Amazon UK reviewer racket exposed

[[GSV]Trig]

That's the bit that makes me nervous. I had that suggested a couple of times in the 'old days' before internet reviews, and always refused to consider it. It's kind-of like them saying "we'll pay you, with free gear, IF we like your review."

I’ve never reviewed anything I wouldn’t want, so if they don’t like my review, tough lol

[excalibur1814]

Someone, somewhere, should now seriously look at how eBay does business. You're charged to list, charged once the item sells, charged for POSTAGE (even if you don't use their service) and then Paypal charges you AGAIN.

Being a seller is also a major pain as there's virtually NOTHING you can do once someone starts to pith you around.

Then there's the near constant '0' feedback accounts bidding 'up' items. eBay is dodgy as heck.

[Spudbynight]

Oh look, a mega corp sympathiser! Bezos is worth over 200 billion dollars. Amazon has cannibalised the market.

But what's that you say? Operating something fairly, equitably and with sufficient moderation and oversight is expensive? Oh no! Well we should just let them off then yes?

You know what else is expensive? Policing a society. So maybe we should just not bother because humans are just going to do foul human things right?

And a healthcare system. Why bother with that because humans naturally get sick and die foul deaths, intervention is expensive so let's not bother.

People like you who apologise for billionaire corporations using "cost" as an argument make me sick. You have a mind for monetary cost and not human cost. Disgraceful.

I'm not a "mega corp sympathiser", I simply think that human nature will come to the fore with "community led reviews". If it is possible to take advantage of a system, unscrupulous people will always do so.

[iggy]

So, um, how does one get in on this?

[Saracen999]

All of that makes a lot of sense, thank you for the clarification of your experiences. It certainly makes your point about trusting physical written publications more - although I'd imagine that as time goes on, more and more at digital ones such as HEXUS (and others like Anandtech etc.) staff would have the same sort of experience with review samples as the physical ones.

Sites like HEXUS probably already have for a long time already of course, but I'd imagine that it's a harder point to get to than physical publications (although I guess little-known physical ones would likely find it just as hard at first, so perhaps it's more a matter of longevity).

In the case of Level1Techs, SK Hynix were the ones to contact Wendell about reviewing it. Given their size and being the manufacturer themselves, I'd imagine they could probably have written off the costs of giving the samples away easily rather than being loaners - it's just a shame they tried to go the route of it influencing the tone of the review by not saying anything bad about it or not comparing it to competitors that would give a better picture of the performance.

The product itself (his purchased sample) didn't even get a bad review, but with the revelations of what they tried to pull with the review sample offering, it does taint SK Hynix and the product they tried it with.

I can't disagree with any of that.

I ought to clarify something though.

Despite being involved with Hexus forums for, well, more or less forever (David Ross and I First "met" when we were both OCUK moderators) I've never worked for Hexus in a review capacity in any way, or been paid for moderating. I'm purely an unpaid volunteer and for the last few months, just another member.

So I feel I can claim a degree of independence of view when I say that there are good and bad (and very good and very bad) online review sites. And that Hexus is one of the very good ones.

Sadly, the mediocre to very bad hugely outnumber the really good.

So, poor old Joe Public has to try to determine which site is.what. It's pretty clear for a mass market nationally (or internationally) published magazine that First, there's a fair bit of money behind them. Getting all that printed copy together was not cheap. A website, however, may be a spotty teen operating from his bedroom, when not at school.

The huge increase in volume of online content, especially free online content, most certainly resulted in some very good but smaller scale or niche publications going under. And even big ones had to adapt to survive. Then there was the 2007/08 crash which put large dents in the marketing and press budgets of even most very large corporations. Budgets changed, and so did the amount of 'work' each loan unit had to do.

To this day, I'm not convinced that all the free internet stuff did the public any favours, despite the valuable contributions of the good/v.good internet sites, simply because of the sheer scale and volume of the dross.

So, if I review a .... whatever, say a printer, why should my opinion matter more than that spotty schoolkid in his bedroom site? Does he have a couple of decades of experience? Has he been reviewing printers since before colour inkjets came out, and years before colour lasers? Has he been out to the US, Japan, etc, and been briefed by development engineers? Has he been in the clean rooms where, for instance, cartridges are made? Has he discussed strategy for forthcoming products (albeit under NDA) with the company CEO?

