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Comment by JohnTHaller | Hacker News Reader

It's common knowledge among most techies that the majority of Amazon reviews are fake and that counterfeit items are a big issue, but most of the general population is completely unaware. I was searching for an inexpensive pair of polarized sunglasses last week and the "Amazon Recommended" ones had an F on FakeSpot with 70%+ fake reviews.

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You really should never be shopping on Amazon for high margin products that are easy to fake. This means perfume, cosmetics, sunglasses and name brand clothing. These items are cheap to manufacture (even the real ones), but get their high perceived value from brand. Those Raybans you love? A $250 pair costs Luxotica around $5 to manufacture. So items like these are common to fake because the fakers can often get a product that is close in quality to the real thing. If they can just trick people into thinking it IS the real thing, they can make as much margin as the big guys without the cost of building an actual brand.

BTW, because of the way Amazon’s FBA service works, even ordering items that are “sold by” a reputable retailer but “fulfilled by Amazon” gets you a high chance of receiving a fake. This is because they mix FBA stock and don’t discriminate what stock it comes from when filling that item, regardless of who the seller is.

Fakes I’m not too worried about, I can usually spot those. The problem is that many categories are flooded with garbage products with inflated reviews. Try to find a bathroom scale. Tons of choices with 4.5 stars and above, but most of the reviews are fake, so it would take hours to sort through the choices and find a decent product.

Same for most things I’ve wanted to buy recently (hiking poles and a daypack are two other examples from this past weekend).

I find that it's usually pretty clear from the bizarre language, excess enthusiasm, and lack of detail which reviews are fake or paid for, without need to refer to any 3rd-party websites. For many products with fewer than 100 ratings, it's clear that all or almost all of the ratings are fake. This often happens when there are several versions of essentially the same product, presumably all from the same factory in China. It's usually best to stick to the one or two variants with the most reviews.

Bear in mind that the existence of obviously fake reviews doesn't imply that all fake reviews are obvious. Maybe it would be prohibitively expensive to do a really good job of producing fake reviews at scale, I don't know -- but surely some companies manage to avoid the obvious tells.

The deluge of low quality, rebranded, foreign built junk is a real problem for Amazon. A search for food scale[0] for example gives you a whole page of similar (many exactly identical with different brand names) pieces of garbage - they have massive, consistent weight drift and drain batteries like it's their job, and yet they're rocking thousands of 5 star reviews.

[0]https://www.amazon.com/s?url=search-alias%3Daps&field-keywor...

Just wait untill these Chinese firms master naming their brands with English sounding names.

That and the thousands of "very good product!" fake reviews, you will not be able to find a non-plasticy, built-to-last product on Amazon at all.

And the fun will continue when you discover the warranty requires you shipping items to PRC, if it's honored at all.

> drain batteries

I'll stick with my ancient one that uses a spring.

This exact issue caused me to use Amazon a lot less.

these days, I check Consumer Reports for a review and usually buy their recommendations. Most of the time, still on Amazon - their delivery is still top notch.

But - not all the time, as there are now viable alternatives that do 2-day delivery well enough. For example, I started ordering some stuff on Walmart.com. A lot of things that are “prime pantry only” on Amazon are available for the same price on Walmart.com, without any restrictions.

> But - not all the time, as there are now viable alternatives that do 2-day delivery well enough. For example, I started ordering some stuff on Walmart.com. A lot of things that are “prime pantry only” on Amazon are available for the same price on Walmart.com, without any restrictions.

There's also local retail. If you don't mind a trip to a store, you can size up the product in person and go home with it the same day. I'm my experience, the prices are often competitive with Amazon, too.

Consumer Reports, Sweethome, Wirecutter. Usually ignore customer reviews and go with Amazon Prime picks for the rest.

They need to give customers a way to sort by review counts in a time-weighted fashion. In other words, a product with 1,000 reviews and a 4.5 average that had been sold for five years would rank higher than a product with 1,500 reviews and a 4.8 average that had been sold for three months. This would help identify the quality products from stable manufacturers.

> They need to give customers a way to sort by review counts in a time-weighted fashion. In other words, a product with 1,000 reviews and a 4.5 average that had been sold for five years would rank higher than a product with 1,500 reviews and a 4.8 average that had been sold for three months. This would help identify the quality products from stable manufacturers.

Major improvements have been needed in Amazon's search ranking for years. The fact that it's little better than it was in 2002 tells me they don't really care to fix any of the issues with their shopping experience.

Dear anyone at Amazon: please read this and implement the suggestions: http://www.evanmiller.org/how-not-to-sort-by-average-rating....

