Amazon is Cracking Down on Top Reviewers

AlphaAtlas

AlphaAtlas

[H]ard|Gawd
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According to a report by Business Insider, Amazon is cracking down on reviewers that abuse their system. Previous reports by the publication dove into the "underground subculture that trades reviews for deals," and apparently, Amazon has had enough. A whole subreddit full of top reviewers claiming to be wrongfully suspend has formed, and a bot on that subreddit has tracked over 5700 top reviewer bans since it went online in 2016.

"We know that millions of customers make informed buying decisions everyday using customer reviews," an Amazon spokesperson said. They continued: "We take this responsibility seriously and defend the integrity of reviews by taking aggressive action to protect customers from dishonest parties who attempt to abuse the reviews system. We take forceful action against both reviewers and bad actors by banning or suppressing reviews that violate our guidelines, regardless of top reviewer status, and suspend, ban or pursue legal action against bad actors, regardless of sales performance."
 
I'm a "top reviewer" or so the 10-20 emails I get a day in various forms of "engrish" claim. All offer a magic code for free or discounted stuff or my favorite, a PayPal refund of an Amazon purchase price in exchange for a review. Never took any one up on these, but somehow Amazon themselves shared my contact info with them.

I can see how people take them up on this, especially as you don't get a 1099 like you do for Vine (I'm an Amazon Vine reviewer). Those 1099s are brutal.


Anyway, glad they're doing something after the fact, but kinda confused how my info got into the hands of whomever is generating an endless barrage of emails for free stuff in exchange for reviews.
 
About time. You know damn well a lot of those people give stellar reviews so that vendors keep sending them free shit.

I don't think I've ever seen a negative review from one of those "top ** reviewer"...
 
So people actually read those on any site ?
Glad they do my share then, cuz i wouldn't waste time on such things, though i am all about knowing what i go into, but there are better ways.
 
Amazon makes wayyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy too much money on fake products, knock off products and fake reviews to turn this business away. That is why we will rapidly degenerate to even a crappier standard than what we complained about with walmart products 15 years ago (and still do).

if you dont use it already try out fakespot.com they analyse a lot of fake reviews. my favorite are the new cases or screen protectors or batteries for phones that are not even out yet and have 100 5 star reviews
 
The problem with the reviews is that even if you can ignore all fakes, most people will be rating 4-5 stars anyway. Products are generally self selected, and as such, there's bias. If I buy a Dyson, it's because I wanted to buy a Dyson, and I likely chose to pay more than I'd pay for a Hoover. Chances are I'll give it 4 or 5 stars. Sure there are exceptions, but you don't buy something expecting to not like it.
 
its just a game of whack a mole, once the attention dies down, they'll pop back up again
 
mammothboy said:
The problem with the reviews is that even if you can ignore all fakes, most people will be rating 4-5 stars anyway. Products are generally self selected, and as such, there's bias. If I buy a Dyson, it's because I wanted to buy a Dyson, and I likely chose to pay more than I'd pay for a Hoover. Chances are I'll give it 4 or 5 stars. Sure there are exceptions, but you don't buy something expecting to not like it.
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eh stars don't really mean anything for the exact reason you posted but stars + review count makes a pretty big difference on swaying buyers. if i'm looking for something and there happens to be 10 versions of basically the same product i just list it by most reviews and read through the first page of the oldest reviews and a page or two of the most recent.. if it's something that has been in production for a while gives me a good idea on whether or not they started cheaping out build quality the longer it was produced. so yeah the fake reviews screw everything up.
 
I like how the stars from 1 to 5 mean, dislike to LOVE. I rarely give 5 star reviews. 4 stars seems appropriate for good stuff. I don't LOVE anything I buy. Well except my AirPods. :)
 
Start by integrating with FakeSpot. Site does a decent job labeling the fake reviews.

Granted, I'm sure the companies will just adapt. But something is better than nothing.
 
Stopped using Amazon. Can't trust reviews, can't tell product quality, and can't even sort results by most-bought.

BS website with BS problems. At this point I even trust ebay more.
 
mammothboy said:
The problem with the reviews is that even if you can ignore all fakes, most people will be rating 4-5 stars anyway. Products are generally self selected, and as such, there's bias. If I buy a Dyson, it's because I wanted to buy a Dyson, and I likely chose to pay more than I'd pay for a Hoover. Chances are I'll give it 4 or 5 stars. Sure there are exceptions, but you don't buy something expecting to not like it.
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That's a problem with how people rate on a scale. Some use the entire range, but many will stick to portions of the range. The range, the more deviation from using all numbers. For example, a 1-10 range may see many users only using 4-9 or 5-10.

