Amazon Bans Incentivized Reviews Tied To Free Or Discounted Products (techcrunch.com)

An anonymous reader quotes a report from TechCrunch: Amazon is making a significant change to its Community Guidelines, announced today, which will eliminate any incentivized reviews, except for those that emerge from within its own Amazon Vine program. This program allows Amazon -- not the seller or vendor -- to identify trusted reviewers, and has a number of controls in place in order to keep bias out of the review process. Amazon has historically prohibited compensation for reviews -- even going so far as to sue those businesses who pay for fake reviews, as well as the individuals who write them, in an effort to make its review and rating system fairer and more helpful to online shoppers. However, it has allowed businesses to offer products to customers in exchange for their "honest" review. The only condition was that those reviewers would have to disclose their affiliation with the business in question in the text of their review. Reviewers were generally offered the product for free or at a discounted price, in exchange for their review. Although, in theory, these reviewers could write their true opinion on the product -- positive or negative -- these incentivized reviews have tended to be overwhelmingly biased in favor of the product being rated. Amazon says that, going forward, the only incentivized reviews will be those from Amazon Vine. These don't work the same way, however. For starters, Amazon selects who will be allowed to review products, and it does so mainly to boost the review count on new or pre-release products that haven't yet generated enough sales to have a large number of organic reviews. Vine reviewers are invited to join the program only after having written a number of reviews voted as "helpful" by other customers, and tend to have expertise in a specific product category. In addition, vendors don't have any contact with Vine reviewers, nor do they get to influence which reviewers will receive their products, which are submitted directly to Amazon for distribution. These changes will apply to all product categories other than books, as Amazon has always allowed advance copies of books to be distributed, the retailer notes.

Comments

One star, won't buy again!!

[Anonymous Coward]

UPS didn't ring doorbell.

I hope this helps

[reboot246]

It's becoming almost impossible to trust the reviews, so maybe this will help a little bit.

Re:I hope this helps

[RubberDogBone]

Co-mingling of goods was already a huge issue Amazon is doing nothing to fix it.

But god forbid somebody get a discount to do a review. Oh no, can't have that.

Here's the thing: the people doing those reviews are at least incentivized to do a review. The co-minglers, on the other hand, are already up to fraud the moment they start.

Re:I hope this helps

[Anonymous Coward]

Reviewers now contact companies begging for products to review. They get "free" stuff almost every day, none of which is declared to the tax authorities and clearly fall under many tax requirement laws all around the world. They are not gifts, they are given in exchange for reviews.

Many Vine members have their reviews pre-written for pending products. They paraphrase PR releases and tech-specs, and post huge reviews within minutes of a product going live on Amazon.

Their review system needs to be scrapped. Vine needs to die, the initial need to get momentum is long gone.

Companies also contact purchasers directly when a < 4 star review is given. They offer incentives to increase the rating. Amazon should not be given sellers contact information or APIs to do so. At the most Amazon needs to provide a "dispute review" functionality to the seller which can then be checked to ensure it's not vindictive junk or a comment about the courier service. Better yet, offer customers filters to remove third party and associated sellers altogether.

Re:I hope this helps

[Mike Frett]

Not really. If it looks well written, it's probably fake. The ones with spelling errors that are about two sentences long and are buried under the "See all customer reviews" are usually the ones you want. =p

Re:I hope this helps

[Anonymous Coward]

I am an Amazon reviewer, presently in the top 100 list.

Yes, this will help. I try to be fair, balanced, honest and thorough, but not all reviewers feel the same. For many, it is about getting free things and climbing the ranks to get more free things. They're of the opinion that if you write a positive review, the vendor will send even more stuff to you, and unfortunately they're right. When I have written bad reviews for products, the vendors don't deal with me anymore which is a good thing since it means I don't have to look at crummy products anymore. When I have written positive reviews, I have been asked to write even more.

But, it's as much about reigning in the vendors as it is about keeping reviewers honest. Some of the vendors are real bottom-feeders, offering money for 5-star reviews specifically as well as offering more products too. And if you write a negative review, they incite other reviewers to downvote you so your percentage gets damaged and your review drops out of site too. The opposite is true too - when you write a positive review, it is not uncommon to get a flood of upvotes, and it's the vendors asking other reviewers to upvote your positive review (I have been asked to do this a couple of times - I didn't). There's all kinds of sneaky, underhanded tricks the vendors play.

Who this really hurts are the honest vendors that are trying to get started. They have to suffer the consequences of others' bad behavior.

Re: I hope this helps

[Anonymous Coward]

I think it may help, but it doesn't get to the root issue that most reviews are fake or otherwise extremely biased. I am one of those rare people that actually writes genuine reviews whether I am pissed or not. I also think it depends on the type of products you buy. I buy mostly musical or audio equipment from a certain, um, friendly music site and I always follow up a purchase with a review for the sake of my fellow musicians. I do it out of a sense of community more than anything, but I often wonder if a particularly gushing review comes off as being fake. Such is the sad state of affairs.

