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Comment by bityard | Hacker News Reader

> while the majority that bought and got a number loved it

This seems to be Amazon's main unspoken strategy behind promoting positive reviews... many people want to be helpful and provide a review of a product that they purchased. That's great, but the problem is that most people are thoroughly unqualified to review things: "I took it out of the box and turned it on, five stars!"

(And I'm not even going to mention Vine Voice or whatever it is called, these are reviews you should ALWAYS ignore because they are given free products in exchange for ostensibly unbiased but implicitly biased reviews.)

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Agreed, and that's if they review the product at all.

Lots of reviewers talk about the delivery, how Amazon Prime bungled the return or even a completely different product; all completely unrelated to the actual features of the product you'll be buying. Pair that with how Amazon allows companies to put completely different products on the same offering with "variants" that are again abused by companies to transfer reviews from a well received product onto a poorly received one. Most users just look at the five start v. one star ratio in the end anyway so an electrician going over a wire gets the same final weight as someone that confusingly put a question in the review box.

I've put up good quality critical reviews too and had them silently removed. Amazon may be an okay place for getting an item, but too many people use it as a discovery and curation vehicle and that's where the manipulation starts and ends. I get better product recommendations looking almost anywhere else than the Amazon search box.

There are lots of "favorites", but one of my favorites is when someone rates it highly and says that they ordered it, haven't yet received it, but are very excited to try it. So in other words, they have no idea, but they are so hopeful and excited they already rated it!

My favorite is the question and answer area where they answer "I don't know".

Both of these are caused by the emails sent out, where unsuspecting people try to do their best to answer the question or write a review - sometimes thinking they have to.

Yeah. Amazon didn't start the answers section like this. Once Amazon started emailing random purchasers to answer questions about the item they purchased, the quality of the answers went way down.

In principle it would be very easy to Amazon to detect 'I don't know' type answers.

In principle it would be very easy to Amazon to detect when a product listing is switched to a completely different item, yet that fraud is rampant.

Yes. I was already implicitly blaming Amazon for the low-quality reviews..

A lot of times manufacturers will offer discounts for a positive review.

They'll do more than a discount. They have entire groups dedicated to giving out entirely free products in exchange for five star reviews. They provide entire catalogs of products available; you put in an order request(s) then get a confirmation to place the order. Then you buy the item on Amazon and leave your 5 star review. After the seller verifies your review you are sent full reimbursement typically through PayPal.

I got invited to join one of these groups from a friend and got tons of free products on Amazon this way. I remember getting a free home security system that was like $500 or $600. I never even took it out of the box, just re-sold it on Facebook Marketplace.

Eventually I left the group because I felt bad leaving these good reviews when some of the products were absolutely garbage. It's an unfortunate situation for the sellers though too; people don't buy products on Amazon that don't have reviews. So if a seller can't bootstrap a few good reviews early on then they won't ever start making real sales.

I would add that something like this often happens outside online shops for devices and more generally house appliances.

My theory is that many people are "proud" to have bought something, either for its novelty or because they managed to get the whatever for a lowish price/discount, or - on the opposite - because they already spent an awful amount of money so it must be exceptional, or because they read somewhere that the thing is exceptionally good.

Short of the thing completely not working, they are (in good faith) convinced that they got the best and talk endlessly on how good it is, and how nothing else is as good.

Once upon a time it was typical of many self-appointed Hi-Fi experts but in more recent years I have seen the same behaviour in many other cases, from vacuum cleaners to Tv's.

Wait till you see AliExpress reviews. Often it's, I received the package, yay it arrived (photo of package). I haven't opened the box or turned it on yet. 5 stars. To be fair, just getting your order from Ali is a momentous achievement :P

I’ve found Aliexpress narrative reviews to be pretty good. The (often) russian buyers don’t like to get scammed!

I was buying cheapass 65" 4K TV from toshiba.

Reviews are all like 'Such an improvement compared to my 10 year old 30 inch plasma 720p TV' or 'noce, it has Netflix'!

Not a single review mentioned that Android TV takes like 3 seconds to respond to any buttonpress on the remote because it's running a 8 year old ARMv7 CPU, basically like the first raspberri pi.

I can't tell if your comment is an honest lament about poor quality reviews, or a jest at other commenters' expectations of online reviews.

And honestly review should be something site pokes user to add at least month after purchase, not 20 seconds after they opened the package

> "I took it out of the box and turned it on, five stars!"

To be fair, if you are buying from Amazon, this is helpful information.

How about "This app is great! I'm giving it 1 star so people see my review!"

In the land of the blind ...

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