How to Look Up Old Product Reviews on Amazon
Like a lot of people, we read Amazon reviews as part of our product inquiry. Getting wide feedback on a product can be very useful when we're looking for widespread issues or seeing how a company handles warranty claims. Notwithstanding, equally time has gone by, nosotros've begun to read user reviews with a far more disquisitional eye.
Although many reviews on Amazon are legitimate, more and more than sketchy companies are turning to compensated Amazon reviews to inflate star ratings and to drum up purchases.
Have you lot ever seen some random product for sale that's from some brand you've never heard of, and the company has no website—still its widget has somehow garnered 15,000 five-star reviews since … last week? We certain have. This situation is likely the event of a compensated-review program. Such compensated reviews—orchestrated by businesses that cater to companies that want more than public positive feedback—violate Amazon's terms of use only are difficult to police. (This arrangement is non to be dislocated with Amazon's Vine programme, in which companies provide products to users in substitution for an honest opinion, although those reviews can be problematic in their ain way. You can read our thoughts on them below.)
The compensated-review process is simple: Businesses paid to create dummy accounts purchase products from Amazon and write 4- and five-star reviews. Buying the product makes it tougher for Amazon to police the reviews, because the reviews are in fact based on verified purchases. The dummy accounts buy and review all sorts of things, and some of the more savvy pay-for-review sites even accept their faux reviewers pepper in a few negative reviews of products fabricated and sold past brands that aren't clients to create a sense of "actuality." In fact, for extra cash, a company can pay ane of these firms to write negative reviews of a competitor'due south product. Wirecutter contributor Brent Butterworth has written about this practice every bit well.
Super shady, we know. And Amazon has a history of trying hard to bargain with offenders and close them downwards. In fact, in April, Amazon sued another round of companies that are accused of selling fraudulent reviews. But past the time those companies are caught, their clients have already fabricated a bunch of sales, and the fraudulent reviewers will likely pop up once more under new names to repeat the process.
Want to know more? Wirecutter headphones editor Lauren Dragan talks to Marketplace Tech about compensated Amazon reviews and how to tell real crowdsourced opinions from astroturfing.
How to avoid getting scammed
You have a few ways to suss out what may exist a fake review. The easiest way is to use Fakespot. This site allows you to paste the link to any Amazon product and receive a score regarding the likelihood of fake reviews.
For example, we ran an analysis on some headphones we constitute during a recent research sweep for our guide about cheap in-ear headphones. You can see from the results beneath that the headphones' reviews didn't score then well.
We corresponded with an official spokesperson for Fakespot to get a better idea of where these results come from. He said:
The quick answer is that every analysis does two simultaneous things: we analyze every unmarried review posted and we review each reviewer and every review that reviewer has ever posted on that account. We take all that data and run information technology through our proprietary engine which grades everything and looks for patterns.
The engine adjusts based on the prevailing patterns used past proven fake reviewers and their reviews, so while there is some base criteria, nosotros're able to use bogus intelligence to keep ahead of the imposters. Every false reviewer has patterns. And the more data we collect via analyses completed, the more our engine is able to adapt and learn. The hole-and-corner sauce is not merely in the engine merely the ability to run the information in the quickest amount of time possible; ensuring swift delivery of an accurate product.
The likelihood of knowing for certain if a review is simulated
To get some perspective, nosotros spoke with Bing Liu, a professor in the department of figurer science at the University of Illinois at Chicago, whose focuses include sentiment analysis, opinion mining, and lifelong machine learning. He has written textbooks on the subjects. We wanted to know his opinion on whether it is possible for a program or grouping of programs to evaluate reviews and correctly determine their validity. Liu's thoughts:
It is hard to say without knowing their techniques. The problem with this task is that there is often no hard proof that the detection is actually right unless the author of the actual fake reviews (not made up fake reviews) from a review hosting site confirms it. Of course, it is easier if the visitor really hosts reviews (e.g., Amazon or Yelp) because they can analyze the public information that the general public can see and likewise (more importantly) their internal data which tracks all the activities after a person comes to the website. A lot of unusual behaviors can be detected. Unfortunately, such data is not available to people outside the site.
In other words: Unless you have a style to ostend with the person (or company) writing the review, or you are Amazon, it's all conjecture. Continue in heed that these analyses are based on Fakespot'southward techniques, and then we take to have their give-and-take for it. We don't have a way to verify how precise they are. However, y'all tin can brand educated guesses. And if you lot're in a hurry or in demand of a 2d opinion, Fakespot can be a useful tool when you lot're because a purchase.
