Why don't they just put a "this review looks fake" button next to the helpful button?
Wire it into a neural net, don't make it a way to snipe competitors products.
ok, ok... probably not a realistic solution.
I've left a few reviews recently and one good thing I have noticed is they seem to be adding some checks (I think they're intentional).
Like you review a product and it says "overall rating 1-5" but below it will have subcategories like maybe "true to size 1-5" "value 1-5" or similar (can't recall the real ones).
Every once in a while they throw in a curveball like "warmth 1-5" which would make sense for a sweater but is nonsense for something like a plate or ssd. I just press [X] and figure it's a check for a fake reviewer. (either that or a fake reviewer added a nonsense category)
1. Add a way to report solicitations for fake reviews. Ban companies that pay for fake reviews for a year and all their reviews above 3 stars are removed. Customers who report requests for fake reviews are given a small bonus; maybe a $5 credit or something.
2. Amazon themselves pretend to be sellers and solicit fake reviews from customers. If a customer reports the request for a fake review, they're given the same bonus but told that they were part of a sting operation. If the customer gives the fake review, they're banned from Amazon for a year, and all their reviews are removed.
Obviously some details need to be worked out: need to make sure the system can't be abused, need to make sure the fake review solicitation doesn't make real sellers look bad. But if done properly, ti should make the whole fake-review solicitation completely impractical.
The one with the customers won't work because creating a new account is trivial.
Actually, I think so is creating a new company to sell stuff on Amazon. Mind you, if your company is kicked off Marketplace, it has to rebuild its reputation and inventory and stuff.
But yeah, they should definitely mark companies that pay for reviews as dodgy. I don't think they would ban them - because ANYONE selling stuff on Amazon is earning them money - but they could do more.
I don't think the problem hurts Amazon enough though. It's not like people stop using Amazon because of bad reviews. And I'm sure Amazon is undercutting the market so that any competitor with good reviews is unable to compete.
Actually it is. Have you tried ENO by capitol one or Privacy or any other VCC company. Folks use em to buy 300 pairs of shoes when the limit was 1 per customer.
At least #2 won't happen: Banning customers means blocking people from paying you money. You don't get to be the richest man in the world by making sure people don't pay you money.
I’d like to believe that they truly see the long term financial value of building more customer trust, but I can see this being a bit of a back burner project due to short term losses
They build the customer trust by taking financial hits - if you’ve been a long time prime customer they are good at refunding the purchase when you aren’t happy. It doesn’t protect others from ordering the same bad widget but you are at least satisfied not to make it a bigger issue.
That's not how Amazon works, they take a lot of 'short term losses in exchange for trust' decisions, like warning you if a product has increased in price since you added it to the wish list, possibly triggering additional research of competitors that might have it cheaper.
> they take a lot of 'short term losses in exchange for trust' decisions
I'm sorry, but I don't believe your statement. They're not doing enough about fake reviews, and definitely aren't doing enough about poor quality products, fake products, and poor products squatting over good / brand products. Their marketplace is not curated enough, and buying a product is a gamble.
There are a few posts about that; one I remember is that someone bought a book off Amazon, but got a fake / copy / low quality reproduction instead.
I can actually confirm, that amazon invest heavily in this. However, they struggle with growing their team and their resources as fast as their (seller) business grows.
Why actually and not just confirm? Also, investing in something internally means absolutely zero as none of those investments seems to have paid off so far, since there has been absolutely nothing deployed or done by Amazon in public to fight the review spam.
I've seen other people say the same thing about fraudulent products but amazon hasn't taken the most obvious step, stopping commingling products, there. This makes me believe that they aren't serious about that issue and I don't see why I should believe they're serious about this one either.
