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Comment by HenryKissinger | Hacker News Reader

Disruptive solution proposal: Get rid of the review system entirely. Stars, comments, user pictures; eliminate all of it. For everyone.

There. Problem solved.

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Good idea. Just list percent returns instead.

I don't know about elsewhere, but Amazon India has been slowly phasing out returns for replacements. It used to be fairly easy to get a return on Amazon, but now almost every product I've bought in the past year or so (and that's a lot of stuff in a variety of categories, thanks to the pandemic) has been replacement-only. If someone gets a fake product, I doubt they'll look for a "replacement", so I'm not sure switching to a return% will be good enough either.

This is, of course, in addition to other issues with removing reviews, such as lacking nuance on why something was returned, etc. I've seen some stellar reviews on Amazon that went out of their way to list the minutiae of a product and the experience of using it, and that's helped me out a lot in the past.

This is half of an idea... people still want/need guidance on purchases.

High quality, curated, independent reviews is probably something that most people would enjoy and appreciate.

That said, the current system is fairly worthless, and what little worth it has is based on hacking it by looking at a specific subset of reviews.

> people still want/need guidance on purchases

It’s funny because Amazon normalized folks needing reviews on things before buying it.

In a way, before Amazon you effectively did have 'quality, curated reviews' - in the form of what products brick and mortar stores chose to stock. Most decent stores aren't going to stock complete garbage, so if you found an item with the attributes you're looking for, it would probably work.

That is a deep and wise point :-)

There was also ebay feedback which was key to shopping for a lot longer I'd say.

This comment isn't entirely without merit. If Amazon could guarantee the genuineness of every product and description, and delivery times, is there any need for star ratings? Reviews are better because it's easier to differentiate between fake and real reviews for now ( as fake reviews usually contain grammatically incorrect sentences, multiple copies with different names etc )

That's what we have done at the marketplace I'm running in the UK. There are no seller ratings and users are encouraged to share feedback.

I don't think reviews are bad, but I think 5 stars is.

Should just be thumbs up, thumbs down. Maybe a "meh" in between.

Alternatively, ask for ratings as 5 star, treat 4 as a meh, and anything 3 or below as a thumbs down.

There are lots of weird things that happen in reviews (from real people). I've often come across three-star reviews which say:

"Product was awesome, but shipping took three days, not one".

There are other reviews I've found useful, for example ones that point out minor flaws. That ability would be lost if you had a simple "good/bad" reaction only.

No please don’t Netflix the Amazon reviews. There is a huge advantage in granularity. Everything in life isn’t so binary, where you either loved or hated it. There is so much gray area in between that makes ratings useful. Netflix neutered their whole rating system when they introduced the thumbs up and down system.

I don't find it useful granularity. It just adds noise.

Product has <huge major flaw>. 4 stars.

Product was a slightly different shade than the picture. 1 star

Stars are also not very granular, vs stuff related to the product itself.

Google's "does this place offer wifi?" type questions seem better than reviews

And how exactly does that solve the problem?

Because the truth is that the reviews are probably almost all fake. Who the f**k IRL takes the time to log back in and leave a product review when the product arrives? I've never done it, and I used to buy from Amazon quite a lot.

Unfortunately some people are dumb enough to give Amazon free business. I used to be that naive myself.

> Who ... takes the time to log back in and leave a product review when the product arrives?

Nice people who want to help others out, and angry people who want their money back.

I do it. It’s easy because the site prompts me to do it. And I’m happy to help future buyers.

This is somewhat true. I review only when am highly impressed or thoroughly disgusted with a product. So-so products where I got more or less what I hoped for, and which is not too highly differentiated from alternatives, I don't bother with reviewing them.

This was what most people did when they bought things online even 15 years ago. I used to leave reviews for almost everything in the 90s and early 2000s. Amazon was a community. At some point of scale that changed.

That would be very stupid

I thought this place liked disruption.

Disruption often means to offer an alternative, better solution to a poorly solved problem. You seem to be suggesting we don't try and solve the product validation problem at all!

Replace reviews with raw data - total number of purchases (at this price and version), return rate, etc.

How does that tell you if the product is any good though? Popularity doesn't automatically imply quality.

It doesn’t - but if 80% of purchases end in returns you’d know to stay away.

A reputable distributor would stop carrying it.

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