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Amazon Fake Reviews - My Experience And Advice

It seems to be very common. Even supposedly staid academic historians who we might expect to be above that kind of thing (ha ha! Yeah, right. In reality academics spend a lot of their time in spiteful and petty bickering arguments), do this kind of thing.

Orlando Figes, for example, was discovered to have been posting pseudonymous reviews that enthusiastically praised his own works and poured scorn on those of his rivals:

Here are some samples:

Description by "Historian" of Molotov's Magic Lantern, by Rachel Polonsky:

"This is the sort of book that makes you wonder why it was ever published … Her writing is so dense and pretentious, itself so tangled in literary allusions, that it is hard to follow or enjoy."

"Historian" described Robert Service's 2008 work Comrades, a world history of communism, as 'rubbish':

"This is an awful book. It is very poorly written and dull to read … it has no insights to make it worth the bother of ploughing through its dreadful prose."

The same reviewer found one writer's work rather more to their liking. Orlando Figes's 2008 The Whisperers was "beautiful and necessary":

"A fascinating book about the interior lives of ordinary Russians … it tells us more about the Soviet system than any other book I know. Beautifully written, it is a rich and deeply moving history, which leaves the reader awed, humbled, yet uplifted … Figes visits their ordeals with enormous compassion, and he brings their history to life with his superb story-telling skills. I hope he writes for ever."
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https://www.theguardian.com/books/2010/apr/23/historian-orlando-figes-amazon-reviews-rivals
 
Nothing better than when guys like Orlando Figes get caught in the act.
 
Here's Whitman's anonymous review of his own work, Leaves of Grass, after it was attacked by almost everybody. Then he got that review (for real) by Emerson.


posted by Walt about Walt:
Self-reliant, with haughty eyes, assuming to himself all the attributes of his country, steps Walt Whitman into literature, talking like a man unaware that there was ever hitherto such a production as a book, or such a being as a writer. Every move of him has the free play of the muscle of one who never knew what it was to feel that he stood in the presence of a superior. Every word that falls from his mouth shows silent disdain and defiance of the old theories and forms. Every phrase announces new laws; not once do his lips unclose except in conformity with them.
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calebprime said:
Here's Whitman's anonymous review of his own work, Leaves of Grass, after it was attacked by almost everybody. Then he got that review (for real) by Emerson.


posted by Walt about Walt:
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Whitman's OTT purple prose always tickles my funny bone. My 11th grade English teacher was astonished when I couldn't stop laughing uncontrollably when we had to read aloud Whitman's poem about Lincoln's death. It just struck me as so ridiculous. She'd never had to kick anybody out of the classroom for such a reaction before. I nearly passed out in the hall from lack of breath.
 
I'm confused.

Not really clear on how Amazon works. But it makes money from all transactions, right? So it has an interest in good reviews, because it boosts business for e-commerce?

I bought a carpet-cleaning machine about a year ago. It was a Hoover product, not some off-brand. It was also cheaper than other machines, by a lot. I subscribe to Consumer Reports, and they really didn't like this model. It cleaned OK but left the carpet too damp. But the online reviews were all glowing. They didn't sound like Chinese people. I couldn't reconcile the difference, but I ordered it anyway. It was $120 or so, literally half the cost of other machines. Now I wish I'd gotten one CR rated higher. There are plenty of good machines; in fact there were more expensive Hoovers I might have ordered base on CR rankings.

There's no household junk quite as annoying as a suboptimal carpet cleaning machine.

Now I think there must have been a massive overstock somewhere. I guess I assumed that it would be OK, being Hoover. But I think I may just be naive about the reality of global manufacturing. Apparently this one was cheap to make, and matched Hoover's specs OK, but could it just be a crummy design that happened to be overstocked?

Ordered through Amazon, but I'm never going to trust those reviews again. Amazon makes money whether I'm happy or not. I would order through them again but will mostly ignore reviews. Actually I don't really want to order from them either. Something about the whole operation is really turning me off.