Re:I hope this helps

[crispin_bollocks]

Actually, the last small kitchen gadget I bought came with a card telling me how to get freebies to review. Small kitchen stuff seems like a category that is teeming with shills. I deliberately look for quality reviews, especially as the price climbs.

Unfair

[Anonymous Coward]

This is unfair. My daugher writes fake Amazon reviews to put herself through college. Now she will have no choice but to work as a stripper instead.

Re:Unfair

[Anonymous Coward]

At least it will be honest work

Re:Unfair

[Anonymous Coward]

Maybe Donald Trump will take an interest in being her sugar daddy since Melania is getting long in the tooth.

Re: Unfair

[Anonymous Coward]

Not if she wants to get the really good tips

Re: Unfair

[Anonymous Coward]

She can blow me instead.

Re: Unfair

[Anonymous Coward]

That's still HONEST work. Writing fake reviews is dishonest. Giving someone a product or service, as agreed, for the "advertised" price is honest. All of the fake reviews have rendered the rating/review system on Amazon utterly worthless. Fake reviews are not harmless.

Incentivized is not necessarily fake

[mi]

The write-up equates "incentivized" with "fake" and that's just not true. A conflict of interest is a challenge, but does not automatically invalidate the result — otherwise any politician promising things like "ending poverty" should be run out of town as a faker, for he obviously has a conflict of interest between his promise today and his next election.

That said, I too tend to discount those — reviews and politicians — and vote them down.

Re:Incentivized is not necessarily fake

[stevel]

I write such reviews - both for Amazon Vine and for vendors who offer me free or discounted products. I take my reviewer role seriously and don't treat a review any differently if I paid for the item or not. I recognize that that there is a serious abuse problem - my fellow reviewers use the term "coupon queens", though these can be both male and female - and I applaud Amazon taking this position even though it means I will receive fewer items to review.

I would urge you, though, not to automatically downvote incentivized reviews. If you believe the review is genuinely not helpful, ("I haven't received it yet but I'm sure my grandson will like it, unless I sell it on eBay first..), downvote away. But there are good reviewers out there trying to help purchasers as if they had bought the item themselves. Indeed, those who paid for an item are often biased in favor of it so as to not appear foolish for having spent the money.

Re:Incentivized is not necessarily fake

[mi]

Unless reviewers are picked blindly and randomly, as the Vine program promises to do, an incentivized reviewer will always weight the integrity of his review against the chances of ever being offered free stuff again.

This conflict of interest is why I vote down such reviews automatically — with prejudice and annoyance — and I'm glad, Amazon is fighting this practice.

Re:Incentivized is not necessarily fake

[Fwipp]

Do you think that getting something for free doesn't skew your opinions of the product?

these incentivized reviews have tended to be overwhelmingly biased in favor of the product being rated.

Whether explicitly scammy or not, products that reward their reviewers are unjustly getting higher scores.

Re: Incentivized is not necessarily fake

[Anonymous Coward]

Part of the problem is that incentivized reviewers don't use the product in the same way as normal users.

An incentivized reviewer often doesn't use the product for very long before putting it in the closet and moving on to the next review. What if the product doesn't stand up to everyday wear and tear? What if flaws or design shortcomings appear only with intense use?

An incentivized reviewer often does not have a genuine need for the product, has not done comparison shopping, and is not familiar with what characteristics that make a product better or worse than competing products. What if this product seems "fine" to the uninformed but is inadequate to someone who has a genuine need for the product?

Re:Incentivized is not necessarily fake

[naubol]

There was a recent study that basically showed incentivized reviews were significantly more positive on products.

Given the bias, we should probably downvote those reviews. Even if some of them are trying to help, on balance, if they really wanted to help they wouldn't write a review on a product they didn't pay for.

Re:Incentivized is not necessarily fake

[Anonymous Coward]

I write such reviews - both for Amazon Vine and for vendors who offer me free or discounted products. I take my reviewer role seriously and don't treat a review any differently if I paid for the item or not. I recognize that that there is a serious abuse problem - my fellow reviewers use the term "coupon queens", though these can be both male and female - and I applaud Amazon taking this position even though it means I will receive fewer items to review.

I would urge you, though, not to automatically downvote incentivized reviews. If you believe the review is genuinely not helpful, ("I haven't received it yet but I'm sure my grandson will like it, unless I sell it on eBay first..), downvote away. But there are good reviewers out there trying to help purchasers as if they had bought the item themselves. Indeed, those who paid for an item are often biased in favor of it so as to not appear foolish for having spent the money.

