How bent is Amazon

[King29]

Wife was on Facebook and just so happened to need a new charger cable for her iPhone. An advert pops up for people to 'test' new iPhone cables from Amazon. They PayPal you the requisite funds, you buy their product and the only prerequisite is; you MUST leave a favourable review. So she receives the funds, buys the cable, receives the cable and uses the cables, not the best but for free they are OK. Leaves a review. £9.99 it cost the company to buy a review of their own product. So really all reviews about this product are going to be bollocks.

Makes you think if this is prolific enough to damage the reliability of the reviews on Amazon. Is the review legit? or has it been bought.

[Zen Dog]

It's pretty well known that the Amazon reviews/ratings system is total guff.
____________________
Current - '94 VFR750FR, '00 VFR800FI Previous - '10 Street Triple R, '92 MZ ETZ301, '05 TTR250, NSR125R, KMX125, "Honda" Win (chinese copy of an old Honda design with a C90 engine)
My bike trip around S.E. Asia 2010/2011

[Polarbear]

Whatever the ethics involved it's like every sort of feedback/review.

If it's very good or very bad people will probably review it. If it's OK, they won't bother. I've been an Amazon prime customer since 2000 and I cannot remember reviewing anything except a kettle the was crappy as fcuk. Amazon refunded me so who cares.

Ebay is another. Five stars for delivering an item. It looks good. I haven't tried it yet, here's 5 stars.

I think the only customer reviews I take the slightest notice of are if I am trying something new from Toolstation or Screwfix. They seem to be written more by people who know what they are doing and those companies don't seem to be worried about posting crap product reviews.
____________________
Triumph Trophy Launch Edition

[The Artist]

https://www.fakespot.com/

Run the cable through that and see if it detects it.

[Bhud]

[Skudd]

Be part of it or don't. Simple.
____________________
Famous last words of Humpty Dumpty. " Stop pushing me "
Petty Anarchists look at "1984".............. The Visionary looks at "Animal Farm".

[panrider_uk]

The questions and answers can be a better gauge of a product's quality but that can also be manipulated.
____________________
Current bike: Honda ST1100

[iooi]

[MCN]

[Ribenapigeon]

Tldr, I think Amazon is just a massive Drop ship operator now. This thread will undoubtedly become a ChinaChina thread.

[bhinso]

Since mpd left we're due a good China China China thread...

[Ste]

[stablepeach]

So pretty much all online retailers do this.

I work at one of the bigger ones and we have a group of VIP customers who we will send things to for free for them to write reviews.

It's big money, reviews tend to increase the attractiveness of a product significantly (a product with a 1 star review still gets clicked on more often than a product with no review, 5 stars is way more) and this then naturally corresponds to increased conversion rates and revenue. Interestingly (or not) customers tend to ignore/filter out 1 star and 5 star reviews and focus on the ones in the middle which are seen to be a more honest reflection.

Customers trust reviews and so this whole process could be considered a bit misleading, however the response has always been as long as it's a fair and accurate review does it matter if the person leaving it was engaged by the retailer or not?

I'd also add that one of the things we use review for (and I believe Amazon do the same) is direct feedback on quality. If we provide a product to a number of customers and they all come back to say it's crap then this gets fed back to the buying team who will likely then stop and kick off with the manufacturer.
____________________
StablePeach

[MCN]

[stablepeach]

[mentalboy]

Jeff Bezos thanks you for your patronage.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/jonathanponciano/2020/08/26/worlds-richest-billionaire-jeff-bezos-first-200-billion/#256889204db7
____________________
Make mine a Corona.