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Amazon Puts New Limit On Customer Reviews: No More Than 5 a Week Except For Verified Purchases (geekwire.com)

Posted by msmash on from the fixing-things dept.

Amazon says it will start capping the number of product reviews any customer can submit in a given week, limiting each person to five/week except for products that have been verified by the company as purchased by the reviewer. From a GeekWire report: Books, music and video are exempt from the limit, but the new cap applies to the rest of Amazon's vast online selection of products. It's the latest move by the e-commerce giant to police its online reviews, a critical resource used by many online shoppers to assess products before buying. The news comes during the peak holiday shopping season, the most important time of year for Amazon, as the company tries to get more people comfortable with doing more of their shopping online. An Amazon spokeswoman confirmed the changes in a message to GeekWire, and they're spelled out in Amazon's updated Community Guidelines.

19 of 95 comments (clear)

  1. A pity, but not a surprise by CohibaVancouver · · Score: 3, Informative

    It only makes sense that you should only be allowed to review something you've actually bought through the site, but man will I miss the comedy reviews. The reviews for the Trump Christmas tree ornament hat are GOLD, as were the reviews for uranium in a can and all the others.

    1. Re:A pity, but not a surprise by dmomo · · Score: 4, Informative

      You can still make up to five comedy reviews a week. Not all is lost.

    2. Re:A pity, but not a surprise by dj245 · · Score: 2

      It only makes sense that you should only be allowed to review something you've actually bought through the site, but man will I miss the comedy reviews. The reviews for the Trump Christmas tree ornament hat are GOLD, as were the reviews for uranium in a can and all the others.

      You can still write 5 reviews per week for items that you haven't bought. That should be plenty for legitimate purposes.

      The real issue with Amazon is that the actual seller's feedback score is not clearly shown on the product page. If you want feedback for the actual seller, it is buried at least 1 click away. Other websites with 'marketplaces' make this a lot more transparent on the product page. Putting their feedback score front and center would fix several issues. Not every problem, but Amazon's reluctance to do even that shows to me that they don't take the problems of chinese sellers seriously.

      --
      Even those who arrange and design shrubberies are under considerable economic stress at this period in history.
    3. Re:A pity, but not a surprise by Penguinisto · · Score: 4, Insightful

      TBH, I would much prefer that *only* verified buyers review an item.

      Yeah, I admit that the joke reviews are often seriously great comedy, but honestly - verified buyers only means that potential buyers will know one way or the other if the thing is worthwhile. This is especially true when it comes to anything political, or anything sold by Twitter's Target Of The Week - hordes of frothing people with a keyboard and a bad case of butthurt (or worse, SJW fever) flood the item with bad reviews, even though they've never paid money for the thing.

      --
      Quo usque tandem abutere, Nimbus, patientia nostra?
    4. Re:A pity, but not a surprise by MooseTick · · Score: 2

      I'd like to see results separated from verified buyers and everything else. If the results are too far apart, then that would seem to indicate someone may be pulling a scam.

      --
      Ninjas don't carry tic tacs
    5. Re:A pity, but not a surprise by unixisc · · Score: 3, Insightful

      I don't get why Amazon or any shopping site would allow non-buyers to review stuff, or even conversely (aside from sociopathic trolls) why people would review products they didn't get from there. If I bought something from Bed, Bath & Beyond and didn't like it, I'd sort it out w/ them, and maybe post something on the product's website, but I wouldn't post that on Amazon. Unless I bought the product in question from there.

      If it's a real scam, take them to court or the BBB, but other than that, it's not my job to put companies out of business and even more people out of work

    6. Re:A pity, but not a surprise by pr0fessor · · Score: 3, Interesting

      Haven't you ever heard the saying "A happy customer will tell no one but an unhappy customer will tell everyone." ?

    7. Re:A pity, but not a surprise by AthanasiusKircher · · Score: 2

      Then how would you recommend that people who purchase a product through a channel other than Amazon verify the purchase to Amazon? Photo of a receipt from Target, Toys R Us, etc.?

      Why does Amazon need their input? Seriously. Is Amazon hosting a "review blogging community" or is it a merchant who wants reviews from customers who have bought stuff directly from it?

      Just posing the question.

    8. Re:A pity, but not a surprise by Wycliffe · · Score: 2

      I would much prefer that *only* verified buyers review an item.

      I think a threshold should probably be used. If there are less than 100 verified buyers then include them all and flag it so you can tell. If there are more than 100 verified buyers then either completely remove the non-verified buyers or bury them away some where. A non-verified review may be somewhat useful for a product with only a couple reviews but once you have a large quantity of verified reviews there is no reason to let them continue to taint the reviews as they could be freebies, spam, etc...

