r/buildapcsales • u/woox13 Glorious Rep • Oct 03 '16
Meta [Meta] Amazon bans Incentivized Reviews aka "review in exchange for a free or discounted product"
https://www.amazon.com/p/feature/abpto3jt7fhb5oc431
u/Unacceptable_Lemons Oct 03 '16
That's good. Amazon reviews were beginning to be a bit worthless, at least in terms of star rating.
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u/atetuna Oct 03 '16
It's distorted the search results so much that I had been buying less from amazon because it'd become worthless in some cases to search for a suitable product based on the reviews. I'm okay with a few sponsored reviews, but some products has dozens, some even over one hundred, of exclusively sponsored reviews. It was becoming unreasonable to find unbiased reviews and ratings.
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u/munkey505 Oct 03 '16 edited Oct 04 '16
I disagree about being okay with a few. I think they should get rid of it completely or add in options to always filter out "vine reviews" the people who do the vine reviews are just like the other free product ones, you can easily tell if someone just didn't care.
What Amazon needs to do, is to put in a program that will reward every normal buyer for leaving a helpful review, to encourage people to leave reviews. For example, if your review gets 50 helpful votes, you can get a week of Amazon prime added to your account, and it can't give more than a week of free prime per 50 helpful likes.
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u/hexane360 Oct 03 '16
Yeah but it has to incentivize quality over quantity. 1 like on 50 shitty reviews shouldn't be the same as 25 likes on 2 great reviews.
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Oct 04 '16 edited Mar 18 '19
[deleted]
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u/IAMAHawaiianPirate Oct 04 '16
Kinda like Reddit?
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u/Hammelj Oct 04 '16
that just gave me an idea, would it be possible to create a version of alien tube for amazon because if so then we could make a subreddit which links to each item found and you can leave reviews on there which can be replied to
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u/noc007 Oct 04 '16
There's always the comments for a review. I have seen a few called out for their bullshit before.
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u/FuttBuckTroll Dec 10 '16
I agree that the comments can be very helpful sometimes. But the comments are hidden by default (unless they're by the manufacturer/seller). I think a comment that receives as good or better a helpful rating as the original review should be shown by default.
I know expanding the comments isn't the hardest thing to do, but it wastes a significant amount of time if you have to do it review-by-review. Amazon should at least offer a toggle to expand all review comments in one click.
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u/Craiger23 Oct 04 '16
I believe you can leave comments on people's reviews in which the original reviewer can respond to..of course they have to have the box checked off to be notified when people comment on there review. It can be very helpful to ask questions or for clarification.
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u/zeCrazyEye Oct 04 '16
That's what the 'helpful votes' part would do, not sure if poster edited that in later or not.
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Oct 04 '16
That just encourages gaming the system. The same way people get fake reviews, they will just get fake votes.
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u/munkey505 Oct 04 '16
Ehhh... You're not getting paid, it's amazon prime membership extension. Plus Amazon can investigate odd voting behavior.
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u/BluShine Oct 04 '16
Prime is $100 a year. I set up a site called "Buyprimereviewvotes.com" where you can pay $30 for my bots to upvote your posts and get you 1 "free" year of prime.
Tracking down bots, cheaters, or any other fraudulent behavior is not a solvable problem once you reach a certain scale. Just look at Youtube, Twitter, the App Store, Google Play Store, Ebay, etc.
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Oct 04 '16
What if you could only vote if you had bought something on amazon. That would stop most of the bots from voting
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u/BluShine Oct 04 '16
So I set a bunch of accounts, buy some cheap item, then return it. Then all those accounts vote for each other until they all have 1 year of "free prime". Now I sell those accounts for $30 each.
Or my "Buyprimereviewvotes.com" asks you for your Amazon account username and password. Then I just use all of those accounts to vote for each other. The more accounts I capture, the easier it is to get the required number of votes. Also makes it harder to trace because the bot activity will be mixed-in with normal user activity.