Any ranking system you can suggest can and will be gamed and exploited. The problem is that Amazon is trying to rank products at all, not whatever opaque algorithm they are using to do the ranking. They need to turn off all the ranking and rating, and start actually vetting their suppliers, but that’s hard and expensive so they will never do it.

> They need to...start actually vetting their suppliers, but that’s hard and expensive so they will never do it.

I agree they need to start actually vetting their suppliers. But I disagree with you about the ranking. "Sort by average ranking" is broken obviously brain dead ways. They need a transparent ranking system that correctly balances number of reviews with average rating. I don't want to user their actually opaque "relevance" ranking.

Faced with hundreds of junk offerings, sometimes a high-to-low price sort gets the quality product onto the first few pages. Doesn't work if there are many "packs of 50" though.

For something like hiking poles, I really recommend REI. It may cost a bit more but you get higher quality materials and great customer support.

> it would take hours to sort through the choices and find a decent [bathroom scale]

Maybe it's different in the USA, but when I needed a bathroom scale for our new apartment I went over to the store and bought the first one they had. If I would have come home and it wouldn't have worked, I'd have gone back and had either gotten repair under warranty or cash back (if they don't want to repair it, you can rescind the purchase). Took maybe 20 minutes. Ordering online would be quicker in terms of buying, but I would have to stay home to receive the package, and if something is wrong, I have to ship it back and get the money back for shipping, plus wait for them shipping a new one... Wouldn't buying from a physical store be easier than looking through hundreds of reviews, both in terms of time as well as in terms of mental effort?

I understand it's just an example and this doesn't apply to everything, but I do hear that in the USA, people order everything from Amazon instead of walking over to the store. I just can't imagine staying home for packages all the time, let alone trying to spot fake reviews for simple things like scales (of any kind), microwaves, etc. They are simple things with simple features (e.g. microwave: power, size, and whether it revolves) that I don't need reviews for. If it doesn't work as expected, also if it breaks after three years of light and correct usage, I'd get warranty (assuming the expectation that a microwave lasts a decade is not wildly off).

> I just can't imagine staying home for packages all the time

I'm not sure why you think people in the USA do that. You certainly don't have to stay home to get package. Nobody does that.

If it's a valuable package, there are ways to make sure it's not stolen, including using an Amazon Locker.

In Germany DHL has lockers that you can use as an address. The next one is closer to me than any store.

Although I agree I have a certain reluctance to return stuff, because now I need to wrap the package, get it to the post office (which is far away) and pay shipping.

In the US, you can just put the package in an Amazon Locker with the return label printed on it. You don't have to pay for shipping.

I don't know if Amazon Lockers exist in Germany, but I'm sure they would reimburse your for the shipping cost if you ask.

> Maybe it's different in the USA ... I went over to the store

Disclaimer: I don't live in the USA

Maybe it has something to do with the fact that many cities in the US have residential neighborhoods separated and far from commercial ones? If I had to grab the car and make a 20min drive, and find parking, just to buy a 10$ scale, no thanks, better to order online

  I do hear that in the USA, people order everything from
  Amazon instead of walking over to the store. I just can't
  imagine staying home for packages all the time

It depends on your life situation.

Personally, it's hard for me to get to stores on work days - whereas my workplace will accept my personal parcels.

On the other hand, I know people whose workplaces won't accept parcels for them, but who walk past loads of stores on their way to work.

So for me, ordering online is a convenience - but for them, it's an inconvenience.

It's called living in the suburbs. I don't order everything on Amazon, but if I need some basic item (hangers, laundry detergent, vent cover, bathroom scale etc) it's a huge time saver! It would easily take me 45 minutes round-trip to drive to the nearest, say hardware store, locate what I need (assuming it's in stock) and drive home. On Amazon, I find the item, swipe right and wait two days. No need to stay at home waiting for the package, I live in a safe area.

Honestly I've had zero issues with counterfeits, but then again I don't have any kids yet, so I'm not buying many toys. I also typically pay more for name brands due to quality concerns in general, so that probably insulates me to a degree. I'm not denying people's experiences, but honestly Amazon's reputation is still fine to me. They're a marketplace like any other and they never really marketed themselves as premium. Curation and trust was never part of the deal IMO. I don't trust Walmart or Best Buy either.

I live in NYC and I'm definitely not taking the subway three stops just to get to a place to buy a bathroom scale, I would just order that from Amazon. Getting to certain varieties of stores in urban locales is pretty annoying and time consuming just like in the suburbs.

