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Comment by bootlooped | Hacker News Reader

The only additional thing I can think they they could do is start infiltrating these review faking networks, figuring out which products are having reviews bought for them, and penalize them. That kind of goes down a rabbit hole where what if a competitor buys fake reviews for your legitimate product in order to get it banned. There is no perfect solution. It seems like Amazon has tried to alleviate the lowered integrity of reviews by showing professional reviews when you search certain things (such as Wirecutter). It's a real problem, and not an easy one to solve.

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I'd love to see a large e-commerce site that runs like Costco. Want a printer? Here's one, and it's probably top ranked by Consumer Reports. Want snow pants? Here are the available sizes and colors for the single set on offer.

Pay professionals to pick and vet reputable, high-quality vendors.

But this is Amazon - pay people? Pay real live people? What are you trying to do, bankrupt them? /s

What? They are the one of the largest employers on the planet with over 600,000 employees.

> a large e-commerce site that runs like Costco. Want a printer? Here's one, and it's probably top ranked by Consumer Reports.

Costco is actually a very bad actor in this particular area; they generally order their stuff with a unique SKU (often the same product, but just a different SKU) specifically so that reviews of outside products don't apply to the (again, identical) Costco product.

I actually think this is due to their liberal return policies and so other retailer's dont have to price-match.

I have not found it difficult to find reviews of products Costco sells - it's typically easy enough to find via the name and physical appearance of the product. I'll search "LaserJet M281cdw", not the individual SKU.

I used to work for a food company that Costco required to make special sizes in order to get into their stores. That made it impossible to price compare across stores, because the sizing was unique. Not all products are as easy to search for as printers.

Was it "we want these specific sizes", or was it "we want these specific sizes and you can't sell those sizes anywhere else"?

The latter.

costco.com? They may not list all the food items online, but they do have printers and snow pants.

Sure, but I want a middle ground between Costco and Amazon.

More product categories than Costco. Fewer options within those categories than Amazon. I can't buy an Apple Watch screen protector at Costco; at Amazon I'm presented with 8,000 Alibaba resellers, often with identical photos of the same product.

For example:

https://www.amazon.com/Lalagen-Women-Sleeve-Peplum-Blouse/dp...

https://www.amazon.com/KaleaBoutique-Womens-Sleeve-Cutout-Pe...

Two different "brands" (there are probably dozens of other sellers with the same item, but these two show up on the same page) selling the exact same shirt, with the exact same photo. I want a site that doesn't allow this, by sourcing reputable vendors.

Couldn't Amazon start reviewing things themselves - like actually curating the products they sell.

The problem isn't fake reviews per se, the problem is products not matching the reviews. You can check a sample of products then stop people who are responsible for "fake" products from being involved in Amazon selling in any way.

Basically do "Which" style consumer reviews on products being sold.

I wouldn't trust Amazon to review products they sell. Not because I think they are dishonest but because there's a built-in confliyof interest.

Trusted reviews are better left to 3rd parties.

They kind of are the third party - the point is that if Amazon review it, ie certify it in any way, then one knows that if it's still terrible you can't trust _Amazon_. It puts skin in the game for Amazon that isn't currently there. At the moment if something on Amazon sucks people just say "oh that seller is awful" and buy something else from another Amazon seller.

I guess Amazon have no reason to implement any sort of techinical checking unless it gains them customers, so people have to vote with their money first.

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