This comment was five stars. It was the finest piece of exposition ever witnessed by any human, living or dead.

I received moderation in exchange for my fair and honest review.

Re: Incentivized is not necessarily fake

[Anonymous Coward]

I think any of these types of programs do have some bias... if nothing else, the 'oh, why not, it's only $1' so you don't care as much if it fails, or doesn't meet expectations, plus you definitely end up ordering things you might not use as much, or for long.

That being said, my main issue with how some of these programs were run, is that they required reviews, at least if you wanted to receiving stuff. Programs that didn't have this requirement don't seem as bad to me - you are still biased towards the company (it's still cheap/free stuff), but the decision to leave the review or not was your own, and you aren't penalized if you don't, or if you leave a 1-star review.

Re:Incentivized is not necessarily fake

[Anonymous Coward]

I agree that incentivized does not equal fake. Paid reviews are specifically for 5 star reviews so I think those are shady, but programs that match up reviewers and sellers are run all over the world, online and offline, not just for Amazon, as a genuine way to get feedback from the public. I've seen reviews of this kind range anywhere from 1 to 5 stars. Amazon has always allowed products to be given or discounted in exchange for honest and genuine reviews, but now that there are businesses helping to do that, Amazon wants to take this revenue stream for themselves. They're not doing anything different to these services other than taking that piece of the pie.

Re:Incentivized is not necessarily fake

[Solandri]

The write-up equates "incentivized" with "fake" and that's just not true.

If it's not true, there wold be no statistical difference between the average rating of incentivized and regular reviews. The inceitives would only be increasing the number of reviews, not affecting the ratings themselves..

Summary says these incentivized reviews were "overwhelmingly biased in favor of the product" - that would indicate a significant deviation between the two averages. So yeah the incentivized reviews are for all intents and purposes fake.

Re:Incentivized is not necessarily fake

[mi]

If it's not true, there wold be no statistical difference between the average rating of incentivized and regular reviews.

False.

Some incentivized reviews are biased. Maybe, even many of them. But biased does not mean fake either and, as I said, not all of them are even necessarily biased.

Summary says these incentivized reviews were "overwhelmingly biased in favor of the product"

Yes, and this may very well be true. But it does not mean, they are fake — the semantic differences are important.

significant deviation between the two averages. So yeah the incentivized reviews are for all intents and purposes fake.

Statistically, Blacks commit disproportionately more violent crimes, than Whites. Are you going to claim, Blacks "are for all intents and purposes" criminal?

Re:Incentivized is not necessarily fake

[Anonymous Coward]

Even the non-incentived reviews are suspect, especially for wobblers. Someone who has bought a product has bought into it to some degree and has attachment to it even before it arrives at the door. They may very well not want to admit (even to themselves) that they made a mistake, especially if the flaws are ones that they can live with.

Re:Incentivized is not necessarily fake

[Anonymous Coward]

The write-up equates "incentivized" with "fake" and that's just not true. A conflict of interest is a challenge, but does not automatically invalidate the result

The fundamental issue here is that there is a basic human right to ethics in business, whether one is a customer, an employee, or simply just a member of a community in which the business operates. Capitalism without ethics turns into a monster. Even the appearance of conflict of interest must be avoided whenever possible. Incentivized reviews always violate this right. This is why people who care about their integrity will never accept incentives before writing a review.

Similar rights apply to government and the practice of law, but in both of those cases it is very hard to get the people involved to be ethical. This lies at the root of many of society's problems, especially in the USA where the legal system is riddled with ethics problems and the political system is based on bribery disguised as lobbying. Accepting incentives to write reviews places one into the same group as the lawyers and the politicians, whom very few people trust.

The situation with Amazon is much simpler, though they may find enforcement difficult - they at least can simply decide to adopt a policy without having the change the entrenched behavior of (almost) an entire profession.

Re:Incentivized is not necessarily fake

[Anonymous Coward]

I always downvote every shill Vine review I see. You may try to kid yourself that your review is not biased by the fact that the manufacturer is giving you free stuff, but even subsconsciously it will be having an effect

Re: Incentivized is not necessarily fake

[Anonymous Coward]

One detail that should be explained about the Amazon Vine program is that the items we select as product reviewers are now calculated as taxable income. As a Vine reviewer of many years, I can tell you that this change in Amazon policy has greatly limited the number of items that I choose to review. Recently I passed up the chance to get a free laptop because I just didn't need it, and I'd rather buy a laptop, instead of creating an income tax liability by accepting the free laptop that Amazon offered me to review. If I lose my job tomorrow, I can always tell Discover Card to go fuck themselves when it comes time to pay the bill for the laptop I bought with my credit card. However, I cannot tell the IRS to go fuck themselves when it comes time to pay income tax on the 1099 that Amazon generated on my behalf as a Vine reviewer.