In my old neighborhood there was one place to buy bathroom scales , however, they were not sold with warranties and were basically getting what you receive from Amazon at a higher price.

Yeah, and the cheap bathroom scale would have been just as awful as the middling ones on Amazon. And that would have probably been just fine.

One of the weird things about Amazon is that its turned us into people that think we need a crowd-sourced review for every $20 common household item.

Recently it became clear to me that my Amazon shopping has been limited to stuff I don't really care about that much.

These are product categories (and european sources) I frequently buy from, yet Amazon hardly serves any of them competently:

- studio equipment (Thomann)

- audio equipment (countless niche, yet competent HIFI shops)

- computer hardware / technology (Really, where to start? Alternate, Mindfactory, Apple)

- bike components (Rose, Mantel, ...)

- tea (Teekontor Kiel)

- clothing (Rapha, Uniqlo, Zara)

For most of these categories Amazon is completely useless. Discovery is abysmal. Selection is mediocre. Product data / listings are a mess and show repeated results with slightly different, often incomplete variations from multiple sellers. Alternatively you get one single product page that features countless, sometimes unrelated product variations that may or may not be Prime-eligible. Maybe Amazon is fine with me buying cheap stuff from them and I still value their Prime-powered, reliable next-day delivery, but for important, expensive stuff I expect some degree of curation and will use other stores. At this point Amazon is slightly better than eBay.

>BTW, because of the way Amazon’s FBA service works, even ordering items that are “sold by” a reputable retailer but “fulfilled by Amazon” gets you a high chance of receiving a fake. This is because they mix FBA stock and don’t discriminate what stock it comes from when filling that item, regardless of who the seller is.

Is this also true with items sold directly by Amazon?

Yes. They commingle all the inventory.

Not true. Sellers can prevent comingling inventory by creating their listing with a unique FNSKU. This doesn't prevent the product from being sold on the same ASIN. If sellers can do that then Amazon can absolutely do that.

They could, but they don't. Why is a bit of a mystery because in the long run this is destructive and it can't be that profitable.

If you sell anything on Amazon and get items back from FBA before they hike up prices near the holidays you will see items returned which were not what you shipped...books for example.

How legitimate is FakeSpot though? I find nearly everything has an F with a high amount of fake reviews when I use it.

Is that a sign of illegitimate fake-spotting, or a sign of just how widespread fake reviews are? Personally I'm quite inclined to believe an extremely high fail rate.

> Is that a sign of illegitimate fake-spotting, or a sign of just how widespread fake reviews are? Personally I'm quite inclined to believe an extremely high fail rate.

I think fake reviews are pretty widespread. This Washington Post story (https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/economy/how-merchant...) talks about how Facebook groups are used trade free stuff in exchange for good reviews. I joined some, and they seemed to have a lot of traffic. FakeSpot seems to put a lot of emphasis on analyzing the reviewers, probably looking for accounts who appear to be participating in one of these review rings.

> FakeSpot seems to spend put a lot of emphasis on analyzing the reviewers, probably looking for accounts who appear to be participating in one of these review rings.

Presumably this (and the fact that Amazon can analyse them too) leads to a wider spread of fake reviews even on legitimate items, as having fake accounts write generic reviews on a random selection of items they don’t care about would make them harder to detect.

Presumably blocking spam leads to a wider spread of spam. Presumably having a zero tolerance policy on drugs leads to a wider spread of drugs. Presumably making firearms legal leads to more violence. Its an arms race, but just because of that doesn't mean the fight is worth it or not.

I'd say however that the lack of accountability by Amazon (et al) is the real problem. They should be held accountable for these fake reviews. We need a lawsuit on this.

I checked your comment and it was an F with 83% fake on FakeSpot.

Edit: I was paid for writing this review.

I checked FakeSpot with FakeSpotFakeSpot, a website to check the authenticity of fake-review spotting websites, and it received an A with 99% authenticity.

It has worked well for me. There are plenty of A and B products, keep looking.

It's been reliable for me.

> I find nearly everything has an F with a high amount of fake reviews when I use it

Seems like a reflection of how bad the reviews on Amazon are, not a reflection of the quality of fakespot.

Some categories are simply flooded with fake reviews where you won't find a single honest listing in the first 3 pages.

That said, there are plenty of A rated products in my experience. All of my products are A-rated, and unfortunately many of my competitors are honest too.

I would guess that it is legitimate. The fake review problem is real. Here is an example of an item with 2k good reviews:

https://www.fakespot.com/product/dewalt-dw745-10-inch-compac...

