Hacker News Reader

Comment by toufiqbarhamov | Hacker News Reader

I can live with the unpleasant UX as far as that goes, but where it implodes for me is having to sift through endless fake reviews, counterfeits, and shit products. “Amazon’s Choice” is frequently garbage, and everything else is a coin flip at best. I have to use Fakespot just to sift through the more obvious dreck.

Of course it’s AWS printing their money, not retail.

View on HN

Fakespot is pure trash. That thing doesn't work at all. According to Fakespot everything in Amazon is fake. Even small legitimate third-party sellers get bad ratings from Fakespot. But that's not even the worst part. I have found dubious listings where Fakespot didn't detect anything and gave them a semi-decent rating when it's obvious that the reviews were manipulated just by looking at them.

If you want to understand a product reliability is pretty simple. Just browse the 1 and 2 star reviews. You can find a lot of valuable information about the products in those reviews.

If you still want to use something to evaluate the reviews use Reviewmeta. It's much better and transparent than Fakespot.

> According to Fakespot everything in Amazon is fake.

http://www.chioka.in/class-imbalance-problem/

And probably half or more that’s on the Internet is fake too especially if it revolves around making money.

I’ve told my older parent not to buy a product or use a svc based on Internet reviews.. go with personal recommendations only!

>According to Fakespot everything in Amazon is fake.

I really don't know how good or bad fakespot is, but I get a roughly uniform distribution - it's not at all rare for me to see an A or B, and I'm pretty sure I don't see more F's than those.

It’s really quite surreal. Unless it’s a highly commoditized item, I don’t bother with Amazon anymore.

What do you use instead? I'd love to be able to ditch amazon for most purchases.

Literally any thing else. For photography equipment, B&H or my local camera shop. For non-Apple computer stuff, local MicroCenter, NewEgg, etc. For non-techy stuff, local stores. Even the dollar stores have laundry soap, dish soap, etc.

I've actually gotten used to taking a weekend afternoon for errands or maybe in the evenings on the way home. It's a good way to just unwind from the computer for a while. There are times to avoid certain stores (Central Market on the weekend). Shopping online pretty much means being in front of the computer all of the time.

FWIW, it's still a decent place to buy books. I go to my local bookstore first, because reasons, but Amazon comes through whenever they can't source it through their distributor.

But yeah, when I die, I want Amazon electronics sellers to be my pallbearers so they can let me down one last time.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com