Half Way There

[BrendaEM]

Banning the vendors would have been the prudent thing to do for people paying for reviews.

Yelp 2.0?

[Anonymous Coward]

How is this any different from the review system with Yelp?

Re:Yelp 2.0?

[justthinkit]

Speaking of Amazon and Yelp in the same post -- both have removed the unhelpful mod (Amazon doing this only a few months ago). So now one can't down-mod a comment. Some end up with a suspicious lack of up-mods, but that is all the information we get.

This all sounds a lot like FaceBooge. Down-mods hurt sales, apparently.

Oh, look, rose-colored glasses are on sale!

Re:Yelp 2.0?

[naubol]

Amazon was the first retailer to invite accurate reviews of its products and it clearly carries very poorly reviewed products. I doubt they are without bias, of course. They stated it was in their long term interests to allow accurate reviews. They implemented it in the face of serious complaints on the parts of their sellers. Given their track record, it seems cheap to call bullshit so quickly.

Who Trusts Reviews? Who WRITES Reviews??

[RobotRunAmok]

There are two kinds of online reviews, whether on Amazon or elsewhere. The kind that are paid for, which aren't worth anything of course but at least money is changing hands and writers gotta make a buck somehow, so I respect that; and the kind that are written by the freekazoid basement dwellers for no compensation or reason except they think we are as interested in the sound of their own voice as they are.

Re: Who Trusts Reviews? Who WRITES Reviews??

[Anonymous Coward]

Basement-dwelling Slashdotter detected

Re:Who Trusts Reviews? Who WRITES Reviews??

[rtb61]

Well, that's a great big ole lie and rates pretty low. By far the most common and frequent review is from pissed off customers. I have been to many a review site and pretty much the majority of reviews are pissed off customers. The other really popular review is the one off direct from advertising review, there are a huge number of them (interestingly enough many of those one off review will occur on the same day within minutes of each other). There are the paid pennies to review slime but there really aren't all that many of them, they lie for others and so they should not be surprised when they get lied to and do not get paid, super high churn. There are also paid negative views to attack competing products, they come off due to particular style a being actual employees of competing companies.

The pissed off reviewers often go back to write further reviews, so a greater number of genuine reviews are floating around in the cess pool of fake reviews. Reviewing slowly but surely seem to becoming more popular, a hobby for consumers to indulge in for a few minutes at a time, brickbats and bouquets time, unhappy with a supplier and it's product let them know in the most painful way possible, happy instead, then reward them.

Keep in mind genuine product reviews destroy billions of dollars worth of bullshit advertising and that alone is fun and worthwhile. Want to clean up reviews, easy allow people to block reviewers they do not like and eliminate them for personalised ratings.

Re:Who Trusts Reviews? Who WRITES Reviews??

[rhyous]

Actually, no. That is not true. You obviously haven't been part of the review process much. There are many types. Reviews happen, first an foremost because:
1. Amazon (or the company) requests them. With every purchase about two later, I get an email asking me to review. A certain % of people, most who are not basement dwellers, will take time to respond.
2. The product caused an extreme emotion: This usually isn't a large percentage. The customer either really liked the product, or really hated the product. The reason so many reviews are high, is because it is actually an extremely small percentage of customers that are so angry they want to throw the product a 1 star.
3. Bloggers/Reviewers as a business.
4. A small percentage of people that just get pleasure from being a top reviewer and do it as a hobby. (Kind of like the same people who post here or on Stack Overflow, who get nothing out of it but virtual prestige).

I would say basement dwellers aren't even on the list of measurable percentages.

About Time

[twmcneil]

While the disclaimers were always quite clear, as noted in the summary, the reviews I read were all very positive. Want free stuff? Keep the review positive like the seller intended. You just can't avoid it. Better to allow it all.

Re:About Time

[silas_moeckel]

Funny I wrote a lot of bad reviews for stuff I got at a discount and frankly they didn't see to care.

Re:About Time

[Kjella]

Funny I wrote a lot of bad reviews for stuff I got at a discount and frankly they didn't see to care.

Perhaps they just thought this was your one in ten poor review so you wouldn't seem like a total shill, it doesn't have to work every time and complaining about a bad review might easily turn it into a Streisand effect causing more bad PR. But you're pointing out an important issue, even if they don't actually punish you for bad reviews reviewers might still think that they will be. Because the official party line is clear, but who really wants bad reviews? *wink wink nudge nudge* Maybe you make a few customers who dodged a bullet happy, but they don't pay you. It's the people who want to sell that pick you, most people will assume there a feedback loop there somewhere no matter what.

Misleading headline; incentivized reviews continue

[gweilo8888]

Amazon has not in any way, shape or form "banned incentivized reviews tied to free or discounted products". Amazon has banned such reviews being conducted by third-parties, because it wants a larger slice of the pie for itself.

