Oddly enough, the same product listing on the US site is rated as A (the above is for the Canadian site): https://www.fakespot.com/product/instant-pot-ip-duo60-7-in-1...

Just did a quick check again, the Canadian instant pot reviews are now rated as F while the US ones are rated as A. Same product, both ship and sold by Amazon, the algorithm returns polar opposite result.

If it's an arms race for reviews, at some point, even good products will have to pay up to keep pace.

Now it is possible that Amazon actually does a good job of stopping fake negative advertisement on its site. Good for them. What would stop them? I don't think there are any laws against putting more money into stopping fraud which does not benefit you than fraud which does.

Amazon has an incentive in showing positive reviews first, as this makes a sale.

Look at an Amazon listing and the 5 star review is always shown first.

They have been risking it by their issues with counterfeit products and fake reviews only in the most recent years, but I would be surprised if they had no engineers who are thinking about ways to solve these problems.

https://www.amazon.ca/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Dap...

Almost all of their products have 500-600 reviews and all are 5 star, not even a single one is less than 5 stars. Moreover, most of reviews are created in November 2017 and each reviewer has left couple of 5-star reviews only for same seller's product within a week.

These fake reviews could have been detected by even a basic detection system. Not sure why Amazon has not already detected and removed them.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/wadeshepard/2017/11/27/american...

I simply can't fathom why Western companies aren't freaking out abut this.

Fake reviews have been an easy exploit for sellers for a long time, and sellers will often buy from competitors just to leave verified bad reviews. It's an ugly game I don't have an answer to.

Amazon recently introduced Vine: https://www.amazon.com/gp/vine/help

Amazon's shipping schedule is really bad because they hold your items hostage unless you pay for Prime. It's essentially blackmail to get your item in a reasonable time frame.

As a non-Prime subscriber it usually takes 7-10 days to get an item if you use their free shipping or 5-7 days if you use the cheapest paid shipping option.

The funny thing is, in those non-Prime free shipping cases, the item is usually processed / shipped after 7-8 days and then arrives in 2-3 days.

While it's a good program, there are millions of items, unlikely to have them all covered by Vine users. They would have to extend the program greatly for this to be an effective counter.

If you want closed back (recommended for office listening - keeps noise in an out) get AKG k550/k553 (negligibly different editions of the same thing)

If you want open back (scary accurate but bleeds sound like crazy) get a pair of Grados, the lower end ones like the 65 will do fine. I say this with love, but those headphones ruined some records for me. You can tell where they cut vocal takes on major label records because the noise floor drops. Crazy stuff.

No they can't. Loudspeakers (of all kinds) can either faithfully convert electrical signals into the vibrations they represent, or they can't. Equalizer presets can be better / worse for certain listening habits. There is no reason, when even a $5 MP3 player has EQ presets, that headphones shouldn't be aiming for a flat frequency-response curve.

Now, admittedly, there might be some preference axis between being able to faithfully replicate high amplitude signals, vs. having low impedance and therefore being kinder to the batteries of portable devices (and/or not requiring an extra in-line portable headphone amp.) But other than that one distinction, headphones can really only be "better" or "worse" at doing their one job.

Harman has done some really interesting research on this - https://www.innerfidelity.com/content/headphone-target-respo...

That is: in most digital artistic media, the goal of the reproduction process is to faithfully carry across the art (and engineering) that "went in" on the other side. Listeners can tweak to their preference from there, but the baseline should be to replicate the work as the artist experiences it, rather than as the artist expects their audience to experience it. (An analogy: the "default", pre-choice-of-audience way to reproduce a painting shouldn't involve a frame and gallery wall, but rather should involve the painting standing alone as a canvas on an easel in a room in the same lighting conditions it was painted in.)

I can't agree with this. I don't think it's right at all. Art is targeted at a broad band of senses, from aesthetic through sensory to emotional. You're hung up on the narrow band of sensory reproduction, but that isn't what's most important to actual humans.

Take an example: some electro house track that person A might have heard on a night out, where they had a really good time. They would have heard it in the middle of a crowd (dampening a significant chunk of the sound), probably overly loud, probably with the bass pumped up.

If person A later listens to that track on studio headphones focused on faithfully carrying across engineering and "art", they'll be hearing the mechanics of the music and how it was constructed, but it will be subjectively a poorer reproduction of the remembered moment and experience. They'd actually be better off listening on much lower quality headphones that had boosted bass and muddy reproduction that let different frequencies intermingle, to make sure it doesn't sound spare and separated out like high quality headphones tend to.

Another example: person B might have been to a symphony or opera. They'll have a much happier time with high quality headphones separating out each instrument, appreciating the individuals even as they form the symphony.

Context.