It's why alternative systems exist that take in account a users vote history and sentiment. If a user only uses the 3-5 star range, but most 3 stars are analyzed with a negative sentiment then 3 gets reweighted towards 1. 4 would be reweighted towards 3, and 5 maybe even pulled down some. Those user weights are then applied to the review score.
 
Let's face it, it is very difficult to find reviews, anywhere, you can trust.
 
hlfbkd420 said:
I use the reviews... But not the 4 and 5 star ones. I read the 1 and 2 star reviews to know what kinds of issues there are.
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From what I've seen there are just as many fake 1 and 2 star reviews as well. Your widget not selling too hot? Buy some fake negative reviews for your competitor's widget.
 
What?? You mean I could have gotten PAID for product review?? I've been doing them for free all these years!!
 
BSmith said:
People really read the reviews? Hehe,....lol.....Rofl,....ROFLMAO!
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I usually spend 30+ minutes studying reviews before buying pretty much anything new. Well maybe not the 100 plastic spoons I bought a few months ago for work but I still read dozens of reviews on that..
 
Amazon needs to employ [H]ard reviewers. Because Kyle agonizing over Hello Kitty Cookware in 100 words or less would be worth it. ;-)
 
What does it matter the reviews when Amazon has commingling?
 
I love it when you see a product with five hundred 5* reviews and one 1* review.

You look up the 1* review and it simply says -

"Doesn't work with Mac!"

You know that would be okay, if it wasn't for a lawnmower!:D


The ones I really hate are the 1* review because the person "bought the wrong size!"

Well that's your fault really.
 
daglesj said:
I love it when you see a product with five hundred 5* reviews and one 1* review.

You look up the 1* review and it simply says -

"Doesn't work with Mac!"

You know that would be okay, if it wasn't for a lawnmower!:D
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I have seen these as well. I don't know if its just stupid people or they clicked the wrong product..


"bought the wrong size!"
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I had that happen to me recently but the return process was pretty simple. The reason for the wrong size is I saved the item in my wish list with a size and expected when ordering from the wishlist that it would keep the size I selected when ordering. It didn't and I ended up getting the largest size.. It was interesting that the order status did not show a size but I did not know what would happen.
 
drescherjm said:
I have seen these as well. I don't know if its just stupid people or they clicked the wrong product..
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lol i've actually done that once.. i put a review i did for some work boots i bought under a review for a monitor then i randomly got a comment from some one with some smart ass comment and i realized i put the review under the wrong thing. oh well shit happens.
 
sirmonkey1985 said:
lol i've actually done that once.. i put a review i did for some work boots i bought under a review for a monitor then i randomly got a comment from some one with some smart ass comment and i realized i put the review under the wrong thing. oh well shit happens.
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That had to be an interesting monitor review. :)
 
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BSmith said:
People really read the reviews? Hehe,....lol.....Rofl,....ROFLMAO!
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Yes, because sometimes there are real reviews out there that talk about an issue they had with the product and how they solved it. Quite common with things that you have to assemble like lawn equipment.
 
Dont look at numbers look at qualitative information those are the good reviews. And if you ever receive a product and fell decieved return it.
 
People complaining about the glowing 4-5 star ratings yet ignoring that most 1-2 star ratings are mostly bullshit as well. Those are just filled with idiots slamming the product because they ordered the wrong thing, didn't read the description, had a shipping carrier problem, couldn't make it do what it wasn't designed for or are just some middle aged woman who wants to complain about something. 3-4 star ratings are usually the only non retarded reviews most of the time.
 
drescherjm said:
I usually spend 30+ minutes studying reviews before buying pretty much anything new. Well maybe not the 100 plastic spoons I bought a few months ago for work but I still read dozens of reviews on that..
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Even though you know there is a very, very good chance all those reviews are bogus?
PaulP said:
Yes, because sometimes there are real reviews out there that talk about an issue they had with the product and how they solved it. Quite common with things that you have to assemble like lawn equipment.
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And there are also fake reviews talking about how bad a product is as well. You cannot be asssured anything you read in a review is actually real.
 
Even though you know there is a very, very good chance all those reviews are bogus?
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I believe it is a very very good chance some of them are bogus but also most are usually not unless you get a product with 5 reviews or something like that.
 