Incentivized reviews tied to free or discounted products are not just allowed, but remain actively encouraged by Amazon -- it just requires the vendor to use its Vine program, giving it more control over who gets chosen, and likely some program-related fees from the vendor too.

Yeah, good luck with that.

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, good luck with that.

advance books, coincidence

[Quirkz]

I was getting worried until that last sentence. I read an advance copy of a book about a month back, and literally just an hour ago the author sent an email saying the book had been published and letting us advance readers know we could now post. I was starting to think it was pretty odd timing, if I got shot down before I had a chance to get over there and post a review.

Re: Misleading headline; incentivized reviews cont

[Anonymous Coward]

The difference here is that since the reviewer is working for Amazon, and not the product seller, there is less pressure for them to give a positive review. Amazon is more likely to want an accurate review than strictly a positive one.

Re: Misleading headline; incentivized reviews cont

[gweilo8888]

If you believe that, there's a bridge I'd like to sell you. Amazon is in the business of selling products. The more positive a review is, the more products it will sell. More than anyone, Amazon has a conflict of interest in choosing which products get reviews, and who writes those reviews.

Re: Misleading headline; incentivized reviews cont

[Anonymous Coward]

You have a very simplistic and child-like understanding of how business works.

I've done soe of those reviews in exchange

[mark_reh]

for a free or discounted product. I think about half of my reviews are negative or neutral, and I avoid doing reviews on things like vitamins that will produce nothing but expensive urine.

Re:I've done soe of those reviews in exchange

[Anonymous Coward]

cool story bro!

Re:I've done soe of those reviews in exchange

[Anonymous Coward]

Vitamin supplements are useless for people in good health but a god send for those who aren't.

Blowback

[Anonymous Coward]

The AC said less pressure, not no pressure.
Amazon also has incentive for reducing returns and for discouraging customers to go to other retailers. A bogus good review at amazon doesn't just blowback on the product's brandname, it blowsback on amazon as a whole.

Re: Misleading headline; incentivized reviews cont

[ShaunC]

Amazon is in the business of selling products that don't leave a bad taste in the mouths of Amazon customers. They have a vested interest in removing shitty products from their site, as the shitty products reflect poorly upon the Amazon brand. Honest and objective reviews, insulated from retribution by the seller, are a good thing.

It's About Time

[fuzznutz]

Reviews for low cost objects were getting pointless. If you search for something, the most "relevant" search would show an item with 350 reviews. 340 of those reviews were "incentivized." It was getting ridiculous. I would search through pages of reviews for any that were real customers. I started looking elsewhere for my online reviews and shopping.

Re: Misleading headline; incentivized reviews cont

[gumbi west]

I go to amazon largely because it has reviews that are not curated by the OEM. The free products were breaking that. This brings it back.

Amazon doesn't want to sell you crap, they want to sell you something in the product category that you are looking for. They are best off if you know what you are in for when you buy (so you won't return) and get the best one so you are happy with amazon.

Now fix co=mingling!

[RubberDogBone]

Since Amazon has clearly clobbered the bogeyman of honest reviews in exchange for a discount, maybe now they can DO something about the fraud that is co-mingling.

For those not up to speed, co-mingling takes place when various suppliers all certify they have x number of identical products and they ship these items to Amazon who then holds them for fulfillment. As far as Amazon is concerned, the items supplied by Larry are the same as those supplied by Sara so the items get pooled together and orders are filled by whichever one makes sense to Amazon.

The problem is, a LOT of vendors are faking it, certifying other products are the same or supplying counterfeit versions. Suppose you order a bottle of Coke. Larry and Sara both sell Coke on Amazon and both of them ship the bottles to Amazon and Amazon then fills the orders. But Sara hasn't supplied a REAL Coke, no she's sent in some store brand drink.

You order a Coke on Amazon from Larry's store. Amazon says well, we have 15 Cokes in stock, and Larry's are the same as Sara's so we'll send you one from Sara's supply since it's closer to you. Your Coke arrives and you spew it all over the place when it turns out to be store brand and not the real Coke. So you leave a bad review! Larry has shipped you fake coke and he's cheating! His reputation takes a pounding and he doesn't even know why.

Larry is then put in the spot of trying to make things right with you even though HIS Cokes were fine and it was Amazon who shipped you the fake one. Amazon does zero policing to validate products are what they say, so Sara gets away with it.

This sort of fraud is happening all the time now. Legit vendors are faced with bad reviews for fake products they didn't supply, but they have to turn around and make the customer happy or else Amazon penalizes them for negative reviews and bad feedback.

The fake suppliers don't care because they don't get caught very often and even if they do, they just toss the account and make a new one, and of course they never had legit merchandise to sell anyway so any sales that DO take place stand odds to be fulfilled with the real merchandise.