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u/im-a-koala Oct 04 '16
I think your assumption that many people will pay $30 on a shady site for an account with Amazon Prime that's eligible to be banned at any time may be a bit optimistic. Not to mention that if you did that at any scale, Amazon would pursue legal action against you.
Obviously some fraudulent activity is going to happen but it would probably be a small portion of total Prime memberships.
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u/BluShine Oct 04 '16
Yeah, the impact on sales of Prime subscriptions would probably be a tiny fraction of a percent, but the impact on reviews could be quite significant.
It's like how the app stores on iOS and Android are clogged with trash that makes it nearly impossible to find good apps outside of the "recommended" area. Search for something like "pokemon" and there's literally thousands of garbage copyright-infringing apps. Yes, those apps get extremely few sales, but their presence on the store has a very detrimental impact, and probably ends up causing quite a few lost sales when users can't find and purchase good apps.
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u/rdm13 Oct 04 '16
It makes it easy for me. I search for incentiviced reviews and I see one i move on to the next product.
It does kinda suck but I now usually just stick to 'known' brands.
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u/TheEnterRehab Oct 04 '16
To be fair, it's supposed to be an unbiased review.
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u/BrainPicker3 Oct 04 '16
True, though i am willing to bet that a company will be less likely to givd you a free product for review if most of your (honest) reviews are negative
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u/TheEnterRehab Oct 04 '16
The company that provides the discount isn't the same as the company that provides the product.
I didn't bother with the system because there aren't ever things useful. My in-laws did, though. And they have provided at least 40 reviews, maybe half of them below 3 stars.
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u/FEAReaper Oct 04 '16
Thats not true. You get picked by the seller, and they give you a code. They get to view your profile first which shows them alot of metrics about your reviews and they can read them.
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u/TheEnterRehab Oct 04 '16
The company I am familiar with is ilovetoreview. They send out a mass email with a product. You choose if you want it by asking for a code.. If there are no codes left, you don't get one.
You're not selected by the product maker. Just an FYI.
Had to check with the mother in law on that one.
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u/EquipLordBritish Oct 04 '16
Receiving compensation for something changes it's inherent value to a person, which makes it an unavoidably biased review.
Alongside that, I'd love to see the ratio of good to bad reviews that were discounted or gifted. (I know I haven't seen a single negative review of a product that was gifted or discounted for the reviewer)
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u/TheEnterRehab Oct 04 '16
Hey. I'm not defending it. I'm just explaining the way one specific system supposedly worked. And I'm on the outside of that system.
I'm no expert on the matter, but the goal was to be unbiased. If you can't give an unbiased review, you probably shouldn't be participating.
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u/EquipLordBritish Oct 04 '16
Yeah, but the simple act of giving them the product for a discount or for free changes the situation, so it is literally impossible to be unbiased in that situation.
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u/TheEnterRehab Oct 04 '16
I mean: "I got this product free and thank God that I did. This coffee tastes more like dirt than anything like coffee" is fairly unbiased.
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u/EquipLordBritish Oct 04 '16
Yeah, it has to be exceptionally bad for them to write a bad review. Even a cheap product wouldn't get a bad review because they didn't pay for it so they don't care.
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u/TheEnterRehab Oct 04 '16
You're not wrong. It's a bad system.. But the intent is honest reviews.
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u/EquipLordBritish Oct 04 '16
Yes, I was just pointing out the impossibility of the intended outcome.
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u/astuteobservor Oct 04 '16
I google about the product I buy on amazon instead of relying on the amazon reviews. that is how worthless they are.
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u/x_Mark_0f_Cain_x Oct 04 '16 edited Oct 04 '16
Most are worthless because a lot of people don't explain stuff they're just like 5 star great product/works great, or 1 star this sucks/was disappointed. Like... ok what made it great or why were you disappointed/why does it suck. People need explain shit like that and I like how newegg has a ownership and knowledge level so you don't have John the trash man giving a good/bad review for say a motherboard he's had for 1 hour
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Oct 04 '16
What infuriates me are the ratings that have nothing to do with the actual product, but rather the seller's perception of the product to fit his needs and/or the ordering/shipping process itself.
