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Comment by jahnu | Hacker News Reader

Only allow reviews from verified purchasers

I bought a $25 product recently on Amazon. In the box there was a “coupon” that I’d get $20 back if I left a 5-star review for the product on Amazon. Instead I left a 1-star review saying that they were trying to game the system, and my review got REMOVED! I give up.

I've had people refund entire purchases and let me keep the item after I complain about a real defect, all just to avoid a low review. The most surreal instance was when I just asked a completely innocuous question and was offered a refund--clearly misunderstand my curiosity as a complaint.

I love imagining the surreal consequences of a world where reputation is far more valuable than the products themselves... but that must be unsustainable.

If you sell a $1 product for $10 you can refund 8 of them and still double your money. Yes, for cheap Chinese made stuff the reputation is far more valuable than the products themselves

Don’t give up. Leave a 5-star review, get an out-of-band refund (if they do that). Then change your review to 1 and demand an in-band refund. Tell your friends.

Would it have upset you if they were asking for any review at all, instead of requiring a 5 star one?

> Would it have upset you if they were asking for any review at all, instead of requiring a 5 star one?

That has largely the same result. Most satisfied customers don't bother to leave a review, so real reviews tend to skew towards people who have had issues.

If you bribe satisfied customers into leaving a review then your reviews are no longer from the same sampling population as your competitors' reviews and you end up looking better than you really are by comparison. Plus, if the incentive isn't offered to everyone then people who get it (and then are disproportionately likely to leave a review) will tend to like the seller more because they liked receiving the incentive.

It would only be fair if the same incentive was provided to all buyers for leaving reviews of all sellers.

"Asking for a friend," right?

This exact same thing happened to me.

Verified purchases on Amazon aren't trustworthy, either.

I live downstairs from someone who gives 5 star, raving reviews in return for "free samples". I'm not sure if it's for profit or for fun or what, but the rate at which Amazon delivery people deliver packages to our building is truly staggering.

I have a friend in Germany that is in a Facebook group for "testing" products from Amazon. They need to purchase all kind of weird and low quality stuff from unknown Chinese brands, they keep the product, get a refund through Paypal and leave a 5 star review. I told him it's kind of a bad thing to do, but hey, free 29 Euro earbuds. :)

I knew this was a problem mostly in the US, but just like one of the initial commenters noted, it's starting to happen even in Germany, and Amazon is now filled with all kind of weird cheap brands that have 4,5+ stars and 500+ reviews, you can't get any proper stuff like a humidifier or some small kitchen accessories without being flooded with spam. Well, back to local shops and retailers.

The stuff they get from doing this is basically junk, a complete waste of resources. But the allure of "free stuff!" is just to great, even if they just end up throwing it in the trash.

It's sickening.

Here’s how people still game verified purchases: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22399781

I am afraid verified purchases are being gamed too. Sometimes I feel like scammers might be going to the extreme of coordinating clustered purchases (I am guessing the merchandise ends up in the owners hand/warehouse anyways somehow?) and posting the reviews.

This is not even mentioning incentivized reviwers who may be posting exaggerated (if not fake) reviews for promos, discounts, etc.

> Sometimes I feel like scammers might be going to the extreme of coordinating clustered purchases (I am guessing the merchandise ends up in the owners hand/warehouse anyways somehow?) and posting the reviews.

This is called brushing and there have been several articles written about it. Scammers create fake accounts for real addresses and then ship fake merchandise to those addresses to get the "verified purchase" for their review.

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/amazon-brushing-scam-couple-rec...

One way in which Amazon has restricted this type of gaming is by restricting the ability of sellers to apply extreme discounting. Even legitimate attempts to do this such as liquidation can result in a warning from Amazon about rank/review manipulation.

However, real crooks just compensate verified buyers by paying them via Paypal, Payoneer, etc. You can't protect against that except through court order or by private sting investigation. Amazon does sue organizers of these schemes and has untangled some in that way, but that is challenging to scale.

I got requests to do reviews for some of the products I received out of nowhere on amazon and other places. They told me they would send me the money if I can order more myself and leave a review. So I guess, no that won't help as much as you think it would.

Doesn’t stop fake reviews.

Technically true, but it would stop bulk fake reviews.

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