Notice that it is not a cheap plastic good, and is neither easily duplicated nor ripped off.

Seems to only work with Amazon.com not Amazon.co.uk or Amazon.de. Do those not suffer from fake reviews? Also, I found that buying the full review from "trustworthy" cost 10 USD.

Its hit or miss in my opinion from when I used it.

I personally just do my own homework. Rule of thumb is 2 or 3 star ratings IMO have higher weighted value because people weren't biased enough to leave a 1 or 5 star review.

Always check the most critical review as well, also all the 1 star reviews. If there's a video, its the most authoritative and unbiased source usually. Images are definitely good too.

Do a search on the question/answer section for competing products. The ones that are most unbiased are going to offer viewpoints in two competing products usually, but this sometimes can be faked. Check the reviewers history if there are both negative and positive reviews, as well as the semantics in their wording.

Check also if there's an alternative source of reviews, e.g. best buy & newegg for electronics. Do the ratings more or less indicate the same behavior? Or is there a discrepancy by a large amount?

If its a popular item or something like gym equipment, do multiple youtube searches and find both (1) authoritative well known youtubers and (2) amateur youtubers. (2) are usually unbiased (1) are potentially biased

If its a really popular item (phone, laptop) use other review sites as metrics. Wirecutter/Thesweethome started off as fairly unbiased, but were acquired by a large company so the ratings are now slightly skewed. You can always check other forums like linustechtips, reddit, and do a search across that entire thread for more answers.

Don't bother doing this much research unless its a big picture though. I had to buy a macbook pro so I thoroughly did 5-10 hours of research in which version I wanted (2015), which specs, potential issues I would run across, considering where the 3rd party sources of used macbook pros would most likely be sold at (ebay), etc. Differences in CPU/GPU benchmarks, battery life cycle usages, etc.

On what do you base your opinion that the "general population is completely unaware?"

I believe that's just common sense.

You'd think that Amazon would have the machine learning resources to detect likely-fraudulent items with high accuracy, should they be interested in preventing such obvious fraud.

> You'd think that Amazon would have the machine learning resources to detect likely-fraudulent items with high accuracy, should they be interested in preventing such obvious fraud.

They must not be interested. After all, they still get paid and have a level of legal insulation due to how they've structure Amazon marketplace. I wonder how long it'll take for their overall brand to take a hit over this, though.

There's probably a huge number of shoppers that use Amazon for nearly everything, myself included, that would just toss the cheap crappy thing they got off Amazon and try another brand from, you guessed it, Amazon.

I don't know how many horrible sets of bath rugs and towels I went through on Amazon before I finally bit the bullet and bought an actual expensive brand and the difference is staggering. Before someone asks they're from Frontgate (not on Amazon).

Point being I'm just sending Amazon money over and over again.. It's definitely made me go back to stores where I can see the product for certain things.

Similarly for Kindle Unlimited despite the fact that Amazon clearly has the technology to address Markov Chain generated fakes, plagiarism and upvoting and review cabals, Amazon either chooses not to invest or not to invest enough to prevent all of that bad behavior.

IMHO investing 1/2 of 1% of the KU pool is enough to fund human review via their Mechanical Turk program. It wouldn't be perfect but it would eliminate most of the fraud.

They have the resources. What they lack is the proper incentive. As long as fake reviews don't completely destroy the customer experience to the point that people forego any other advantages (mostly convenience) of shopping there, Amazon will continue to reap the short-term benefit of more apparent variety, more apparent quality, and more sales. Any effort beyond keeping the fakery just short of destroying the brand isn't worth it to them.

I'd venture further and claim that it's in Amazon's long-term interest to drive down the perceived brand value of third-party suppliers through its distribution channel.

Costs are lowered and the value of Amazon's brand is relatively increased. Similar to stocking own-brand product in a supermarket. This weakens the negotiating position of big name brands.

Would this be the same machine learning that was recently in the news for incorrectly identifying 28 lawmakers as people that had been charged with some crime? Maybe it is, and that's why it can't spot the fake reviews?

The 28 were incorrectly indetified, because they ran their tests using default settings, which aren't fit for such an use case.

Why is this “common knowledge” while almost nobody believes astroturfing exists on Reddit or Hacker News? Serious question. I don’t see a fundamental difference.

I get fake brushheads this week for my Phillips toothpaste. Also Amazon recommend.

So true.. I like the Flying Fisherman San Jose sunglasses and have gotten them from Amazon under <$15 in the past. Not quite as cheap and as disposable at $30 IMO.

https://www.amazon.com/Flying-Fisherman-Polarized-Sunglasses...

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