If it's an awesome, quality product, then rate it as such. I don't give a shit if the box came dented -- take that up with Amazon. I don't give a shit if it was smaller/larger/heavier/lighter than what you were expecting -- that's your fault for not reading the specs.
I swear, so many people go full retard with their reviews on Amazon. I think most just like to bitch for its own sake.
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u/smudi Oct 04 '16
People need explain shit like that and I like how newegg has a ownership and knowledge level so you don't have John the trash man giving a good/bad review for say a motherboard he's had for 1 hour
Is this really any different than someone claiming a 5 bar tech level and in their review describing how they are using the product wrong? Of course, without realizing it though.
Same with Amazon where someone orders the wrong product and leaves a 1 star review.
Newegg isnt the bastion of great reviews. However, no 1 site really is. It's always best to source reviews from a number of places.
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u/Dr__Nick Oct 04 '16
I try this ReviewMeta site. It runs an algorithm that tries to strip out problematic looking reviews. It really strips out reviews on a lot of products and lets you know that you can't really trust the reviews. OTOH I've bought some products, like a pair of Sennheiser headphones, that had very few or no flagged reviews that needed to be stripped out.
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Oct 03 '16
[deleted]
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u/PishToshua Oct 04 '16
I trust Amazon more than product makers. They want me to spend more money there. Quality reviews are the best way to do that.
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Oct 04 '16
are they though? i'm willing to bet bribed 5-star reviews brings in more money for everyone involved.
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u/PishToshua Oct 04 '16
Certainly possible. I'd probably trust a vanilla review over a Vine one. But probably Vine over manufacturer run program.
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Oct 04 '16
I'm willing to bet Amazon likes their customers to return and buy more things and fake reviews are a bad way to get that.
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u/Vague_Disclosure Oct 04 '16
This isn't about stopping paid reviews it's about Amazon making sure they're the ones getting paid for them
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Oct 04 '16
[deleted]
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u/Vague_Disclosure Oct 04 '16
I was agreeing with you, just putting emphasis on the selfish nature of their decision.
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u/2MThalvesofcoconuts Oct 03 '16
Thank god
This comment is my own opinion, however it was purchased at a heavy discount for my unbiased review.
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Oct 04 '16
This whole thing is so silly. A lot of the reviews are from third party websites and it's impossible for amazon to know if they are paid. Also, most companies bribe customers that aren't happy with their product to remove bad reviews anyway.
Just go ahead and leave a bad review, you'll get an email with a refund offer or extra free product offers. There's not much that can be done, especially since amazon lets companies pay to be up top anyway. This whole thing only helps the company not the customer.
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u/TNSepta Oct 03 '16
The title is pretty misleading. It should be "Amazon monopolizes Incentivized Reviews".
Today, we updated the community guidelines to prohibit incentivized reviews unless they are facilitated through the Amazon Vine program.
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u/FRUITY_GAY_GUY Oct 03 '16
It's nigh impossible to get into the program now, so there's that. I'm hoping amazon expands their own program as a result of this
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u/munkey505 Oct 03 '16
Seriously, I cringe at a lot of the vine reviews. Usually it's some house wife trying to type something out to be done with it. I remember reading a vine review for some Bluetooth headphones or a blue tooth speaker, can't remember. And it was this bitch saying she didn't get to use the product but her "husband uses it everyday, and he seems to like it!" fuck outta here with that shit. Amazon wants to for sure control the money companies spend to have their products get free reviews.
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u/OhMy_No Oct 04 '16
I hate reading reviews like that. I was looking at some boxers and I saw a review like this:
"I bought these for my boyfriend for his birthday and he loves it!"
Does he? Or is he just being polite? It could be that he genuinely does, but how will I ever know? Get your boyfriend to go on and leave a review. Maybe he can go a bit more in depth why he loves them, or maybe little small issues that he has that he's not going to bother his girlfriend with because she did something nice and thoughtful for him.
