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.
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
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.
to add to this, it does that to check for patterns it already knows in the reviews themselves, but 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
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.
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.
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.
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
FTFY. I don’t even have an account there.
I only use it for 2 dollar Amazon prime video + gaming sub that I got when Apple App Store glitched.
How do these analyzers determine if a review is fake?
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.
to add to this, it does that to check for patterns it already knows in the reviews themselves, but 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
That’s appalling customer service.
Can you elaborate? I’ve never experienced this and would like to understand how they do it.
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.
Give it 2 stars instead of 1.
And never read the 5-star reviews.
Amazing. Thanks for the description.
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.
Do you mean Vine? I can tell you a few things about that.
Yep vines, never paid attention to them until this happened.
Are they all fake or something?
Customers who were sent free products “to honesty review”