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Comment by Semaphor | Hacker News Reader

> Now you know why it was so highly reviewed.

I’m relatively certain that was indeed what the author meant to imply.

Usually, you can see a few comments mentioning those offers when you check the reviews. Amazon lets you go see just the 1-star reviews; this is a good use for that feature.

It's interesting how it's actually really easy to notice this happening as a random consumer (I've seen it a few times, in fact) but somehow impossible for Amazon to do anything about, and presumably when they do they don't bother putting in much effort to properly punish sellers for it. It's almost like Amazon does not give a shit.

Part of my falling out with AMZN was when I saw a product listing that where somewhere between fraud and word salad, complained, and was told that AMZN doesn't care what I think about a product listing unless I bought the product.

Problem is if I try to buy something on AMZN I need to sift through large numbers of junk product listings, a problem I don't have with best buy, petsmart, adorama, or other reputable online retailers. Even the marketplaces like Ebay, Etsy and Temu seem less offensive to me. Result = I canceled my Prime subscription and now AMZN is the last place I will go to buy something and not the first.

I wrote another comment in the thread about it, but fyi as of now mid-2024 giving out incentives (free items / discounts / cashback etc) conditioned on a positive review, is considered fraud and can be reported as such on https://reportfraud.ftc.gov/ .

Next time I see such an offer in an item I order I will definitely report it. Maybe it will improve the online shopping landscape by an epsilon if we all do it.

Fakespot is not infallible but a useful addition to any Amazon research process.

They try to hide it from the front page (a bit of a dark pattern) but you don't need to download the plugin to use it, just visit https://www.fakespot.com/analyzer

Yeah, I was really annoyed when it to me quite a while to find that URL after they changed the layout of the site. I only shop on Amazon when I absolutely have to, and have an extension just sitting there being regularly updated with who knows what code really didn't appeal.

Bookmarklet:

  javascript:void(open('https://www.fakespot.com/analyze?url='+encodeURIComponent(location.href)))

If you are ever a recipient of such an offer (free item, cashback, any benefit) and it is conditioned on writing a positive review (ie giving 1/5 won’t get you the free gift), this is as of recently not allowed and considered fraud.

Should report all such new cases you see to https://reportfraud.ftc.gov/

ftc press release: https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/news/press-releases/2024/08/...

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