Amazon is doing nothing to fix this and thousands of honest vendors are being slammed with bad reviews about fake or counterfeit or dangerous products that got co-mingled into the system.

Re:Now fix co=mingling!

[Anonymous Coward]

If you are a seller and you're concerned about this, then don't use FBA. For what they charge per carton, this shouldn't be an issue. You're the customer here, not Amazon's slave. If you have no warehouse space and/or don't want to do the fulfillment piece, find a reputable 3PL that does fulfillment with Amazon integration.

Re:Now fix co=mingling!

[swb]

I bought what ended up being knockoff Anderson PowePole battery connectors off Amazon. They were so bad I couldn't even get continuity on one leg.

It was annoying but to Amazon's credit, they accepted the return despite the crimp pins being crimped with a stub of my battery cable still in them. Of course it cost me an inch and half of my cable.

Stupidly, the real product from a company web site who distributes actual Anderson connectors ended up being cheaper, but the site wasn't easy to find.

The real victim of course is Anderson whose products are being knocked off and sold by Amazon. My guess is the real fix for this is for the real maker to go after Amazon for selling shitty knockoffs.

Re:Now fix co=mingling!

[Anonymous Coward]

This problem of knock-offs being shipped when you ordered "the real thing" even if you bought direct from Amazon, along with fake reviews of free product, and pretending you still get 2-day shipping (really! it got there 2 days after we sent it, never mind the 5 day delay preparing to ship...) is why I cancelled Prime and will probably never go back to being a substantial Amazon customer. I paid for 2-day shipping service and they failed too many times. I expect to get what I ordered. Even with the excellent return support, it is such a waste of time. Not being worth the hassle, I just shop local more often now. Sometimes I just decide that I can do without either after seeing the product in person or if going to get it is also a waste of time.

Dang!

[Anonymous Coward]

I had hoped to get a cushy sweetheart deal and drive a Tesla for 10-years free! No hope now.

Will banning even work?

[craighansen]

Amazon's naive to think that banning incentive-driven reviews will make them go away. Of course they'd like to think that all vendors will transition to Vine, but more likely they'll just go underground - when they're not marked, readers can't adjust their interpretation based upon the information, nor can they be studied statistically. Vendors will also get suckered into participating in underground paid reviewing, increasing their real sales costs, and run the risk of losing the invested money when they get caught.

There's been several comments about "co-mingling" of products. I'd agree that we, and Amazon, should be concerned about that, too. Amazon could address the co-mingling issue for reviews that are connected to a purchase by identifying the vendor associated with that purchase, just as when products are lumped together, the reviews have a notation as to which of the several products are reviewed. Amazon needs to go even further, and separate the star rating average by product and vendor as appropriate. Probably, it would help identify poor vendors more quickly.

Almost....

[wkwilley2]

Anyone who frequents Amazon has been aware of this issue for some time.

I run in to it all the time since I started working on rebuilding a 50cc Chinese moped using nothing but parts from Amazon. If the reviews on a product look too good to be true, then you need to take a look at the individual reviews and look only at "Amazon Verified Reviews". Those are the people that actually either paid for the product or were selected directly by Amazon to review the product.

It's not really that difficult. In fact, Amazon has a better review system than most other sites do, at least they tell you when the review is verified.

Great point:FullfilledbyAmazon has similar problem

[cshay]

As for your problem -- The worst offenders are batteries and razor blades. Expensive items that can be faked by experienced Chinese manufacturers and added to Amazons cache. I will never buy those on Amazon!

I have also run into similar issues where one third party seller whose items are "fullfilled by Amazon" gets good reviews for a product like branded vacuum cleaner bags. Then a shady other seller sees the good reviews and lists their product on the same page. But they substitute inferior crappy generic vacuum bags. Then you have a situation where some of the reviews are 5 star and the rest are 1 star and it all comes down to the seller. I end up having to ask the 5 star people over and over again in the comments, who their seller is. This is ridiculous! And I am aware of the problem. Most people just get ripped off for a product they thought had 5 star reviews. Amazon should fix this.

What's the deal with the spate of 1 line reviews?

[cshay]

I have been seeing hundred of reviews where the title is "X stars" and the text is something less than 7 words, like "I like it".

Is Amazon somehow forcing this?

Get Rid Of Them Altogether

[TommyNelson]

People will far more likely bitch about a product or service they're not happy with than recommend one which they like. I can't remember the exact proportion, but its about 1 to 5. So if you're unhappy you'll go tell 5 people, if you are you tell 1.

With this in mind, if you see any product with review averages in the 4 and 5 stars you *know* it has to be fake. The very fact that vendors pay for positive reviews only confirms this. They're - naturally - getting many more negative reviews than positive ones so they go pay someone to write something nice about their stuff so people will want to buy it.