    9. Re:A pity, but not a surprise by Joviex · · Score: 2

      You can still make up to five comedy reviews a week. Not all is lost.

      Not only that, you can just make endless emails and post 5 per.

      All this does is swap one type of spam for another, and now, Amazon gets to enjoy that extra helping as well when 1 million new accounts suddlenly show up and they have to figure out what is and is not legit.

      Totally smart way to resolve this instead of just making it 100% you can only review shit you buy.

    10. Re: A pity, but not a surprise by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Informative

      Sometimes people do things they enjoy without being paid. In the old days, we called those things "hobbies." Back then, people were also interested in helping others rather than simply finding an "angle" they could use to get rich.

      You might find references to this behavior in a history book somewhere.

    11. Re:A pity, but not a surprise by c · · Score: 2

      After all, what sort of person goes on Amazon to write a review for an item they haven't even purchased there? In the past 15 years, I can say that the few times I've done so, it was to rant about something.

      Every once in a while I run across something I bought years ago from elsewhere and bang out a quick review. Usually I'm looking for something related like a part or extension and the original pops up.

      My motivation for doing so is that I actually like the thing, found that it's lasted for a while, and feel the urge to spread the love.

      I've noticed other people doing this too, and quite frankly I consider these sorts of reviews from experienced owners to be a shitload more convincing than someone who's pulled the thing out of the box and played around with it for a few minutes.

      --
      Log in or piss off.
  2. Overall Result by alvinrod · · Score: 5, Insightful

    The overall result is that instead of 20 fake reviews from a single account, there are now 20 fake reviews spread over four different accounts. This just makes it more inconvenient for the people posting fake reviews, but doesn't really do anything to stop them. Maybe that makes it economically infeasible for a few of them and they go on to something more economically viable for them like pimping their grandmother, but this isn't going to be that big of a shakeup.

  3. I had never realized that by lwmv · · Score: 4, Interesting

    I can review something not bought throught amazon, until I read this on slashdot...

  4. Re:Not good enough... by FatdogHaiku · · Score: 2

    It should be that the user HAS to have purchased the item. Why would you do it any other way?

    I would be happy if I could just filter reviews based on a "verified purchaser" tag. They already mark the verified purchaser reviews with that exact text, so make it a sub-option on the review display options...

    --
    You have the right to remain sentient. If you give up the right to remain sentient, you will be elected to public office
  5. Re:Not good enough... by bigwheel · · Score: 3, Informative

    It should be that the user HAS to have purchased the item. Why would you do it any other way?

    I would be happy if I could just filter reviews based on a "verified purchaser" tag. They already mark the verified purchaser reviews with that exact text, so make it a sub-option on the review display options...

    You can already do that. From "see all customer reviews", select the sort/filter for "Verified Purchase Only" (rather than all reviewers).

    What is missing is the ability to sort my searches by "average customer review", but only consider the reviews from verified purchases.

  6. Re:Sort out their own behaviour first by Dutch+Gun · · Score: 3, Informative

    Strange. Maybe Amazon's UK service quality differs from the US? Amazon service just recently gave me a credit for a purchase through a third-party seller. I was only reporting a seller that seemed to be charging an excessive amount of shipping (about $20), nearly as much as the product, which I hadn't notice at the time I purchased it (yeah, it was more or less my fault, but still). They said they'd look into the matter and then offered me a credit without me even asking for it.

    Anytime I've contacted Amazon support, my issue has *always* been quickly resolved and completely, with outstanding service. Maybe it helps that I've been a customer for a very long time, probably over fifteen years or so. That's one of the reason I continue to buy from them almost exclusively - the other is they've got a good security track record.

    I've also had support from 3rd party sellers... hrm, maybe two times? One time a replacement unit was sent, and another time, I shipped the product back because it was defective, and I got a refund because they couldn't get a replacement.

    Maybe I've just been lucky?

    --
    Irony: Agile development has too much intertia to be abandoned now.
  7. Should have gone verified purchase only by barc0001 · · Score: 2

    I don't see a point at this stage of the game to people being allowed to post reviews without having a papertrail in Amazon that they bought it to AMZN.

  8. Re:Sort out their own behaviour first by OhPlz · · Score: 2

    Amazon isn't the equivalent of "consumer reports". They offer retailers a sales platform and they offer consumers a varied market. That's it. You can check the seller reviews or Google, or if it's an expensive item and you want to make sure the warranty claims are valid, you can contact the manufacturer. Amazon couldn't possibly check every item for sale at every retailer. That's like saying a shopping mall should ensure that every item in every store is marked correctly every day. You'd need an absurdly large workforce and the cost of doing so would negate any savings for the consumer. You could bring the seller to court for making false claims, but that's up to you.