• gastationsushi@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    I bought an 4.7 rated amplifier on Amazon that broke the first day. Looking at the reviews closer, I noticed they were 100% paid reviewers.

    When I tried to leave a negative review, Amazon stopped me, giving a generic message about fake reviews on this product. This product is still out their with a high rating and no way for actual purchasers like me to warn other customers.

    • DigitalPaperTrail@kbin.social
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      1 year ago

      I’ve gotten into the habit of never buying anything from Amazon before first running it through a review analyzer. I used to use reviewmeta, but that stopped being maintained, so I had to switch over to fakespot.

      it increases the hassle and amount of time to make a decision, but I’ve run into too many situations like yours. And it’s enlightening how many products get fail or bad ratings after being analyzed. I’ve just started ignoring a lot of things with more than 10k-ish reviews. even if I know the product is good despite the manipulation, I don’t want to encourage it further with a purchase

      • Engywuck@lemm.ee
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        1 year ago

        I’ve gotten into the habit of never buying anything from Amazon

        FTFY. I don’t even have an account there.

        • sheogorath@lemmy.world
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          1 year ago

          I only use it for 2 dollar Amazon prime video + gaming sub that I got when Apple App Store glitched.

        • aesthelete@lemmy.world
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          1 year ago

          It’s some ML/AI thing that analyzes the review content.

          I honestly have no idea how accurate it is either, but I guess if it gives a strong ranking back you’d probably be best to take that into consideration.

          • DigitalPaperTrail@kbin.social
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            1 year ago

            to add to this, it uses that to check for patterns it already knows in the reviews themselves, and also goes into each account that submitted a review and checks their account history as well for recognized patterns.

            there’s lots of stuff it picks up on, like one small example being if it spots a group of accounts that all reviewed only the same items around the same times, using similar sentence structures, though that’s a really obvious one

    • detalferous@lemm.ee
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      1 year ago

      That’s appalling customer service.

      Amazon stopped me, giving a generic message about fake reviews on this product

      Can you elaborate? I’ve never experienced this and would like to understand how they do it.

      • drekly@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        I’ve had this multiple times.

        Tried to leave a big detailed helpful negative review and it gets flagged for being suspicious, with no copy of the review attached so I have to write it all again. And then it gets removed again.

        I just looked in my emails. The exact phrasing was “We have reviewed our decisions and concluded that the product you received is authentic. As a result, we removed your review specific to this product. This ensures other customers see reviews that reflect the current shopping experience.”

        Most recently it happened with a body trimmer, where I never questioned the inauthenticity, and then a zojirushi travel mug that I genuinely believe was a fake, and attached a lot of evidence.

      • Kumatomic@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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        1 year ago

        They’ve blocked my review on a shower chair that was absolutely not rated for what they said. I nearly fell on my butt and my skinnier partner said it was too wobbly. They’ve blocked the negative review 5 times saying I questioned the authenticity of the product and they have confirmed it. I knew it was Medline brand. I’ve had to file a FTC complaint which I expect to be worthless.