I could go on, but, say I had a query or issue with a product under review. I often, indeed usually, could get anyone from a UK product manager to a US or Far East engineering manager or development manager on the phone to clarify the issues. Or sometimes, directors or the CEO. I never interviewed Bill Gates (though I met him a few times) but I did interview several CEOs, both formally and informally. Getting them on the phone for a product query wasn't appropriate (and would not have gone down well) but I did get the odd call from them, about this or that, or just 'keeping in touch'. The wife even got the odd call in the early hours of the morning from some West Coast bosses who'd .... ermmm ... forgotten the time difference.

She tore a right strip of one, at about 2am, and went bright red when I explained which billionaire it was.

It was, certainly in those days, a very different world to today's Amazon "reviewers" and net influencers. Very different, indeed.

But how is Joe Reader supposed to know? He can't, really, but when you see the same names on articles in print magazines (which cost serious money to put out) year after year, you can be pretty sure they've got a clue what they're talking about.

The mass proliferation of free stuff didn't quite end that, but it certainly changed the game.

[Output]

I can't disagree with any of that.

I ought to clarify something though.

Despite being involved with Hexus forums for, well, more or less forever (David Ross and I First "met" when we were both OCUK moderators) I've never worked for Hexus in a review capacity in any way, or been paid for moderating. I'm purely an unpaid volunteer and for the last few months, just another member.

So I feel I can claim a degree of independence of view when I say that there are good and bad (and very good and very bad) online review sites. And that Hexus is one of the very good ones.

Absolutely. What I wrote was with you as a fellow reader who also enjoys HEXUS and has done so for many years.

The wife even got the odd call in the early hours of the morning from some West Coast bosses who'd .... ermmm ... forgotten the time difference.

She tore a right strip of one, at about 2am, and went bright red when I explained which billionaire it was.

What was the response of the nameless billionaire in question to the dressing down they were given?

Sadly, the mediocre to very bad hugely outnumber the really good.

So, poor old Joe Public has to try to determine which site is.what. It's pretty clear for a mass market nationally (or internationally) published magazine that First, there's a fair bit of money behind them. Getting all that printed copy together was not cheap. A website, however, may be a spotty teen operating from his bedroom, when not at school.

The huge increase in volume of online content, especially free online content, most certainly resulted in some very good but smaller scale or niche publications going under. And even big ones had to adapt to survive. Then there was the 2007/08 crash which put large dents in the marketing and press budgets of even most very large corporations. Budgets changed, and so did the amount of 'work' each loan unit had to do.

To this day, I'm not convinced that all the free internet stuff did the public any favours, despite the valuable contributions of the good/v.good internet sites, simply because of the sheer scale and volume of the dross.

So, if I review a .... whatever, say a printer, why should my opinion matter more than that spotty schoolkid in his bedroom site? Does he have a couple of decades of experience? Has he been reviewing printers since before colour inkjets came out, and years before colour lasers? Has he been out to the US, Japan, etc, and been briefed by development engineers? Has he been in the clean rooms where, for instance, cartridges are made? Has he discussed strategy for forthcoming products (albeit under NDA) with the company CEO?

I could go on, but, say I had a query or issue with a product under review. I often, indeed usually, could get anyone from a UK product manager to a US or Far East engineering manager or development manager on the phone to clarify the issues. Or sometimes, directors or the CEO. I never interviewed Bill Gates (though I met him a few times) but I did interview several CEOs, both formally and informally. Getting them on the phone for a product query wasn't appropriate (and would not have gone down well) but I did get the odd call from them, about this or that, or just 'keeping in touch'.

...

It was, certainly in those days, a very different world to today's Amazon "reviewers" and net influencers. Very different, indeed.

But how is Joe Reader supposed to know? He can't, really, but when you see the same names on articles in print magazines (which cost serious money to put out) year after year, you can be pretty sure they've got a clue what they're talking about.

The mass proliferation of free stuff didn't quite end that, but it certainly changed the game.

Some very good points again, thank you again for more of your insights.

