Amazon Institutes Cap On Product Reviews

[Megalith]

If you’re not a verified purchaser, you are restricted to five reviews a week now (unless it’s a book). I feel like this should have gone into effect years ago, since it seems like an obvious way to curb review spam.

…if you write a review for an item you didn't buy from Amazon, then your review might not be posted. Users can post reviews on as many items purchased from Amazon as they like but can only post "a limited number of non-Amazon Verified Purchase reviews" each week. According to the relevant page on Amazon.com, users "can submit 5 non-Amazon Verified Purchase reviews each week". And no, the new policy does not apply to book reviews. This new policy follows only a few weeks after Amazon banned manufacturers from giving away samples in exchange for reviews. That activity is now restricted to the Amazon Vine program, where Amazon can collect coop fees from the manufacturers.

 

[westrock2000]

It's a tough side to choose.

On one end, I want there to be legitimate reviews, which means I would like the vested interest to be "they paid for one" and not "they were paid for one".

However, Amazon is my initial go to source for many reviews when I am out and about. So I realize that not everyone buys from Amazon, but having a centralized review hub is a great thing. Amazon has everything, so it's not just electronics.

5 a week still seems like a lot.

 

[SilverSliver]

Needing third party filtering for Amazon reviews is ridiculous. There is no reason Amazon can't clean this crap up.

 

[QES]

I don't even understand why they've allowed reviews without purchasing something. I could understand if maybe you sent in proof that you purchased the item in question elsewhere then being allowed to post a review of it.

 

[Nashligo]

This also doesn't fix the problem of paid-for reviews. The reviewer gets refunded for purchasing a product, but only after the product creator has seen their positive review posted on Amazon. This lets the product get a bogus review (There is no refund for a not-positive review), but it still has the look of a "Verified Purchase". The only tell is the "I was provided this product at a free or discounted price for my fair and honest review" at the end of the product review.

 

[thesmokingman]

I always skip the 5 star reviews, go to the 1-3 star reviews and of course ignore the engrish/google translated reviews.

 

[Derangel]

Needing third party filtering for Amazon reviews is ridiculous. There is no reason Amazon can't clean this crap up.

There are probably millions of reviews posted on Amazon every single day. There is no reasonable way to expect them to be able to go through every single one of them.

 

[M76]

There are probably millions of reviews posted on Amazon every single day. There is no reasonable way to expect them to be able to go through every single one of them.

Imdb probably gets the same amount every they. Yet they have some kind of system in place. I don't think if an actual human sees all the reviews, but it certainly takes a few days for reviews to get actually published.

 

[SilverSliver]

There are probably millions of reviews posted on Amazon every single day. There is no reasonable way to expect them to be able to go through every single one of them.

Why not? I can click a ReviewMeta button and it automatically filters/adjusts the reviews based on repetitive phrases, words and completely removes reviews that indicate they received the product for free for review purposes. This cuts down on most of the crap. No reason Amazon cannot internally implement a system like that.

 

[AceGoober]

I ignore the non-verified purchaser reviews anyways. Seems rather pointless to review a product bought elsewhere on another e-tailors website unless there is a proven major malfunction with the product.

 

[Trimlock]

I usually look for the ones that were given the item for review anyways (if its something that matters to me). Those won't be verified purchasers but are usually the most critical of the items. Better than those "IT TURNED ON YAY!"