All of that aside, we had a similar stance when we read the Rxvoit reviews ourselves, and nosotros can tell you a few factors that we use when evaluating customer reviews.
How we spot a phony review
What aspects of the Rxvoit headphones' reviews felt funny to us? Well, first of all, we noticed that a lot of the positive reviews happened within a few days of each other. That indicates to us that people made a push for reviews to happen on a timeline.
In fact, at the time nosotros did our research sweep, the Rxvoit headphones had a five-star rating and a few hundred reviews posted within a calendar week or two. This, for a company that is very new (as in, it has but one product—these headphones) and one nosotros had never heard of. That'southward a red flag.
2nd, within those reviews, we saw a lot of the same wording, and even similarly staged user photos. It was as though someone said, "Hey, take a picture of a close-up of your hands belongings the headphones over a countertop." While we know that people do post pictures to accompany their reviews, information technology seemed as well coincidental that they were all staged in the aforementioned manner, all over a span of a few days.
And lastly, nosotros couldn't discover a company website for Rxvoit. While the lack of a Web presence isn't in itself an indication of a shady manufacturer or a indicate to look out for imitation reviews, information technology is worth noting. When your only point of contact for a visitor is through Amazon, you lot accept no style of accessing customer service directly. This means warranty claims are tough to redeem. It likewise means it's tougher for a significant number of people to "simply happen" to stumble across a production and decide to purchase information technology, which makes a sudden spurt of reviews very unlikely.
What does this wait like in the wild? Well, here's an instance of reviews that are accused of being faux from the most recent Amazon lawsuit.
Notice how all the reviews appeared within days of one some other. They also reference the same key thing: the low-cal on the cable. In fact, 2 of the three use the verbal phrase "how bright the lights on the cable are." That's a good indication that something is sketchy. And although we don't know what product the lawsuit's case refers to, if the product'due south manufacturer was brand-new and had a few hundred of these kinds of reviews inside a few days, chances are skillful that the visitor paid for them in some style.
The Vine program
The Vine program, and like methods of eliciting feedback, give away products for free (or sell them at a deep disbelieve) to potential customers vetted (by Amazon in the instance of the Vine program) for the helpfulness of their reviews, in exchange for an "honest review." While these sorts of reviews are far more ethical than paid-for reviews, they can too be a little problematic. Even if the way the review was obtained is disclosed on product pages, several aspects of the purchasing procedure don't become considered as part of these programs.
For example, returns and long-term use aren't part of the evaluation. When y'all go something for complimentary, you're less likely to follow upward on breakage concerns or customer service issues. Additionally, if the reviewer didn't actually buy the product, that person doesn't take the purchase and shipping processes into consideration.
Merely near important, receiving something for costless or almost costless tin profoundly impact one's opinions. You might notice how few of the reviews through Vine and similar programs are negative or even critical. This isn't a case of reviewers intentionally being dishonest, but rather the upshot of unconscious positive bias. Not paying for an item can make difficulties with that particular seem less irritating.
Additionally, reviewers may give their opinions on items for which they have no expertise or real experience and therefore have no frame of reference about how well something works by comparison. It's hard to say how practiced something is if you don't know what else is out there.
Then, just know that you lot can't always believe what you lot run across when it comes to five-star reviews. While some overnight successes do be, frequently a iv-star product with authentic reviews and a proven track record is a better buy. Look beyond the overall star rating and read with a critical heart, and you'll be in skilful shape.
Further reading
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The All-time Lockbox
by Alexander George and Tim Heffernan
After scouting newer options this twelvemonth, and cracking lockboxes with a locksmith 2 years prior, nosotros found that the
Kidde AccessPoint KeySafe
is still the all-time lockbox.
-
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The Best Robot Vacuums
by Liam McCabe
We've tested dozens of robot vacuums, and recommend the sturdy, potent, smart-plenty
Roomba i3 EVO
first, followed closely by the super-clever
Roborock S4 Max
.
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The All-time Cloth Diapers
past Rebecca Gale
Subsequently considering 30 fabric diapers and recruiting six families to compare six finalists, nosotros recommend the
bumGenius Original v.0 pocket diaper
.
goulburnnotee1990.blogspot.com
Source: https://www.nytimes.com/wirecutter/blog/lets-talk-about-amazon-reviews/
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