Amazon Fake Products and Fake Reviews

rsk writes "The first time I came across fake reviews on Amazon, it was hilarious. Using Amazon's Window Shop app, I came across a great category, 'Peculiar Products,' and was more than happy to look through it. Almost every one of the products I found on the list (Uranium Ore, 1 Gallon of Milk, Parent Child Test, Fresh Whole Rabbit) were fake, with thousands of reviews on them. As a shopper, I wasn't aware of how easy it was to apparently fake product reviews and it bothers me. When I'm shopping, the first (and a lot of times only) place I visit is Amazon to read the reviews if I'm in the market for something. I don't expect the reviews to be the word of God, but I do assume a certain level of legitimacy for most of them. While this won't affect my use of Amazon (especially not at this time of the year) I would like to bubble this up to Amazon's attention so some time is spent on improving the quality of the reviews."

Comments

Worth every penny

[nigelo]

Free advice is worth every penny.

Article is Clueless -- Reviews are Jokes

[eldavojohn]

I did this way back in 2005 for IDC reports that cost thousands of dollars but were only 10 page PDFs.

It's a joke. It's funny. It's not people gaming a system, it's people being funny. It's not some evil corporation pimping it's uranium, it's people who think half life jokes and Back to the Future references are the hip new thing.

One of my friends posted the original joke review to the Three Wolf Moon T-shirt a long time ago and for about a week, we got our kicks writing joke reviews and people approved of them because, well, they were funny. I'm appalled that you think this is gaming the system when it's just regular people having a good time.

As a shopper, I wasn't aware of how easy it was to apparently fake product reviews and it bothers me.

How on earth could that bother you? You didn't notice it until you stumbled into a weird category on some beta app. Do you have any sense of humor?

For what it's worth, Amazon is starting to allow reviewers who ordered the item from Amazon to mark on their review that Amazon confirms them as an owner. So you could probably in the future sort those reviews by those that wrote jokes and those that actually ordered the uranium (my god, how is this not on idle).

It really bothers you? How? Please tell me how I've ruined your shopping experience.

Re:Article is Clueless -- Reviews are Jokes

[Monkeedude1212]

It really bothers you? How? Please tell me how I've ruined your shopping experience.

Really John? You have to ask that question?

A couple years ago my Father wanted to get out of the Field Technician Business and get into a more desk type job at home, where he could be his own boss kind of stuff. For Christmas he had but ONE request, a semi-luxurious Office Chair. Given that my father could not come to terms with how I dropped out of school and still got a job without that piece of paper, we both have this grudge about things we shouted at each other one day. However, the holidays are about family and I could not help but feel compelled that perhaps fulfilling this one request might mend the broken family that came about as a result of me not finishing that damn technical writing course. (As a side note, I was seriously knee deep in working out Regular Expressions in Perl, how could they possibly expect me to do up a cover letter that made any sense at the same time?)

Anyways, so after discovering this magic bullet to fix all the things that went wrong, I set out to get my father the best Office Chair Canadian money can buy. Having been recently thrown out and banned from Staples, Bestbuy, and Futureshop, for setting the IE Homepage on the display computers to the small local competitor down the street, I had no where to reasonably go but online. I did consider Ikea, but honestly I had enough trouble setting up some shelves with nothing but wooden dowels and an allen key, I did not want to take the risk of them making me set up a complex office chair with nothing but the same.

So there I was, browsing the Amazons and the Ebays of the world over, just trying to find the best price and shipping combination for my buck on Office chairs with reasonable features. However, I noticed a shocking trend. A lot of people who recieved these shipments of Office chairs were horribly mauled and disfigured by what they claim to be a Bobcat. They would not buy again. Now, I know that occaisonally someone likes to post a little joke review here and there. But this was EVERYWHERE. It was like an epidemic. I rationally thought that there must have been some mix up at the factory, or they really should not have put that Office Chair Warehouse right beside the nature reserve.

As such I did not purchase an office chair, but rather settled on a Thelma and Louise DVD. Needless to say, relationships have since worsened, and he has recently ended up in the hospital. He doesn't even want to see me. He thinks I did this to him. Everything is just so messed up, and I had this one perfect opportunity to make everything all better. And I blame you and your ilk for completely ruining my shopping Experience, Christmas, and inadvertantly, the rest of my life.