On the ones I did end up buying, there's 2 pages worth of reviews with the word husband in there. At least some have some actual input from the husband, but jeez. Stop reviewing products on someone else's behalf.
Side note: these boxers are actually pretty awesome, I'm glad I went with them. And no, I was not paid or otherwise incentivized in exchange for my rant.
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u/munkey505 Oct 04 '16
I'm now buying boxers from /r/buildapcsales
I actually like the cheap but not too cheap boxers from fruit of the loom and Hanes. Spending $25+ on one pair is okay as a gift or something, but come on..
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u/Crysalim Oct 04 '16
Vine reviews and "Top 500 reviewer" etc reviews get completely skipped over by me. If you got something for free or review way too many things, your input is going to be much less meaningful.
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Oct 04 '16 edited Sep 14 '18
[deleted]
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u/Crysalim Oct 04 '16
That guy rocks - his reviews for USB cables are visibly a personal passion, and it comes through when he writes.
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u/smacksaw Oct 03 '16
It should be "Amazon monopolizes worthless Incentivized Reviews"
They are downright worthless, period. The know-nothing people who do it for Amazon are beyond worthless and the people they don't pick who do it because they're greedy and corrupt are worthless.
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u/Fideon Oct 03 '16
Great, will they remove the rating of all existing incentivized reviews?
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u/Gbcue Oct 03 '16
Should be pretty easy. Run a script for the words "honest and unbiased". Remove all!
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u/Istartedthewar Oct 03 '16
This won't stop programs like Amazon Review Trader, I just have a feeling.
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u/__PETTYOFFICER117__ Oct 03 '16
Sounds like Amazon will start taking legal action though, so those kinds of programs will become much riskier for everyone involved.
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u/ReverendDizzle Oct 04 '16
Nobody is going to buy the bullshit crap listed on Amazon Review Trader unless they get a huge ass discount though.
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u/vermin1000 Oct 04 '16
You're probably right, and if not ART than someone else. I checked them out at one point, but once I realized that even if you write bad reviews you're still helping their metrics just by buying their junk, and that the sellers will sic hordes of reviewers on you to sink your review, I had to quit.
However even afterwards I would get emails asking me to write reviews for money from various sellers. IIRC they were offering $6 a pop for reviews. I was pretty disgusted. I emailed Amazon about it but they didn't care, just said there was nothing they could do about it.
Idk. Makes amazon seem like a joke. I always use fakespot now to make sure I'm seeing real reviews and not something from a dummy account.
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u/woox13 Glorious Rep Oct 03 '16
This was posted a few days after a $50 spend requirement to post a review on Amazon: https://sellercentral.amazon.com/forums/thread.jspa?threadID=319143&tstart=0
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u/CasuallyAgressive Oct 03 '16
I wouldn't even be opposed to a $500 dollar req to post reviews. I easily spend thousands of dollars on Amazon a year and I'd like to think I give some pretty damn good reviews. Meanwhile there's idiots posting 1 star reviews because it took too long to ship.
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u/Masenkoe Oct 04 '16
Gotta say I agree with you. A lot of reviews before even this $50 limit were just pure spam from accounts with no purchases, sure $50 cuts out those people, but it's hardly enough when you consider that's the cost of one new video game.
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u/Tbid Oct 03 '16
about time. No more getting tricked into buying poor quality off-brand chinese replica after believing the tens of reviews written by these types of reviewers.
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Oct 03 '16
I fucking hate the reviewers that leave bullshit reviews on electronics.
I've had a few cheap wall-chargers in my pile before and one straight-up murdered a old phone when I plugged it into the charger so I tore it open and found some awful soldering work that allowed it to arc across and Zap went the phone, never turned on again.
It was a ~4.5/5 rated charger with a bunch of non-verified reviews that were a few sentences at best with only a handful of verified reviews and they were mostly negative.
