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So you just helped continue the fraud? Things aren't gonna improve by complaining on HN.

It's not his job to fix Amazon's fraud issues. Amazon has billions of dollars at its disposal, it should invest some in quality control.

Of course it isn't his job. As it isn't his job to help an old blind woman to cross the street.

I am not intending to emit a moral judgement, just to point out that he was sufficiently outraged to complain about it and to use such strong vocabulary as "fraud", and yet he acquiesced.

Helping (a little bit) to fix the problem wouldn't have been that much of an inconvenience, and if we customers were more like that this kind of behaviour wouldn't be possible, or at least harder.

Your statement assumes that Amazon isn't investing anything in quality control. If you have evidence of this, please post it. Otherwise, you're just a troll.

I could probably write a script in 5 minutes that would scan the database and pull the products with 5 star only reviews like this one. No matter how good a product is somebody will always be unhappy with it because people are people and that's normal. We can't afford to be that naive to believe in a 5 star only product because that is the actual trolling.

No matter how good a product is somebody will always be unhappy with it

If nothing else, someone almost without fail will leave a one-star review that has nothing to do with the item itself. "Package was damaged, one star." "UPS left it in the rain..." If Jesus asked for reviews at Mount Olive (the loaves and fishes thing), there'd be a one-star review somewhere, "fish was a little dry, and I don't like sourdough bread. Better miracles at Joe's House of Wonder, one star." (Though I guess even in reality he got one star from the Pharisees: "shouldn't be doing miracles on Sabbath; one star.") Nothing and nobody, even Jesus, gets nothing but five star reviews.

IOW, your suggestion would be as good as anything Amazon has right now.

My own two eyes?

At least ~30%+ of Amazon's products are cheap Chinese garbage resold from Albiaba under 10+ different "brands." (private label) There's are also tons of very obvious fake and counterfeit products that could be spotted with a simple human review of new listings.

No, things will improve when Amazon gives >0 fucks and cracks down on the practice.

His other option was letting them keep the money. Surely that's worse?

The point of the fraud is to make money. He denied them that money.

And allowed them to continue to make future money.

There's no point in debating the moral issues when our world is anything but. It's like condemning engineers for enabling governments and corporations to spy on us and constantly erode our privacy. In this particular situation the interaction was between me and the seller. Reviews are written, edited, removed by a person that owes nothing to other potential customers.

Seems contradictory to buy a low quality item based on unfair reviews, complain about that fact, then go on saying that reviewers owe nothing to anyone. They obviously owe a modicum of honesty and objectivity to other potential buyers. Why would you leave a review if not to inform other buyers ?

The other reason for a review is to complain to the seller. And it worked beautifully, he got his money back, and the seller lost money.

I wonder if perhaps, just perhaps, it was indeed a faulty item

Well in this case I left a review because the seller was hassling me for one. Personally I have little trust in reviews. By the way, I wasn't complaining in my original post, just stating facts.

I would have just updated my review with the relevant info that they gave you a free replacement and then followed up by asking you to remove your review.

> by a person that owes nothing to other potential customers

Yet you feel jaded by the other reviewers. You don't owe me anything, but I would encourage you to go back and leave a negative review if the product isn't worth the price. I'm in the market for a cooking knife and would appreciate good reviews. Thanks.

Just buy a thin bladed one from ikea along with a ceramic roller sharpener.

Don't use it on frozen stuff.

If money is no object get a global along with the global specific ceramic roller sharpener.

Yes there are better things out there but for the cost Ikea is very good.

Again.. Amazon is like eBay on crack .. you can and will come across quality - you will - and when you do - you'll be that much more apt to go back for more - no??

If you just need a small set, I highly recommend the Wusthof Studio set. I got mine for under $100 and they work really well.

> It's like condemning engineers for enabling governments and corporations to spy on us and constantly erode our privacy.

I don't agree with your actions, but I definitely agree with your statement. It's like judging people for paying less taxes via loopholes, yet it's perfectly legal. We focus on judging the action, rather than fixing the problem.

In this case, judging you for using a broken system, akin to tax loopholes, may not be "good" - but it's certainly not the root of the problem. Judging you would, at best, just cause one more "victim" (for lack of a better word), and completely ignore the root cause.

We as a nation need to - at the very least - focus equally on the root cause as much as those doing something we don't like. In this case, the company and/or Amazon are far more meaningful and fruitful subjects to lay blame on. Forcing one person to keep an item is not going to fix anything but ensure they have a wasted money, and have 1 bad review in a likely sea of reviews. A possibly insignificant digit. Yet, if the company is accurately called out, if Amazon are accurately called out, we may see real change.