Re:Article is Clueless -- Reviews are Jokes

[eldavojohn]

You selfish insensitive clod, your father is still alive while mine was horribly mauled, disfigured and killed by what appeared to be a Bobcat after I gifted him this same office chair! Your father may be in the hospital but mine is dead because I did not read those online reviews. If only I had been so lucky!

Re:Article is Clueless -- Reviews are Jokes

[God'sDuck]

But the reviewer said that eating uranium ore for a month had caused him to grow three heads. I did the same and I still only have one head. I want my money back!

Give it time. I'm sure you'll grow tu mor soon.

Fake post

[PatPending]

Fake post.

Re:Fake post

[CaptainPatent]

*CaptainPatent found this review to be helpful*

Honest truth is rare.

[h00manist]

If there is money or prestige involved, generally there are lies involved.

Steering Wheel tray

[MollyB]

Here's a bizarro product, and the 1000's of customer reviews (with pictures) that were submitted:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B000IZGIA8/ref=s9_simh_co_p263_d4_i1?pf_rd_m=ATVPDKIKX0DER&pf_rd_s=left-1&pf_rd_r=0964R987N5R9BZSJ4NP6&pf_rd_t=3201&pf_rd_p=1263271162&pf_rd_i=typ01

Re:Steering Wheel tray

[uglyduckling]

I love the fourth picture on the product page.

Amazon Reviews can't be trusted all the time

[Stregano]

Here is a big example: the release of Spore. That game had thousands of bad reviews because of the DRM. People who never played/bought the game.

Actually the review issue will be super simple to fix: if somebody buys a product from Amazon, if they also write a review on the product, there will be a special piece of text that says that the user who left the review bought the product from Amazon. To get rid of most of the bad/fake reviews, all Amazon needs to do is require that all reviews be from people who actually bought the product. This would also eliminate reviews on fake products, since unless the person paid for and bought the paid product, no review for them.

As for fake products, you would think there is some way to flag fake products to alert Amazon about it.

So, Amazon could easily fix these issues with items that are already in place (unless flagging products is not in place, but that sounds like something very odd that should be place if it is not), but it appears they choose not to. Maybe contacting Amazon directly and informing them about this would help out much better than a /. article, but maybe that is just me

"Verified Purchase"

[Mr 44]

This exists! It's called Amazon Verified Purchase. See, for example:
http://www.amazon.com/review/R23WKI375G1JJM

I don't know if their ranking algorithm rates reviews from verified purchases higher or not, but wouldn't be surprised...

Re:Except it happens with real products too

[Moraelin]

Yes, and after the game is released, a few million people still have to spend collectively the equivalent of a couple of centuries just wading through the brainless drivel of some cretin who thinks he's funny. 'Cause obviously we wouldn't want to get straight to the actually useful information. I mean, oh noes, some people must be sheep if they just want to learn whether that product worked as a t-shirt (e.g., if it shrunk after the first machine wash) from other customers, instead of being delighted to wade through pages of idiots pretending that their "OMG it's magical" drivel is funny. Right?

Obviously if we're actually shopping for a t-shirt, our time is there just to read some lame jokes, and not to actually compare t-shirts. Man, what would we ever do with our time if we didn't have to spend hours using TEH LOGIC to guess which products are real and which are lame jokes, and which reviews are real and which are lame jokes. Why, without your kind of selfless saviour providing all that crapflood to filter, we'd be done with the shopping in 10 minutes and probably be stuck for the rest of the evening getting bored and having nothing to do. Oh noes! I mean, it's not like there's TV, YouTube, games, websites, etc, to go to if we want entertainment. Without your kind crap-flooding Amazon, why, we'd just have to sit there and get bored.

Heh.

And that goes double for cases when basically the request to use logic comes from some cretins who aren't very good at logic or data to use it on in the first place.

E.g., since the summary mentions Uranium, it must be an obvious joke, right? Well, no, actually depleted Uranium is perfectly ok to own and use for civilian purposes. It's even used as balast in boats and whatnot. Being very dense, it can lower your boat's centre of gravity a lot without taking much space. So someone could actually be trying to buy just that, in all honest.

But don't tell that to the ignorant joker who's basing his idea that it'll be an obvious joke for anyone who isn't stupid... on his own being stupid and ignorant.