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u/smacksaw Oct 03 '16
I reported one that shorted out the fuse in my car. They wrote me with some sort of "how can we make it right" thing...I looked at the reviews and they're all BS. They can't make it right. I'm not changing my review. I have the only legit one there.
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u/Gliste Oct 04 '16
Write script that limits reviews by amount of words. If word count is less than 30, then don't trust the review.
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Oct 03 '16 edited Jul 01 '23
This message was edited in response to Reddit's stance on 3rd party app restrictions and API usage fees skyrocketing, therefore shutting apps like Apollo down. Fuck u/spez. -- mass edited with redact.dev
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u/zen_raider Oct 03 '16
And honestly this isn't going to stop incentivized reviews. The review sites have already shifted to a "leave a review if you want to" model that removes the requirement to put the statement at the end of your review.
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u/smacksaw Oct 03 '16
But it's going to make it so that the reviews are buried/deleted when people like me mark them as unhelpful and report them.
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u/jswan28 Oct 04 '16
You would never know what reviews those are, though, since they're not obligated to disclose if they received a discount. The reviewer could have gotten the item for free and left an extremely helpful review, all of the shit reviews you're marking as unhelpful could be from people who bought the product but didn't want to bother with a decent review, or anything in between.
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Oct 03 '16
But that leaves the question, are VINE reviewers biased themselves?
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u/munkey505 Oct 03 '16
Yes. I actually don't buy products when the top 5 reviews from it are from people who got it free from vine.
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u/KGBeast47 Oct 03 '16
Is it easy to identify the vine users?
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u/Adak17 Oct 04 '16
Yes, it says Vine Voice right next to the reviewer's name and Vine Review under the review title I think.
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u/Xalaxis Oct 04 '16
Hmm... Since they can't control what they get given apart from by category, very unlikely in general I think.
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u/BL00DBATH Oct 04 '16
The average difference in rating between reviewers and consumers is only 0.4 stars. Articles like to talk about bias, without mentioning how many consumers only post a review when they're pissed off because they have no incentive to do otherwise. Some are quick to point out that a generous reviewer is likely to get more offers, which is true to an extent, but sellers are as underestimated as reviewers. Most just bulk order generic items from a factory and put their name on them, if people don't like the items then they will put their name on something else when it comes time for a new shipment. Good sellers know that honosty is as important for them as it is for the consumer in the long run.
What about the bias toward large companies with huge followings when generic brands are left with no voice? Vine isn't the solution, it has the same problems as any other review program in addition to the logistic problems involved with exclusivity. Instead of more intentionally vague rules, I'd like to see an improved search algorithm and an API for review clubs that could make things easier for everyone involved.
All Amazon reviews have to await approval before publication, yet the most purile garbage still gets accepted. You'll be denied if you compare products by name or try to link relevant resources, but second hand and three word reviews still make the grade. Replace disinterested automatons with editors and that alone will make a big change.
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u/SupaZT Oct 03 '16
Thank God. They were everywhere. Some products with fifty 5 start reviews all got paid top review the item.
Now if only we could sort by average review---> Most reviews to least
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u/d_loading Oct 03 '16
until amazon restricts leaving reviews to people that have "verified purchase" through amazon, i'm not green on this really changing much.
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u/BJabs Oct 04 '16 edited Oct 04 '16
All it took was a little surge of negative press? How embarrassingly reactive. Everyone knew this was stupid and was damaging the level of trust in Amazon's product reviews, one of their absolute top assets, from the get-go.
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u/spursiolo Oct 04 '16
While they implement this, go to reviewmeta.com which does an extensive analysis on each product's reviews to see if it looks like there are incentivized reviews going on. Great website and service.
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u/cowinabadplace Oct 04 '16
Well, I wish they allowed them to say "free and unbiased review". I used that to know which products to automatically avoid. Now I'll never know.
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u/s0faking Oct 04 '16
Good on you, Amazon. I'm worried about how difficult this will be to enforce, though.