Amazon doesn't want to fix this stuff. I tried buying a WiiU so I could play Breath of the Wild and ended up buying from a fake seller. They mailed a fake package that was delivered to an address states away from me. I looked at the seller feedback and lots of people were saying they fell for the same thing. When I got a hold of Amazon to refund me I told them they need to take that seller down now so that they don't have a lot more of this. I was told not to worry about it and when I checked a month later that seller was still selling bogus items.
 
To begin, I believe that over 5,700 of Amazon's top 10,000 have been banned. And the PurgeBot only tracks those with zero remaining reviews after the ban. In my case, I've been improperly banned twice (reinstated weeks ago and then banned again almost immediately thereafter). However, for whatever reason, one review remains out of my 11 years worth of work. So I've been banned twice and that wasn't even picked up by PurgeBot due to the one remaining review. That suggests that the actual number banned may be far, far higher than 5,700.

Here's a post I wrote for another site:

In my view, it’s not so much Amazon “cracking down” as it is a flaw in their software that’s giving the boot/restricting often innocentI customers.

Let me tell you what is actually going on in many cases. There is a flaw or bug in Amazon's software or algorithm that labels many or all verified reviews (purchased directly from Amazon) as unverified. It then dishes out a variety of warnings on these "unverified reviews", which again are verified. Soon after, it begins to warn the user about bias, even though they're typically only reviewing items purchased from Amazon. Ultimately, it blocks the reviewer entirely and strips them of all reviews. If they are a Vine member, like me, it kicks them out of the program, with prejudice (not welcome to return).

That's exactly what happened to me.

At first, I was told everything was fine and not to worry about it. But the warnings got worse and worse, as described, to the point where I was banned from reviewing and kicked out of Vine.

I politely challenged it, as I had done nothing wrong, and Amazon found in my favor. Shortly thereafter, I received 4 messages from Review Moderators. 3 said that I was cleared and reinstated. The 4th said I had violated community standards and would not be discussed further.

Huh?

Got that cleared up, but days later, the same nonsense warnings about bias and unverified reviews began, again on items bought directly through Amazon.

As an example, I bought a floor lamp from Amazon that got poor reviews. I felt the reviews were inaccurate and I really liked the lamp. So I gave it a great review. I then got an immediate warning about "unverified reviews", was suspended for a week, and later had all review rights and Vine membership revoked.

While I'm in the USA, there is a UK unofficial Amazon Vine forum. They did a poll and approximately 50% of members who responded had their review rights cancelled, all reviews deleted (11 years worth, in my case), and removal from the Vine program. Most were ultimately reinstated, but not all. Some like me, and others, have been given the boot for the 2nd time in weeks even though the matter was recently investigated and found in our favor.

In fact, I've seen people get the boot who have never written a single review. They just logged in one day and saw the warning that they had exhibited bias and were banned for violating "community standards".

I contacted Amazon almost 2 weeks ago and still have not received a reply. I am hopeful that I'll hear back soon and that they will once again find in my favor.

But it's important to understand that I believe many or perhaps a great many (most or even the vast majority) of these banning are faulty and improper. Their system is incorrectly identifying legitimate reviews as "non-verified" or "biased" and then the system shuts them down.

It's quite frustrating and I hope that they resolve this issue soon. They should agree that it's unfair to treat their customers in this way when they plainly don't deserve it.
 
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Nukester said:
I like how the stars from 1 to 5 mean, dislike to LOVE. I rarely give 5 star reviews. 4 stars seems appropriate for good stuff. I don't LOVE anything I buy. Well except my AirPods. :)
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That is how I am. I rarely give a top star unless it is something that really goes over the top for what it does.
 
wizzi01 said:
That is how I am. I rarely give a top star unless it is something that really goes over the top for what it does.
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Just curious a to high high your reviewer ranking is? I'm right at under the top 1700.
 
These are what they typically look like:

Hello Ben,
This is Bela, we are an Amazon seller who keeps focusing on providing high quality car accessories, cellphone accessories, etc.
We just released a dual dash cam, it can record both car front and car inside, 1080P+720P, Near-360° Solution can capture more details via motion detection. Do you have any interested in getting a free one for reviewing? If you are interested, we will be more than happy to send you a free one.
Since this is a new released dash cam, we are looking for some reviewers to help us test the dash cams so we can know how we can improve the dash cam and make it better. Do you have any interested in getting a free one for reviewing? If you are interested, we will be more than happy to send you a free one for reviewing.
Since we want to made the review marked as verified purchase, to get the dash cam you need to order the product first, half the refund will be sent to you via paypal once product ship out, another half will be sent once review done. Also, we will cover the paypal fee.
Please send me one of your previous review link at Amazon if you are interested, thank you!
On regards
 
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