About 2 months ago I went to review a product I bought from Amazon | Hacker News Reader

About 2 months ago I went to review a product I bought from Amazon

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82 pointsnonfamous25 comments

There was a time when I used to look at Amazon reviews for help.

Now, I only look at 1-star Amazon reviews to see if there is any meaningful input relevant to my case, and some discussion in Reddit if possible.

Other than that, the whole review space is a royal mess between stupid blogs and weird long YouTube videos.

1-star reviews usually only say the product sucks. I find 3- or 4-star reviews to be the best and usually most detailed reviews, with pros and cons of the product listed.

Easier to read version here: https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1472677342627598337.html

Without reviewmeta amazon reviews would be at this point completely uninformative. You never know

1. Is the review 'paid for'? 2. Is the review at all about this product? 3. Were any reviews changed/deleted (big sign that there's foulplay - either the seller paying off bad reviews or just flagging them for deletion)? 4. Do the stars reflect the reviews or just anonymous/invisible star ratings without review? Amazon makes it purposefully impossible to distinguish in their star rating between reviews and just stars given. A product with 10 reviews and 14k stars? Sure.. 5. Will I get an original or a copy? Looking at reviews of any big (non-tech) brand, you find this a lot. WMF kitchenware always has glowing reviews next to 1-star reviews and I suspect this is not the company doing foulplay, but amazon selling fakes amid originals.

Amazon is horrible for reviews. You can't leave Bas reviews for a lot of these 3rd path vendors.

The reviews are compromised. The review analyzers (FakeSpot, ReviewMeta etc) get progressively unreliable and hence compromised. Review sites like the Wire Cutter that were wonderful places to read great long form reviews of products are unfortunately compromised as well.

With so much money in play, the platform will pretend to care as most customers purchase more to replace bad products rather than seeking recourse against sellers. All this I suppose is what keeps big box stores alive.

For a while now I've been kicking around the idea of a "Trusted Social Reviews" website, where you get item reviews only from 1 maybe 2 degrees of separation of your social graph.

Various problems and challenges exist - no need to point out the obvious.

But I wonder what HN would consider, if the presumed positives would actually pay off?

I’d use that, I hate the fact that people can just be paid to lie and actually effect choice. This sounds like a great attempt at a solution that I’d give a go

Well, I can see people still lying (and taking payment) -- but in that case you should probably get better friends ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

I don't know.

Your idea seems nice, but the "proximity" of reviewers is not (IMHO) a good metric.

I mean, let's set aside for the moment the internet/web aspect, and let's talk of the small circle of your (or mine) friends (not actually "friends" and not people you simply know, people with whom you have a continued relationship, that you meet from time to time that you know enough).

How many of them would you actually trust being actually objective in their review?

And how many of them would you actually trust being good at reviewing a certain item (and not another)?

The only "guarantee" that you would have by the 1/2/3 degrees of separation would be that the person making the review would be existing/real and that (possibly) the review was written in good faith, but nothing about the "validity" of the review.

Interesting point about trusting your friends/family to make objective reviews - I was thinking about my close network, whom I'd absolutely trust. But I have a maybe a strong expectation of my friends.

Do you really have so little trust in your immediate network to review items? Especially if you knew specifically who posted each review?

The very close network is so close (and small in numbers), at least in my case, that one wouldn't actually need a web/internet site for it, they are people you talk to or possibly meet often, when you go at the 2 or 3 level, you have a lot more people but you don't actually know them.

>Do you really have so little trust in your immediate network to review items?

What I personally have is "selected mistrust", i.e. (example) if I want a (trustable/reliable) opinion on (say) a vacuum cleaner I wouldn't ask it to my friend "A" whom I know has a definite preference for any gadget that is new and shiny/esthetically pleasing, whilst if I want an opinion on (still say) a car, him would be the person I would trust the most, on the other hand, my friend "B" would be very reliable on the vacuum cleaner, but he would be not as much reliable on the car, and of course I can do this kind of selection only for "level 1" people.

Im not sure if it helps but I always put in all the positive things about a product even if I want to give a bad review so its more fair and harder to claim its fake.

I often found the reviews to be related to shipping and whatnot, and not the product itself.

Hmm... Pretty sure one of those amazon LPs is pretty relevant here.

Like a Buzzfeed "journalist," I don't think a reviewer has a right to be shielded from the consequences of their speech. There's nothing that says you can undermine a business owner or harm an establishment with your exaggerated or even false claims, and then expect to be treated like a king. Just because you had a less then stellar time once doesn't mean that the average shopper doesn't leave satisfied. So the next time you show up at my shop to buy some wood screws or whatever, be prepared to be shown the door while I meaningfully tap the sign that says that we reserve the right to refuse service to anyone.

This doesn’t really seem like the situation linked above. This situation is amazon blocking his reviews as “fraudulent”, not the vendor refusing to do business with him for leaving a bad review.

When someone leaves a damaging review, the seller has the right to ask Amazon to investigate the reviewer. In this case, the reviewer was found to be fraudulent. We haven't seen his reviews and we don't have the seller's perspective, so we can't really judge. I'm generally on the seller's side in situations like these.

> I'm generally on the seller's side in situations like these.

That seems like the wrong bias to me. Some random dropshipper selling garden hoses bought off alibaba on amazon has no real incentive to be an honest player and plenty of incentives to be dishonest, while on the other hand some random person who bought a garden hose has no real incentive to lie.

Either way, if you think there is potential for one party to abuse the system (in your case you're suspicious of the buyer, while I'm suspicious of the seller) the actual problem here is with amazon being an un-accountable middle-man. I doubt the seller would have had much better luck contacting amazon and appealing the judgement, if amazon had sided with the buyer in this case.

The right to leave a negative review in your mind is expecting "to be treated like a king"?

No, you have the right to leave your negative review and I have the right to show you the door. "Treated like a king" is thinking you can hurt my business and expect to be treated as if nothing had happened.

I'm really confused by your take here. "Just because you had a less then (sic) stellar time once doesn't mean that the average shopper doesn't leave satisfied." The average experience is the sum of all reviews - not each review is the average experience. That's how reviews work.

Scumbag reviewers leave damaging and often false reviews out of spite, without having experienced your product or service fully, and often without having experienced it at all. I think this is well understood, as well as the fact that they are often paid for and organized by bad competitors looking to drive honest business out of the market. See examples of Amazon itself copying products to offer in its Basics line.

I don't disagree about that - about fake or manipulated reviews and even paid reviews. However I do disagree that the solution is to ban all negative reviews. I don't know the correct fix however, certainly the way Amazon does it doesn't work.

There is no goal to "ban negative reviews." That is an absurd interpretation of what I wrote.

You are free to write negative reviews, for any reason, including being a shill who is paid to write fake negative reviews. Do it on a merchant's website, do it on your own blog or YouTube channel, do it in your local paper or at a bar with friends. Do it on a boat with a goat, where permitted by law.

Businesses are then free to deny you service, suspend your account, investigate your activity, sue you for slander, etc.

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