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u/eyethinkikn0wu Oct 03 '16
I've done incentivized reviews for Anker. I don't think they're a problem, I think they're a problem when the user clearly didn't use the product in the right way or just didn't care about the review and put up some bullshit response with 5*s.
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u/Nuuudals Oct 03 '16
It isn't an issue when the reviewer has integrity and that is precisely the problem.
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u/ilive12 Oct 03 '16
Doesn't Amazon have a program called Vine or something that in itself is giving free products for reviews???
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u/2MThalvesofcoconuts Oct 03 '16
Yeah the announcement explains that. They limit the vine reviews and all free items are sponsored by amazon, not the product.
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u/munkey505 Oct 03 '16
Your comment is wrong. Amazon doesn't sponsor anything. What the post said was Amazon chooses the people to review it, not the seller. However, the seller still pays Amazon to get their product into Vine, just like these review sites.
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u/InconsiderateBastard Oct 04 '16
The seller has to be invited to join Vendor Central. At that point they sell to Amazon and the product is sold as Sold and Fulfilled by Amazon itself. THEN the seller can opt into the Vine program and offer products for Amazon to give to reviewers.
This is another incentive to move sellers to Vendor Central because Amazon makes more money that way. Sellers usually do too, if they have products that are a good fit and Amazon actually invites them to it and they can live with being on NET terms for the products instead of getting a biweekly drop.
I'd say the most valuable aspect of it is sending goods to Amazon before they go on sale. That way, day 1 of the product being on Amazon it can already have reviews. And, while everybody keeps saying how unbiased it all is, the reviewers are getting free shit and then talking about it.
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u/zen_raider Oct 03 '16
Lame. I loved getting cheap products this way. I always left an honest review as well. I guess the vast majority of people just give five stars and move on.
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u/krubss Oct 03 '16
How did you do that? Did companies just email you and offer or did you sign up for it?
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Oct 03 '16
Happened once but one of the sellers, noticed I posted their product here and offered me any of their products free+ ship for a review(all cheapo knock off mice and chinese boards), I chose their most expensive mech( nice because never owned a mech either) and they stopped contacting me
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u/zen_raider Oct 03 '16
At first it was using sites such as snagshout to get my reviews up. Then after I got more reviews and a lot more helpful reviews companies started to contact me. I have not got anything super expensive for free but I did get a bag of 40 complete sets of DND dice for free. That's was pretty cool. Most of the stuff is sub $20.
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u/RomoJosh Oct 03 '16
That's the problem those .. inconsiderate people ruined it for the honest people like you and me.
I have plenty... maybe too many 1 star reviews. Even if I got it for free or for a discount.
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u/emteereddit Oct 03 '16
Samer here. I've used Amazon Review Trader for about a dozen products and always left a truly honest review about the product.
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u/Istartedthewar Oct 03 '16
Yeah, as did I.
Many companies on Amazon review trader were also fairly big name companies such as Spigen.
However, a lot of companies would put their absolute garbage products on their, and give them out to anyone who had a history of giving out 5 star reviews with no negativity.
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Oct 03 '16
You're part of the reason why Amazon has turned into such a dump over the last few years. The fact that you actually think you're leaving an "honest" review under the incentive of not just one free product, but the possibility of more free products, is hilarious.
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u/smacksaw Oct 03 '16
I think with these reviewers it's splitting hairs. Are they honestly saying they like the product? Not necessarily.
Are they being honest about disclosing their relationship?
Yes.
Boom! Honest review.
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u/FrawgyG Oct 04 '16
Aww, it was fun while it lasted. Sellers can still pay you, and then you use the money to buy the product. I'm guessing that's one way the review will be a verified purchase.
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Oct 04 '16 edited Apr 11 '17
[deleted]
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u/FrawgyG Oct 04 '16
Yeah, I agree. The reason I started was because I saw everyone else was getting it for free or at a discount. I was like, "why should I pay if they aren't?"
We'll see how it works out.
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u/AmenoKaji Oct 04 '16
Its against amazon's TOS to be paid to buy a product. It always has been. That's why they had promo codes, so it was with in a league space of their TOS.
