Amazon pro tip: if you find something that has lots of good reviews, sort them by Recent. Those ones are the reviews by the people who were suckered in by the initial dump of 5 star fake reviews and you’ll probably see a lot more honesty from those people.
Even better: run Fakespot on the listing to see if it detects manipulation or fake reviews.
A lot of the reviews that are for the “wrong item” are there because of the seller repurposing the listing.
The seller will list some item that is easy to get good reviews on, like a hammer or something. Then after they rack up several hundred 5* reviews saying “Works great, seems high quality!” they edit the listing to change the item title, description, everything to a new product but keep the reviews.
Then the new product gets a big boost from the high review count and star rating of the previous product.
One time an Amazon rep came to my fucking university class and told us about how the was always an empty chair at boardroom meetings that represents “the customer”.
In that moment I knew I was not full of shit enough to hack it in the industry.
Amazon pro tip: if you find something that has lots of good reviews, sort them by Recent. Those ones are the reviews by the people who were suckered in by the initial dump of 5 star fake reviews and you’ll probably see a lot more honesty from those people.
Even better: run Fakespot on the listing to see if it detects manipulation or fake reviews.
Best: don’t use Amazon to buy things.
Another approach is to use 3-4 star reviews. These have a higher chance of being human and often contain common problems.
Online reviews are a total crapshoot even when they are written by actual people, because people are fucking idiots.
“I bought this as a gift so I don’t know how it works” - 1/5 stars.
“This hanger was too small to fit my winter coats so I would up returning it” - 2/5 star review for a universal TV remote.
“This product became sentient and stabbed me in my kidney while shouting racial slurs” - 5/5 star review
A lot of the reviews that are for the “wrong item” are there because of the seller repurposing the listing.
The seller will list some item that is easy to get good reviews on, like a hammer or something. Then after they rack up several hundred 5* reviews saying “Works great, seems high quality!” they edit the listing to change the item title, description, everything to a new product but keep the reviews.
Then the new product gets a big boost from the high review count and star rating of the previous product.
Very scummy.
The fact that that’s even possible is fucking stupid. I hate amazon so much.
One time an Amazon rep came to my fucking university class and told us about how the was always an empty chair at boardroom meetings that represents “the customer”.
In that moment I knew I was not full of shit enough to hack it in the industry.