I had been thinking that it made it easier to start things up (just like HEXUS did in the beginning), but hadn't thought of the fact that it also brings with it the need to sort the wheat from the chaff, and the resulting difficulty many can have in doing so too.

Those not serious about things trying to take up resources and lines of contact that reputable reviewers can find crucial would certainly be a real issue in that context.

Obviously in the case of the Amazon/eBay reviewers, the disreputable companies are trying to game the sytem which is intended to inform other potential customers from a fellow customer's perspective - which can be invaluable for products not reviewed in any publications (or not reviewed by any at that point at least), but also has the potential to give a longer-term review of how the product has worked out, which may be less prevalent in published reviews due to the limited time with the products (and potential of cherry-picked review samples).

On an unrelated to the topic but still customer review related note, it seems ridiculous the amount of times you'll see questions on an Amazon product page, with the first answer in many cases being "I don't know" and having to check for other actual answers with a link to them instead - clearly Amazon needs to re-word their emails to people who have already purchased the items if they think that they are required to answer it without knowledge.

Just as ridiculous however is when people put a review with a low score simply because of the seller experience/postage speed rather than it being a review of the item itself - the seller and postage feedback is obviously a different area. Perhaps that's something that needs to be made clearer to some people though.

[Yoyoyo69]

A few month ago I tried to leave some reviews, to warn other users of scammers and poor items.

My reviews contained nothing other than details about the products and was a fine and clear review.

Each time I received a reply from Amazon stating after review, they were unable to post my review (it really was just a short, simple description of the product), the didn't seem to care, in fact it appeared they were attempting to suppress negative reviews.

Have had positive reviews posted, without issue. They're also more than happy for fake reviews to be very abundant.

Obviously both positive and fake reviews are profitable.

[Yoyoyo69]

I only read the one star or negative reviews and then make my decision.

This is what I di also.

[Saracen999]

....



What was the response of the nameless billionaire in question to the dressing down they were given?

....

Perhaps surprisingly, a sincere and genuine embarrassment.

I may have milked it a bit next time I saw him, though. Well, quite a lot, actually.

He was still embarrassed. Said it's not like he didn't know better, but was just so busy, so caught up in doing things, he just didn't stop to think 'timezone'.

[ik9000]

Just as ridiculous however is when people put a review with a low score simply because of the seller experience/postage speed rather than it being a review of the item itself - the seller and postage feedback is obviously a different area. Perhaps that's something that needs to be made clearer to some people though.

this annoys me too. At least it's easy to ignore them. Over things that cause problems:

amazon grouping products so reviews for multiple products get bundled together. You can try to filter by "this product only" but it takes a lot of effort and the average user won't bother. See graphics cards for a classic example. All the gigabyte 2080 (or another manufacturer) cards are grouped on one page. The performance of el cheapo windforce is very different from their aorus top-of-the-line model. But you wouldn't spot that from the reviews unless you knew to segregate by product type.

idiots answering questions with incorrect answers. Not the banal "i don't know" or the classic "I got it for my husband and he seems happy with it". I saw one chump telling someone a camera lens would fit their body when it totally would not, and never could. Another user then piped up it just needs a converter. Again incorrect. They then provided a link to a converter (for a different camera altogether). I logged the answers as not useful but there really needs to be a way to flag "errant BS". Report it is just for swearing and aggressive posts so far as I can tell so you can't use that.

There is no way to feedback to Amazon. Not good feedback, nor bad feedback, nor suggestions, nor even to flag website errors, product listing inaccuracies, nothing. It's a joke. For a "customer-centric" focussed company they really aren't I don't think. Not anymore anyway. You can't even email them anymore. They've blocked that off. Like all good companies they get to a certain size and the dross starts flocking to them. (Cough *Microsoft*)

roll on a viable alternative, preferably paying tax in the UK. My loyalty is there for now, but it won't take much more of this for me to jump.

[Output]

this annoys me too. At least it's easy to ignore them. Over things that cause problems:

amazon grouping products so reviews for multiple products get bundled together. You can try to filter by "this product only" but it takes a lot of effort and the average user won't bother. See graphics cards for a classic example. All the gigabyte 2080 (or another manufacturer) cards are grouped on one page. The performance of el cheapo windforce is very different from their aorus top-of-the-line model. But you wouldn't spot that from the reviews unless you knew to segregate by product type.

