Investigating fraud on Amazon | Hacker News Reader

Investigating fraud on Amazon

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141 pointsdredmorbius20 comments

Expanding on the point that this isn't just limited to dietary supplements, I ran into what I'm pretty sure is another example of this today. I was looking on Amazon for an inexpensive Android tablet, and came across a brand I'd never heard of: http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=bl_sr_pc?ie=UTF8&field-brandtext...

Lots of products with vast numbers of great reviews, interspersed by occasional individuals pointing out seemingly fundamental flaws. There wasn't much mention of the company other than on Amazon, Ebay, and their own site. I did come across one seemingly reputable review by the WSJ: http://www.wsj.com/articles/finally-a-100-tablet-worth-buyin...

They gave it their lowest rating in every category they considered: battery life, camera, screen, and speaker. Not only this, but they also rated it as worse than each of the 3 other tablets they considered in each of these categories.

While I suppose they could be a great tablet at a great price with lots of excited fans, it seems odd that the only major media reviewer I could find came to a totally opposite conclusion. Eventually I came across a 1 star Amazon review that seemed to explain the discrepancy:

Terrible product, even for the price. I can only think the positive reviews are due to the extra offer that came with the tablet for positive reviews.

http://www.amazon.com/review/R2QZCEUWC4MQKB/ref=cm_cr_dp_cmt...

While it would be interesting to know exactly what that offer was, it removed my interest in researching them any further.

> the company offers a protective case with the completion of a review

http://www.amazon.com/review/R2ZIC24LFDBD1D/ref=cm_srch_res_...

> comes with a FREE case if i write a review!

http://www.amazon.com/review/R1JNOKKTR5XM7B/ref=cm_srch_res_...

> there is a slip that comes with the item offering a case free giveaway all you do is review your purchase and rated then copy the review and send it in email with your order number n in seven days u will get your case I did it n nothing so far only a email asking for screenshot did it n still nothing anyone else is having the same issue

http://www.amazon.com/review/RI65M4YHQAC8N/ref=cm_srch_res_r...

So a bribe.

It may go beyond a free case. One of the 5 star reviews says:

"Disclosure - I received this product in exchange for an honest review."

http://www.amazon.com/review/RGESQVR7NTLPX

One wonders if there might be other reviewers who also received the product in return for a "honest review" but failed to include such a disclosure. The problem, of course, is that if you give an honest but negative review, you are unlikely to continue to receive free things to review.

FWIW I bought the $55 Dragon tablet and it's pretty good for the price and works just fine.

looking at the first linked product from that search url you posted: http://www.amazon.com/Dragon-Touch-Bluetooth-Pre-installed-T...

all the reviews shown are from verified purchases.

Yes. That was explained in this thread. People who bought the device were offered a free slipcase if they left a positive review.

I'm surprised at this because of my experience as a seller.

A couple of years ago, I was an Amazon seller. Amazon essentially saw that I was making money and started directly competing with me and undercutting all of my prices.

Soon after this, I was banned completely with almost no explanation. When I asked why, they told me that the information is proprietary to their business and I would not get a reason. After this canned response email, they ignored all of my emails. In any other industry, they would be investigated by the government.

My money was also held for 90 days, which nearly put me out of business.

so, what were you selling?

I've had nothing but bad experiences with Amazon re-sellers and I avoid them completely.

Do you care to explain? I have had only good ones, I mostly bought strange cheap stuff from China like vacuum pumps, endmills and the like (they are often the same sellers than on ebay). But I don't buy in competitive markets (dietary supplement, electronics, photo).

I bought a bunch of books from different resellers (biology text books that I could not buy new) and none save one arrived.

Amazon was pretty good about it even though it took months to resolve.

Yikes!

Almost all the books I buy are used, through resellers, and I ... buy a lot! Maybe not quite 100 per year, but tens and tens, and at one point I got a somewhat up to date but still used set of first year and a bit beyond college textbooks. And I can't recall a single one not arriving (the condition it was in, that can be another story). Ah! And I had to replace on the order of 50 of them after a tornado trashed my apartment, but fortunately only a small fraction of my books.

So I guess this must be a regional thing.

My experiences have been almost uniformly good, but I avoid re-sellers who don't have at least a 96% rating, and I'm in the US vs. Europe.

I'd imagine that it can't be too hard on Amazon's side to predict whether a product receives a lot of fake reviews or not. Just checking if the reviewer has other reviews would be a simple first step to grab the low-hanging fruit.

Amazon is a huge search engine. They should act like one and prevent attempts of gaming the system.

I'll just note that other search engines have been waging a ~15 year war against deceptive content, fake links, and other shenanigans. It's a war of attrition and whack-a-mole, not something you can straight-out win.

That said, if Amazon incentivized private fraud-busters like amazonthrowaway here, that might be a Good Thing.

Faith in the site itself, reviews, and products should matter to Amazon, after all.

I have proof of similar fraud. My wife ordered a premium-priced hardware item which was completely sub-par and nothing like the 5* reviews suggested. The product description was purposely misleading (which is how they fooled my wife). She mentioned the many 5 star reviews.

Checked out the reviews, noticed a similar U-shape review distribution. Checked out the reviewers and a multitude of them reviewed the same or similar products (e.g. supplements) and many showed a very "random" set of previous purchases, ie nothing seemed related, everything was cheap, one-liner reviews. Reported to Amazon, no action taken.

PS I love the convenience of Amazon, but never buy from third parties.

The album got deleted because dox, can anybody reupload with censor bars?

These kinds of practices would be commonplace. The only thing to ensure is its scale.

job well done sherlock!!

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