This is in Amazon's interest, too, but only if it doesn't get out of hand, which apparently it has. People are skeptical about reviews and loudly complaining that false endorsement led them to buy things that turn out to be crap. Its happened to me.

So if you leave things go their 'natural' course you get too much negativity which is not representative and yet harms sales, and if you do paid reviews you get too much enthusiasm which ultimately harms sales, too, the logical thing to do is to just get rid of consumer reviews altogether and rely on traditional advertising which we consumers have learned to interpret so as to form a relatively accurate picture of what to expect.

incentivized reviews are poison for Amazon

[Anonymous Coward]

> these incentivized reviews have tended to be overwhelmingly biased in favor of the product
> being rated

No shit =-)

Wait! maybe that's why they were doing it?!?

Holy Jesus! :-)

I recently bought a few things on Amazon. The incentivized reviewed were a pain. There were lots of them, and I had to read all the reviews to find out which were incentivized and which not. It made reading reviews much more work than otherwise it would be, and for some products there were in fact only one or two real reviews.

These incentivized reviews also *completely* fuck up the star rating for products. It used to be you could look at that and get an instant feel for the product. Not now, because a product can have tons of five-star incentivized reviews.

This incentivized review process has basically fucked up a pretty important part of Amazon, which is the reviews offered by other users.

Re: What's the deal with the spate of 1 line revie

[Anonymous Coward]

It used to be that you couldn't leave just a star rating; you had to write a review to go with it. And a review needs a minimal amount of content to get posted. Now one can simply provide N stars without any commentary, but the old reviews (and some - though hopefully fewer - dumb people still doing it) are still around.

What about when it effects service?

[Chewbacon]

I bought a tripod and wasn't impressed with it. So I left my thoughts in a review. The manufacturer contacted me and told me they were aware of the problems and working on a new version. They offered to send me the next model up and asked if I'd "update my review." I agreed and updated it to reflect them standing behind their product (didn't change my thoughts on the tripod itself), which I think is important in the buying process. I've left negative reviews for companies doing the exact opposite.

Oh, No!

[Anonymous Coward]

No more Sugar Free Gummy Bear reviews?
Oh, the horror.
Those Gummy Bears, that is.

Could have had a better approach

[Anonymous Coward]

I would not mind seeing the incentivized reviews, some of the stuff I buy--it is obvious that the seller knows nothing about it and doesn't write/speak English coherently. So, they send out some product and get a pretty decent set of 'quick start guides' that they can disavow plus some pics and vids from someone that the potential customer (me) can relate to (and understand!).

What I want is a way to filter them out so I can see real reviews sometimes. The fanboi reviews and these paid reviews are verylimited in usefulness. For example, for a bicycle headlamp, some of the reviewers were obviously not ever going to spend more than $5 on a bike light... so they balked at the high cost and size of the light... even though the run-time and light output was appropriate for a system of that design... what they needed to concentrate on was the fitment to the bike (they had no clue how to mount it) and what type of rubbers and plastics were used and how they were assembled to keep out moisture and prevent degradation when exposed to water, oil, and UV light. Many specialty products suffered from this sort of shotgun-review from, frankly, idiots in the products market space. Sort of like someone saying that the binoculars were OK, except for all the glass and the spare one permanently attached to the main one.

Re:Misleading headline; incentivized reviews conti

[bluefoxlucid]

Actually I've been complaining a lot to Amazon about external addresses contacting me asking for Amazon reviews in exchange for a discount. There was a vendor selling a type of metal thermos with a handle held on by two rings for $30, giving me a $15 discount; I found another manufacturer making an identical thing and selling it for $16. I started pointing out to Amazon that they were giving me a "discount" on a product with an inflated price, which seems to suggest they'd make a profit anyway--JC Penny strategy, plus free review under favorable terms.

Vine requires you to provide a free product, and marks the review as a Vine review. Amazon gets to see the review was a Vine review; and they mediate everything, so if you post a negative review and the seller tries to retaliate, Amazon is well-aware of what went on with the review business. They don't get to contest or remove bad reviews, and they don't get to ply for profits by offering discounts on overpriced products.

I've been waiting for Amazon to come down on these people for over a year. I am, in fact, signed up for Vine; just nobody actually uses it, because they have to send a free product instead of giving you a $10 discount on a $20 product that cost them $8 to sell.

FakeSpot!

[Fnord666]

The situation has gotten to the point where there are websites like fakespot.com that analyze the reviews for a product and generate a report based on how many reviews look to be "incentivized" or outright fake. It does seem to do a good job on most products.

Re:FakeSpot!

[Anonymous Coward]

I've been using this more and more. Some products have ONLY fake reviews. I just won't buy from any of the suppliers who seem to make extensive use of the "incentivized" reviews. It's shady at best!