I absolutely agree with that point - even worse is that there isn't always the option to actually filter by the specific product, just keywords that aren't always very helpful (unless I've somehow missed it at times).

idiots answering questions with incorrect answers. Not the banal "i don't know" or the classic "I got it for my husband and he seems happy with it". I saw one chump telling someone a camera lens would fit their body when it totally would not, and never could. Another user then piped up it just needs a converter. Again incorrect. They then provided a link to a converter (for a different camera altogether). I logged the answers as not useful but there really needs to be a way to flag "errant BS". Report it is just for swearing and aggressive posts so far as I can tell so you can't use that.

There is no way to feedback to Amazon. Not good feedback, nor bad feedback, nor suggestions, nor even to flag website errors, product listing inaccuracies, nothing. It's a joke. For a "customer-centric" focussed company they really aren't I don't think. Not anymore anyway. You can't even email them anymore. They've blocked that off. Like all good companies they get to a certain size and the dross starts flocking to them. (Cough *Microsoft*)

roll on a viable alternative, preferably paying tax in the UK. My loyalty is there for now, but it won't take much more of this for me to jump.

It begs the question as to whether they are trolling or simply wanting to appear knowledgeable despite that not being the case.

I agree that more options to point out inaccuracies and give feedback would be very helpful and really should have been in place for a long time already.

Technically there is the CEO email route (in this case, to the UK CEO), but I'd imagine that could have repercussions for your account (namely closure) if you tried that route too many times.

[BobF64]

amazon grouping products so reviews for multiple products get bundled together. You can try to filter by "this product only" but it takes a lot of effort and the average user won't bother. See graphics cards for a classic example. All the gigabyte 2080 (or another manufacturer) cards are grouped on one page. The performance of el cheapo windforce is very different from their aorus top-of-the-line model. But you wouldn't spot that from the reviews unless you knew to segregate by product type.

Yea, that is very annoying. Worse yet is when someone changes their listing entry so its a completely different product.
I can't say it happens often, but definitely seen it more than once, because the reviews talk about something else.

idiots answering questions with incorrect answers. Not the banal "i don't know" or the classic "I got it for my husband and he seems happy with it".

I always like the ones that post a "1 star review" along the lines of "It turned up late, too late for some relatives birthday, they were very disappointed", its like they have special needs and should require a carer to write the review for them sometimes.

The internet has stopped people thinking "if you have nothing useful to say, say nothing" and just let them burble whatever inane thoughts enter their heads.

[ik9000]

Yea, that is very annoying. Worse yet is when someone changes their listing entry so its a completely different product.
I can't say it happens often, but definitely seen it more than once, because the reviews talk about something else.

I always like the ones that post a "1 star review" along the lines of "It turned up late, too late for some relatives birthday, they were very disappointed", its like they have special needs and should require a carer to write the review for them sometimes.

I think some of it is in response to amazon's spam emailing "let us know what you thought about this", "write your review here" tactics. So people do. They don't log on to write a review, they click on the email link and type. If Amazon made you sign up in your settings to activate the ability to review it would avoid most of that I reckon.

The internet has stopped people thinking "if you have nothing useful to say, say nothing" and just let them burble whatever inane thoughts enter their heads.

whatever do you mean? The average internet user is well educated and rational right?

[Ttaskmaster]

Who buys nail clippers? Surely everyone's got a pair hanging around from a cracker?

I do, because the ones in crackers are naff.
However, we did have some crackers that featured minature kitchen utensils once. I kept the Tiny Whisk, because Binging With Babish, and used it thrice last week for a round of cool pasta-based meals.

[ik9000]

I do, because the ones in crackers are naff.
However, we did have some crackers that featured minature kitchen utensils once. I kept the Tiny Whisk, because Binging With Babish, and used it thrice last week for a round of cool pasta-based meals.

I think your phone auto-text has gone into "Fast-show" mode there

[Ttaskmaster]

I think your phone auto-text has gone into "Fast-show" mode there

I have not seen this television programme - Please explain...

Also, typing this on laptop. No auto-text.