I assume we blame you because it's easy. "Don't dodge taxes!" we scream. Yet, it's our laziness that enables tax dodgers due to ultimately ignoring and not fixing the root problems.

> In this case, judging you for using a broken system, akin to tax loopholes, may not be "good" - but it's certainly not the root of the problem

Wouldn't the greed of man be the true root of the problem? It just so happens that we can't actually fix it in a practical manner so the next best thing we can do is to be make it so it's difficult to take advantage of others.

> It just so happens that we can't actually fix it in a practical manner so the next best thing we can do is to be make it so it's difficult to take advantage of others.

I mean, I think we can. In the case of tax loopholes, they should be plugged. The corruption in politics that created, and also support the loopholes, should be prosecuted. The list goes on and on.

Sure, you are correct, the "greed of man" is to blame - but my point is systems shouldn't be set up where greedy people can freely exploit, and good people exist solely to be taken advantage of.

Systems, laws and limitations should exist to mitigate the damage done by greedy individuals as best possible. The water in the boat may be a pressing concern, but it'll just keep coming back if our main focus is to just bucket the water out of the boat. It needs to be a combined focus, or we only delay eventually being overtaken completely.

Theft is a crime, and laws exist to punish the bad actors. Yet, we still have locks on doors to mitigate who can steal from us.

We do owe those around us.

We are a society built on good will. The kindness of others has given me everything I value in life. It is my responsibility to pay into it.

Sometimes we cannot afford to. That is fine. A lifetime of good deeds covers moments of necessary selfishness. If this was one such moment for you, don't feel bad about it. But if you could afford to take the time and wealth to make the world better, do.

> There's no point in debating the moral issues when our world is anything but.

Some people have not given up on having a moral society and believe that there is great benefit in debating the issues. Because you are not open to debate doesn't mean the debate has no value, but I appreciate your perspective.

Why not just leave the honest review up?

A dull knife is fraud? Seriously?

Knives are meant to me sharpened. The cheapest knife can be sharpened to razor blade sharpness. Sometimes new knives come sharpened somewhat, but in my experience all mass-produced knives need sharpening when new, even $250 knives.

I genuinely can't comprehend the complaint. What next, buy a new car and complain it didn't come with the tank full?

>What next, buy a new car and complain it didn't come with the tank full?

Yes. You should complain if you buy a new car and it doesn't come with a full tank of gas, or needs new tires, or needs an oil change right from the dealership. Those are things you expect from a new car, and they're the reasons you buy a new car.

If I bought a used knife, I'd expect to sharpen it. If I buy a brand new knife, I expect it to be sharp right from the factory. If it's not, I could have saved money and just bought a steel rod and made my own knife out of it. A knife has one purpose: to be sharp. If it's not, it's not a knife. It's a cheap hunk of thin steel that they told you was a knife.

There is zero reason a brand new product needs immediate maintenance before it can be used.

> Those are things you expect from a new car, and they're the reasons you buy a new car.

Those are thing you expect from a new car, and they most certainly are not the reason I would buy a new car.

> If I buy a brand new knife, I expect it to be sharp right from the factory.

You might expect that, but the practical reality is that knives don't really come truly pre-sharpened, and there are many reasons for that. People don't realise that this is the case, because most people, in general, have really, really dull knives, so even a mediocre edge will seem comparatively sharp. But it isn't, it's just mediocre and once you have used a really sharp knife the difference becomes very apparent.

There isn't one way to sharpen a knife. Some people prefer an asymmetric edge, some people hate asymmetric edges. Some people prefer shallow angles, some people prefer steep angles. Some people prefer knives sharped for slashing, some people prefer knives sharpened for slicing. There is no right way to sharpen a knife, it is something extremely user-specific and personal and there cannot be a way to pre-sharpen them that would satisfy all people.

Because it is such a personal issue, I fully expect that I need to sharpen a new knife the way I want it, just as I fully expect I need to installs the apps I want and configure a new phone before I can use it.

> I could have saved money and just bought a steel rod and made my own knife out of it.

This is just hyperbole.

> There is zero reason a brand new product needs immediate maintenance before it can be used.

And yet many products are like that. For example DSLR cameras come without SD/CF cards. The user has to buy them and put them in the camera before he can use it.