Sadly my dog is getting frail :( and I don't know how much longer I'm going to want a carpet cleaner at all.
 
Minoosh said:
I'm confused.

Not really clear on how Amazon works. But it makes money from all transactions, right? So it has an interest in good reviews, because it boosts business for e-commerce?

I bought a carpet-cleaning machine about a year ago. It was a Hoover product, not some off-brand. It was also cheaper than other machines, by a lot. I subscribe to Consumer Reports, and they really didn't like this model. It cleaned OK but left the carpet too damp. But the online reviews were all glowing. They didn't sound like Chinese people. I couldn't reconcile the difference, but I ordered it anyway. It was $120 or so, literally half the cost of other machines. Now I wish I'd gotten one CR rated higher. There are plenty of good machines; in fact there were more expensive Hoovers I might have ordered base on CR rankings.

There's no household junk quite as annoying as a suboptimal carpet cleaning machine.

Now I think there must have been a massive overstock somewhere. I guess I assumed that it would be OK, being Hoover. But I think I may just be naive about the reality of global manufacturing. Apparently this one was cheap to make, and matched Hoover's specs OK, but could it just be a crummy design that happened to be overstocked?

Ordered through Amazon, but I'm never going to trust those reviews again. Amazon makes money whether I'm happy or not. I would order through them again but will mostly ignore reviews. Actually I don't really want to order from them either. Something about the whole operation is really turning me off.

Sadly my dog is getting frail :( and I don't know how much longer I'm going to want a carpet cleaner at all.
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If you want to know why Amazon might have an interest in honest reviews rather than allowing fake positive reviews it’s because their reputation for honesty is also at stake. If you discover that they tolerate dishonesty from those who sell on their site, you might end up going to their competit.... oh, wait!
 
angrysoba said:
If you want to know why Amazon might have an interest in honest reviews rather than allowing fake positive reviews it’s because their reputation for honesty is also at stake. If you discover that they tolerate dishonesty from those who sell on their site, you might end up going to their competit.... oh, wait!
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This is a good clarification. They prefer honest reviews, because if the customers can't identify good vs bad products on the platform, they will stop using it whether there's a competitor or not. Spending money on junk sucks.

I experienced something this back in the 1980s when visiting East German relatives. They asked me to bring name brand items (eg Tylenol, VHS copies of popular films, music) because brand counterfeiting was so widespread over there nobody bought *anything* anymore. Poor intellectual property protection was spiralling the economy down to the bare minimum. Most purchases were most likely swindle, so don't bother.

I had one experience on Amazon that did it for me: I bought an RCA brand record cleaner (the felt kind with a hollow handle to store the fluid in) from a well reviewed vendor, which turned out to be a ****** fake made from a shred of used corduroy pants.
 
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Roger Ramjets said:
So you are protesting by giving a fake review? It's just as I suspected. All those bad reviews are from people who were pissed off for some reason unrelated to the product itself.

My first ever purchase from Amazon turned up today. Hoping it works and they pay me to give a glowing review!
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Did you read the post I made right before yours?
 
Maybe I'm just a pessimist but I mostly only read the 1, 2 and 3 star reviews anyway. I want to know the potential down side of something I'm thinking of parting with my hard-earned for.
 
Amazon is sort of in a bind here;if they start banning reviews they think are dishonest they will be attacked for censorship.
Best thing to do is just take all amazon reviews with a ton of salt.
 
TX50 said:
Maybe I'm just a pessimist but I mostly only read the 1, 2 and 3 star reviews anyway. I want to know the potential down side of something I'm thinking of parting with my hard-earned for.
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Me too. I think the negative reviews, taken with some skepticism, are far more useful than the positive ones. Eight negative reviews describing the same problem with the product can be very informative. I just ignore any negative reviews that complain the shipping box arrived bent or some such trivia unrelated to the quality of the product itself.
 
dudalb said:
Amazon is sort of in a bind here;if they start banning reviews they think are dishonest they will be attacked for censorship.
Best thing to do is just take all amazon reviews with a ton of salt.
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Amazon should know who has actually bought the product, if they indicated this on the review then this would indicate that the review is not fake.
 
rjh01 said:
Amazon should know who has actually bought the product, if they indicated this on the review then this would indicate that the review is not fake.
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It was pointed out earlier in the thread that actually buying the item does not necessarily result in an honest review. The item sellers will pay people the cost of the item in exchange for a positive review.
 