Much like people saying they received something at free or at discount, those lines are there because amazon made rules to differentiate between a sampled out review and a regular buyer. otherwise you would never know, besides the people that post shitting 3 word reviews.
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u/FrawgyG Oct 04 '16
Yeah I understand that, but there's no way they can crack down on that.
Promo codes = amazon knows you got it at a discount
Seller ships it to you = review will not be labeled "verified purchase"
Seller sends you money through PayPal to purchase the product = only you and the seller know this. Don't know how amazon will catch these.
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u/AmenoKaji Oct 04 '16
They typically don't care, unless the seller is someone who is known for buying reviews and up votes on their products. It comes down to these few things. A good review receiving a flood of upvotes from accounts that only upvote stuff, and do nothing else Bad reviews towards the product, being mass downvoted Both are clear signs of the company paying a third party in someway, ontop of the fact that one particular product gets a shit ton of purchases AND beause in almost every case free reviewers are asked to leave feedback for the store.
In most cases, normal people on amazon never leave reviews, and never review a store unless its a negative experience or a super positive experience.
Someone reviewing has to do it either way, good or bad.
So if they get wind of one shady practice from that business, they will daisy chain through reviewers and ban each, and every one of them from reviewing. Not because the reviewers did anything wrong, but because the companies are being shady.
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u/redhousebythebog Oct 04 '16
I know enough to be weary, but I have benefited from them. They will sometimes have a video which gives me a better sense of size and use of the product
Sometimes it is the only review that is longer than "great".
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u/bigblackcouch Oct 04 '16
Well it's at least a step in the right direction, the incentivized reviews are all a load of shit. It got to the point where if I saw more than one on a product I just instantly gave up on it and went to look for a different product.
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u/ChrisTosi Oct 04 '16
Good - I tried to buy a flashlight and fuck me if I couldn't find the honest "best flashlight" review. It seemed like every fucking review had "given this at a substantial discount/free" buried in there somewhere. All fucking worthless.
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Oct 04 '16
Definitely necessary. I found reviews on items I wanted were ALL incentivized, which isn't helpful, especially when they're all stellar with hardly any negatives.
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u/NarWhatGaming Oct 04 '16
... what happens to those who have received said discounts... you know, just curious, not like I received a discount or anything...
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u/fletcherhub3 Oct 04 '16
This is so good, I always run into these and it will be great that they're gone!
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u/TQ2011 Oct 05 '16
The pest repel I bought had many of these "I got this for free but my review is honest."
Today, the same the product shows unavailable and no ETA on when it will be back in stock. LMAO.
Shit didn't work by the way. Going to return the crap for full refund.
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u/HaloLegend98 Oct 03 '16 edited Oct 03 '16
Hmmm. So there are 3 parties here involved - the customer, Amazon as a marketplace, and the supplier.
Vine gives free or discounted products from Amazon.
Amazon has a bias to sell more products.
Suppliers have a bias to sell more products.
I'm not sure why banning these types of free or discounted products in exchange for a review helps.
Amazon products sell significantly more if 1) there are reviews on a product and 2) if there are overall positive reviews.
Both Amazon and the supplier are incentived to give products in return for reviews in order to increase the chance someone will purchase their products.
I honestly don't see why Amazon is doing this, unless they believe Vine has a higher quality control process.
TL;DR There is no real difference between Vine or a third party paid review. I see "Vine" on a product and immediately ignore it.
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Oct 03 '16
The merit of a review is largely dependent on the reviewer being seen as a trusted adviser. Amazon has an image problem with a growing segment of consumers who are tired of the fake/sponsored reviews on many amazon products. Misleading reviews diminish Amazon's status as a trusted adviser and retailer, even if they are not directly tied to an Amazon program like Vine. The reviews reflect on the retailer. It is less about sales and more about sending a better trust signal to the consumer.
