Amazon Reviews: Plenty of fraud, even after changes
Amazon accepts reviews on a product from anyone, whether they purchased the product or not. It is a trivial matter for someone to use this as an attack vector against competitors.
A one star review is extremely damaging. Just a few of these can derail ranking and sales. To counteract the effects of one start reviews a whole pile of five star reviews are necessary. Result: Lots of third party sellers had to resort to subsidized reviews. Amazon created the problem.
Sellers need a way to protect themselves from such offensively deployed negative reviews.
Amazon needs to only allow reviews by people who actually purchased the product and have owned it for a reasonable period of time.
You can post a review without buying the product or even before you receive it. How does this make any sense? How can you review vitamins, a tool or a chair before receiving it?
A review, in order to be valid, needs to be legitimate. One way to help legitimize it is to enforce time-from-purchase rules.
Finally, sellers need to be able to address negative reviews before they appear on a product page, affecting ranking and sales. This means giving the seller the ability to solve the problem prior to the publication. This is no different than real life: If your customer isn't happy they call/visit your, file a complaint and you make good on your promises or refund the product. This would be fair to both parties.
In summary, this is what they are missing:
- Reviewer must actually have purchased the item on Amazon
- Enforce reasonable time between purchase and review
- Give sellers with the opportunity to provide excellent
customer service by being able to deal with negative
reviews prior to publication