I've noticed this also. I was browsing for a hand-held rechargeable vacuum, and of course the well-known brands are all there - B&D, Shark, Vax et al, but there are also about a dozen or more cheap (£20 - 45) weirdly-named items, all with overall ratings of c. 4.5 / 5, from upwards of three hundred glowing reviews, almost all "verified purchases", many quite wordy and accompanied with photos, and all posted in the last couple of months.

Yeh, right.

However, buried in these reviews are handfuls of what are probably genuine ones which are likely telling it like it is - dismal suction, batteries rapidly dying etc'.

Amazon has effectively been hijacked/hacked by scammers, but the company seems to be descending into fleaBay-like levels of nonchalance and money-grubbing, apparently not giving a **** that tons of craptastic (mostly far-Eastern) garbage is being sold via the site because they're getting their 15%.
 
I ordered 4mm ball end hex wrenches from Amazon a while back; they are usually rather expensive for a simple piece of metal. I got one hex wrench in the pack instead of the product description of five. My review included the word fraud in it. Amazon removed my product review but admitted they knew that item was not accurately described. A re-worded review was accepted; 1 star. I did get a refund.

A closer look at the reviews in the past would have revealed this problem.

Ranb
 
I had occasion recently to need to look for a new nearby dry cleaner since the one I had been using is no long doing the job it once did. Googling for dry cleaners in my neighbourhood turn up Google's usual mishmash of adds, review sites, assorted websites with "dry cleaner" in the url and a few thousand of rapidly diminishing relevance.

Checking the reviews on Yelp and such showed no company with anything like as many as ten reviews. Typically, with four reviews more or less, most struggled to get even 2 stars. Who praises a dry cleaning service? Much more likely to complain if a one in a hundred mistake is made? Except there was one new company in town that had over 40 reviews. ALL FIVE STAR. All extatic about the service. I did not go there but picked the one with the 20% off coupon. I'll know on Tuesday how well it went.

:thumbsup:
 
I started sorting the reviews by Most Recent rather than Most Popular. The company I did this for wanted reviews right when the product was released. Then again, this last product was not new, I guess they just needed more good reviews.

I skip the ones with photos and video unless they are negative, especially for cheap products like these. "Hey here's a photo of my new socks!!!". Ya right, who does that?

I too read the 3 star reviews to see about any complaints. Now that I have experienced this I find it difficult to trust Amazon, and that is becoming a real problem for me and them.

Also, Amazon finally accepted an updated review. I guess, as mentioned above, you need to be careful what keywords you use. My first negative review was multi-paragraph and they didn't take it. Now it's reduced to just two sentences. Kinda pisses me off.

They need to make it easier to report stuff.
 
Gord_in_Toronto said:
I had occasion recently to need to look for a new nearby dry cleaner since the one I had been using is no long doing the job it once did. Googling for dry cleaners in my neighbourhood turn up Google's usual mishmash of adds, review sites, assorted websites with "dry cleaner" in the url and a few thousand of rapidly diminishing relevance.

Checking the reviews on Yelp and such showed no company with anything like as many as ten reviews. Typically, with four reviews more or less, most struggled to get even 2 stars. Who praises a dry cleaning service? Much more likely to complain if a one in a hundred mistake is made? Except there was one new company in town that had over 40 reviews. ALL FIVE STAR. All ecstatic about the service. I did not go there but picked the one with the 20% off coupon. I'll know on Tuesday how well it went.

:thumbsup:
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Clothes seem clean and don't smell bad. A success I would say. :thumbsup::thumbsup:
 
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