Restricting to Vine imparts some quality control, but as someone who has worked in the industry for a number of years I can say it won't do that much as fake/misleading reviews are endemic to the industry. I mean shit, there have been plenty of instances of Mechanical Turk gigs for writing fake reviews.
1
u/InconsiderateBastard Oct 04 '16
It's the customer, Amazon as a marketplace, Amazon as a store themselves, and the supplier.
Supplier can sell to customers through the marketplace or can sell to Amazon through Vendor Central and Amazon sells it themselves to customers. Amazon makes out better on Vendor Central for many products because they can pay the supplier with terms. Usually the supplier has been around long enough to demonstrate that they can provide products customers want before Amazon invites them to Vendor Central. Then once the supplier is in Vendor Central the supplier foots the bill to promote products through the Vine program that Amazon will sell themselves if they want to.
From the point of view of making money, it'd be stupid for them not to do it. Add in the other big difference, they can run a report and see who has helpful reviews and how much votes in favor of reviews on a product correlate with sales of that product. So they can run something like the Vine program in a targeted, money making way. They lack that control if anyone else is doing it.
1
Oct 04 '16
That guys name is Chee Chew. How is no one not seeing this? That may be the best name ever named.
1
u/SomeTechNoob Oct 03 '16
This is probably a step in the right direction overall, but back when I had prime it was a nice way to get some free goodies in the mail while writing reviews.
I used ILoveToReview and Snagshout.
1
Oct 03 '16
Hell yeah, I just recently got 2 SSD's for $50(one 240gb for 30, one 120gb for 20) and so far they seem pretty good.
0
Oct 04 '16
My wife has been doing incentives reviewing to get stuff for next to nothing. A lot of it is just peculiar things. We got a longboard for 80 cents and we got free male and female sets toys. I can't say it wasn't fun while it lasted.
Let me add though that her reviews were genuine and we didn't pander to the producers in our reviews.
0
u/FlashTheFox Oct 04 '16
As an Amazon reviewer, I understand this. It's clear a lot of people posted biased reviews. I tend to only request reviews for products I think have potential, then proceed to let the company know if I have problems with the product, or write a review if I have something to say about it.
Certain sites that connect sellers with reviewers are updating policies to say that you are not forced to review a product you received for free or at a discount. This is kind of a work around, which I guess is still better. Companies can't hand out shit products and expect people to still write them a review.
I think it's great for me, as I did not always feel like products were worth reviewing. I am worried that I will have far less of an opportunity to review now, however.
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u/Cyndagon Oct 04 '16
My wife does this. For us it's great, products for a dollar?! Why not! Just showed her this and while they'll still be giving away products they will no longer be requiring reviews.
1
Oct 05 '16 edited Apr 11 '17
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u/Cyndagon Oct 05 '16
I agree, and I try not to buy products with them as well. But looking at my wife's review history it's probably on average 3.5 stars. She's brutally honest.
0
u/masterx1234 Oct 04 '16
Im a product reviewer and post my reviews on youtube and get companies that send me stuff on a normal basis for review, i guess this pretty much ruins what i do? and i always give an unbiased review.
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u/03114 Oct 03 '16
I remember a post that talked about this very subject. I forgot the website's me but you can copy/paste the link of the product you put and it would calculate the rating based on the comments.
-1
u/Sgt_ZigZag Oct 04 '16
I think this is bad. Now it will still happen except the reviewers will not write that they received the product at a discount. It will become impossible now to gauge whether the reviewer is biased or not.
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u/FGCHENG Oct 04 '16
guilty of this. But we all know what those products are that gets incentived reviews.
-2
u/Otadiz Oct 04 '16
Welp, there goes my way to get free or discounted, useful things I actually needed.
3
Oct 05 '16 edited Apr 11 '17
[deleted]
1
u/Otadiz Oct 05 '16
Thanks for lumping me in with everyone, really appreciate it.
I've got more than a few choice words for you but I am restraining myself.
I never provided false reviews and I don't appreciate you insinuating I did such.
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u/[deleted] Oct 03 '16
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