Could Amazon Reviews Be Corrupt?

adeelarshad82 writes "In the first academic study of its kind, Trevor Pinch, Cornell University professor of sociology and of science and technology studies, independently surveyed 166 of Amazon's top 1,000 reviewers, examining everything from demographics to motives. What he discovered was 85 percent of those surveyed had been approached with free merchandise from authors, agents or publishers. Amazon is encouraging reviewers to receive free products through Amazon Vine, an invitation-only program in which the top 1,000 reviewers are offered a catalog of free products to review. John Dvorak puts up an argument which hints that some of these Amazon reviews may be corrupt."

Comments

I trust this guy's comment

[A5un]

I trust this guy's review. It's absolutely true

"Dvorak hints"

[keith_nt4]

I can't believe I read that entire summary only to be lead into a link to a Dvorak column. It's like the slashdot version of being rick rolled. And I fell for it. Bravo samzenpus, bravo.

As a member of the Vine program...

[Anonymous Coward]

I was invited to join the Amazon Vine program when I was somewhere in the 2,000-3,000 range in terms of reviewer rank, so it's definitely not the "top 1,000 reviewers". Every review that results from the Vine program has a green highlighted link on the review stating it's from the Vine Program with a "What's this?" link that people can use to find out what it's about. So it's made very clear when a reviewer got a free copy to play with.

Technically, all the "free" products are still owned by Amazon, so they could ask for them back at some point. Some large items like exercise equipment are loaned only for 30 days and then picked up. Certainly some Vine members probably eBay everything valuable they get, but this is clearly against the terms of the program.

Books are sometimes un-edited pre-release copies without final art or perhaps printed in black-and-white, as any book reviewer might get.

I've written five star and one star vine reviews, and Amazon accepts all of them.

It's fun to actually get some benefit from posting about stuff you like. Free stuff to review on Amazon, free add-free Slashdot for having really good karma, etc.

My experience

[Bobfrankly1]

I wrote a few Amazon reviews, then noticed a review that had absolutely no bearing on the item being reviewed. I reported it and Amazon stated that they found no reason to remove the review. I replied with full detail outlining how unrepresentative the review was and how misleading it was to consumers. I received a reply stating that it didn't violate their review policies, and that they wouldn't hear any more complaints about the issue. I forwarded the specific details out of their own publicly posted review policy that were violated, and received a "We'll take a look at this", which was obviously a brush off. Months later, no response and the fraudulent review remains.

I've henceforth removed all of my reviews, and I forward my clients to Newegg instead. Newegg's customer service has been better anyway.

While this may not be directly related to the story presented in TFA, it does speak to the lack of integrity in the Amazon review process when obviously false or misplaced reviews are allowed to remain, even when pointed out and explained to a human being (as opposed to a automatic responder).

Re:I do

[ehrichweiss]

There's no doubt there. I recently purchased a book that was reviewed fondly here on ./ and noticed that all the reviewers on Amazon were RAVING about it; every review had 9 out of 9 "this review was helpful" ratings. Then I read the book and found it to be utter garbage, so I wrote a review detailing why it was not living up to the reviews or promises. Within a couple of days there were 9 people saying my review wasn't helpful...but there weren't 9 MORE people saying the other reviews were helpful(they remained at 9 out of 10)...just that mine was unhelpful.. I'm 100% certain the reviews were rigged. I don't dare reveal the book for fear the author has mod points...