Maybe the fact that sites like Fakespot have arisin is the proof Amazon needed to convince them that their customers do NOT like having to wade through the compensated reviews, and have the rating system destroyed by those reviews. It really does diminish what used to be one of the handy features of Amazon.

too bad

[Anonymous Coward]

I have been ding these discounted reviews, I have really enjoyed doing them too. I have never left a fake review for anything. If they are going to do this they ought to open up registrations for their vine program instead of making it invite only - it just means that amazon will cherry pick the reviewers instead of a third party..

This is only about Amazon's $$$

[Anonymous Coward]

Amazon's take on all this is shameful. This seems to have more to do with making money that quality of reviews.

First, it's silly that Amazon will continue to "allow" books to be reviewed in the normal fashion, but their approval is hardly needed, especially since books have been provided free to reviewers for well over a hundred years -- with no one suggesting that the reviews were tainted because the books were provided free to reviewers.

Second, the rates for companies to participate in Vine are outrageous. In addition, the companies complain about arduous requirements. I can understand Amazon being upset about Prime-based shipping on free/nearly-free products, but this policy change isn't limited to that. Why not?

Third, Amazon ranks reviews "Arrived on time. It's okay but not what I thought," highly, whereas as the kinds of detailed reviews provided by non-Vine reviewers -- filled with objective technical details, tests on quality, careful measurements, etc. -- Amazon claims are "biased." What's biased about these details?

Fourth, most products do what they claim to do. Hence, the generally high scores across the board. How is that suspect?

Fifth, there are many places to buy products, outside of Amazon. What makes normal purchases -- the kind where Amazon doesn't get a percentage -- less valid?

Sixth, the companies could just issue reviewers temporary debit card codes and their "restrictions" are rendered useless, so the policies are unenforceable (which is always a bad approach).

Finally, if they wanted to undercut inflated reviews, they could simply eliminate the stupid "star" rating system. Then, visitors would have to read the reviews and judge if the points made seem valuable or not. Problem solved.

So why the continuing restrictions? Because this is the "solution" that puts more dollars in Amazon's pockets. And then they turn around and claim that reviewers who get free products, in exchange for hours of evaluation and write-up time, are the ones being dishonest.

What a laugh.

[Anonymous Coward]

You can easily find people purchasing reviews on Amazon's own Mechanical Turk service and they choose to do nothing about it.

It's about time!

[Anonymous Coward]

The reviews on Amazon have steadily deteriorated with all of the "compensated" reviews polluting the process.

It used to be that you could put some faith in the reviews, but now, many products have ONLY reviews from "compensated" reviewers. Or at least they have a huge percentage of "compensated" reviews.

At this point, I simply will not buy any products from Amazon that have a high percentage of "compensated" reviews. The fact that a supplier has used this method to generate reviews for their products casts a lot of doubt on them and their products. So why bother taking the chance?

Amazon may well be finding that most of their customers do NOT trust the "fake" reviews, and resent having to wade through them even if the compensation is noted within the review.

I would like to see Amazon either remove all existing compensated reviews (including their Vine reviews) or segregate their reviews into several categories. You should have "Uncompensated reviews", "Vine reviews", and then "Other compensated reviews". And each of these categories should have their own star rating.

That way, you can read some of the compensated reviews if you wish. And you can read "Vine" reviews if you wish. But you can also filter all of those out and see only the star rating from Uncompensated reviewers (or any of the categories).

Yes, I do think people tend to be more motivated to write a review when they have a bad experience with a product. But this has always been the case, and most people expect it. You can read the bad reviews and determine whether or not the bad review has a legitimate complaint or if the reviewer simply bought the wrong item for their use, or didn't understand or know how to use the product. And you can discount any reviews that don't explain what they liked or didn't like about the product. So with a bit of reading, you can come to a reasonable understanding of the product.

By the same token, some of the compensated reviews seem to be well thought out and quite thorough, answering questions I might have about a product. The person being "paid" to write the review may spend more time explaining things and pointing out features (or lack thereof) or other important considerations. So the compensated reviews are not all entirely useless by any means. I have gotten good information from some compensated reviews, for sure.

But by categorizing the reviews, and letting us filter/sort them by category when reading them or viewing the "star ratings", you'd have the best situation for the Amazon shopper. And in the end, that's really what Amazon is likely the most interested in achieving. The way the reviews have been lately, one of the most useful features of Amazon has been rendered increasingly frustrating and pointless. It really has caused me to look elsewhere for some products. And that is NOT in Amazon's best interest.

Assuming the company is relatively well-run, they (Amazon) can be expected to do what is in their own best interest. I have to think that they've realized how annoying most of their customers find these compensated reviews to be. And the last thing any company wants to do is annoy their customers.

Get rid of all compensated reviews, or give us a way to filter the results, Amazon.