That read as a satire of a hacker news response. It's a relatively expensive knife, it's not unreasonable to expect it to arrive with a sharp edge.

No offense, but it's a very cheap knife. Not saying at all you need or you might even want expensive knives, in fact yesterday I made a post on reddit about some very good cheap knives: https://www.reddit.com/r/Cooking/comments/6pet6k/cooks_whats....

However, that price point is the bottom of the bottom of the lowest end when it comes to knives and should be reviewed as such.

No offense, but you seem to be someone who is very into knives and is proud of that. Most of us aren't. So what's "very cheap" to you is well above the price point of many people.

I mean, a BMW may be a high quality car, but most people are going to just get a base model Toyota Corolla and they're just fine with that choice. I can buy a kit car that makes me supply my own engine and tires and exhaust and electrics and it will be custom fit to my exact needs, but for the Toyota Corolla owners, they want to buy a car that already has all of those things and can be driven off the lot.

I'm not criticizing your choices, you seem very knowledgable. I'm just trying to help you understand that when you say "a knife shouldn't come sharp from the factory" and "that $45 knife is the bottom of the lowest end", it makes you seem incredibly out of touch with how most people buy knives.

If I bought a knife that wasn't sharp, I would return it to the store and get a different one.

Knives and knife sharpening is a hobby for some people. These people are going to think any knife under $500 is garbage and any knife they didn't sharpen themselves is dull. They have their mind made up already.

If it was a ceramic knife, would it still make sense for a customer to figure out how to sharpen one of those?

No, I would expect a ceramic knife to be sharp and I would expect it to remain sharp throughout its life.

Unfortunately that's not possible, ceramic knives dull differently (the accumulate lots of tiny nicks or chips along the edge), but you can certainly sharpen them on a diamond stone, or with a dedicated sharpener, or in some cases send them back to the manufacturer[1].

1: http://www.kyoceraknife.com/how-to-sharpen-ceramic-knives.ht...

> It cost £33, so wasn't particularly cheap

Not that I doubt your assessment of the knife but..

As far as kitchen knives go this is cheap, although you can still get very good and sharp knives for this price like the Tojiro DP Gyuto or Victorinox Fibrox.

Usually people don't judge a knife by it's out of box sharpness but the sharpness after sharpening, ease of sharpening, edge retention, balance, and overall craftsmanship.

>Usually people don't judge a knife by it's out of box sharpness

Maybe knife connoisseurs don't, but normal people certainly do. I don't know the names of any knives, those names you mentioned might as well be brands of washing machines. But if I buy a knife and it's not sharp, what's the point? Why can the factory not sharpen it before selling it to me?

Disclaimer: I would rather have a sharp knife out of the box. But:

Using knives makes them not sharp, so the ability to sharpen is the definition of the knife not being junk. A dull knife is not a garbage knife that needs replacement, it is just a knife that needs sharpening.

I use a Lansky sharpener [1] and it is the cat's meow. Just takes a couple of minutes to put a great edge on.

[1]: http://lansky.com/index.php/products/dlx-5-stone-system/

This is weird. It's like complaining about corruption and accepting a bribe at the same time.

Why not get your refund, and then reinstate your review along with your experience of them getting your review removed.

It shouldn't be hard for Amazon to detect such behavior and improve it's reviews or scores. Why don't they do that?

They haven't realized it's an existential threat yet.

And to be fair, at scale, given that most people are idiots and don't know astroturf reviews exist, it might never be for them.

But they are definitely in danger of losing the people who told everyone else about "that Amazon thing."

> It shouldn't be hard for Amazon to detect such behavior and improve it's reviews or scores. Why don't they do that?

Amazon doesn't benefit financially from negative or average reviews, but they do benefit from the positive reviews, regardless of their legitimacy, as the parent poster demonstrated.

Of course Amazon benefits from negative reviews. In a brick-and-mortar shop I can physically inspect the product before buying to judge its quality. Online shops don't have that, so you either have to trust the shop, brand or review system. Since Amazon allows everyone on their platform, the review system is the only reason you can still buy noname products there.

A good review system translates to trust, which enables sales.

You can't really "inspect" most items in a B+M store. For example, if I buy a slow cooker I can see it in its package and see the display model. So? I don't know how well it cooks my fav dish.

Why didn't you leave the review?

Probably the best thing would be to edit or replace it and then in addition to the criticisms, mention how they were very proactive about replacing/refunding for the item