An analogy: the "default", pre-choice-of-audience way to reproduce a painting shouldn't involve a frame and gallery wall, but rather should involve the painting standing alone as a canvas on an easel in a room in the same lighting conditions it was painted in

I think you're nuts! There's multiple frames to view a piece of visual art; from the artist's perspective, they may have designed the piece for a specific location, so you're better off if it's shown that way. It may have been designed to be contextualized (e.g. in a triptych, or as ironic contrast with its original commission). But the passage of time also contextualizes art; art can become meaningful not for its intrinsic artistry or aesthetic, but because of the narrative around the piece, or the artist, or the city / country at the time. A piece of art might be interesting only because e.g. it was once stolen by a very interesting person and got into the news that way; it might not have anything to do with the artifact as a thing-in-itself.

And I hasten to add that that doesn't mean it's bad art. Art is about provoking broad band reaction in the viewer. In order to do that, it needs to trigger the viewer's pattern matching neurobiology relating to different aspects of their lived experience. That's inherently contextual, both on the subject side and on the object side. There's no escaping context.

Sure there is. The market might prefer a baked-in EQ preset. In fact, different subsets of the market may prefer different presets. And that brings it back to the grandparent's point. The customer is always right; even when they're technically wrong, their preferences are what count.

To be fair, I don't use an external DAC or source high quality sound on the road.

But for $10 and tolerable, good enough for travel.

[1] https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/B00E4LGVUO/

Cheap but surprisingly good end: Superlux HD668B (20-40$, as they got popular you may need to watch out for counterfeits). IMHO they are on par with some popular 200$ - 300$ Beyerdynamic / Sennheiser / AKG models. You may want to follow one of the online guides to replace the ear cup plastic with velour.

Fakespot: A (90%)

Expensive end: AudioQuest Nighthawk, 1st model. Their sound is unique and "purist audiophiles" may not like it, but they work pretty well with my listening habits; the experience has been pure joy so far and they are very comfortable.

Fakespot: A (90%)

Listening habits: Metal (symphonic-, power-, progressive-, i.e. complex and with classical music elements; e.g. Blind Guardian) and some Depeche Mode

I don't even bother with any other earbuds.

Click on first reviewer's name, and that reviewer has just happened to review 5 items all on the same day, and those are the only 5 items they have ever reviewed. And all 5 items are completely random (electronics, bed linen, garden equipment, clothing, etc). Rinse and repeat with second, third, fourth reviewer and a similar pattern arises.

Majority of recently listed electronic items that I've been looking to purchase follow the same pattern.

EDIT: Here's the fake review analysis for the headphones: https://www.fakespot.com/product/bluedio-f2-faith-active-noi...

Sorry to be a bit of an asshole.

Do not buy Chinese crap. It's a lottery.

My Sennheisers (made of plastic BTW) have been in use since 2014. My previous Sennheisers broke (just the headband) after a couple of years.

Bought $30 Taiwanese headphones, good Amazon reviews, but the headband is too small. And the microphonics is terrible. Sigh.

Recently bought boots, Made in China. Size is about 1.5 units off.

For a certain class of goods and for reasonable price points, you do get what you pay for.

Say you want bookshelf speakers. Going with the budget pick I might get Pioneer SP-BS22-LRs, but they're around 4500RMB here in China. Other reputable brands come in around 10000RMB, which is so far outside my budget its not even funny. But most of these speakers are made in China anyways, so you start sleuthing. K, i find a post on an Audiophile forum that tells me that HiVi(/Swan) makes the drivers for most upscale Audio equipment. Let's check what HiVi has. Ahh, they've got a bloody gorgeous pair of speakers for 1699RMB[0], and a passable one for 699RMB, and an official Taobao store. And they'll do.

Boots I would not buy from China, in China, you can return them and test.

For budget headphones, Senneheiser is what I get in Germany, Tascam if you're in the US, JVC for Asia. Don't know any Chinese brands of note there.

For smartphones Xiaomi is blowing it out of the water right now. Their Redmi（红米） line is incredible value. Then there's Huawei, Meizu, OPPO, Honor, and whatever Hammer(Chuizi) is.

[0]https://detail.tmall.com/item.htm?id=542718449070&ns=1&abbuc...

Most of the problematic products as they relate to reviews on Amazon are Chinese products. When I used to do incentivized reviews, all but one single company who approached me for a product review (this does not include eBook authors) was not Chinese.

>> For a certain class of goods and for reasonable price points, you do get what you pay for.

This is 100% true, but I find a lot of Chinese products punched above their weight. During my time reviewing, I turned down the cheap sketchy products and focused mainly on stuff that I wanted that looked like they were well made. And you know what, a lot of the products I got were actually fantastic relative to their selling price.

BTW I actually ended up buying Sennheiser headphones after I returned the crappy ones.

---

Also related:

The Sennheisers branded ear pads or Brainwavz (IIRC) ear pads are a bit expensive ($20+).

You can get generic "memory" foam ones on AliExpress for $4.

It's not actually memory foam and they might send you the wrong type, and it's a tight fit (just remember to breathe !?) but they work.

Let me guess, HD280 Pro? It seems they've fixed that for HD380s.

I got angry, took my drill, a piece of metal, couple of screws and connected the whole thing Mad Max style. Yes, they were quite uncomfortable.

And you couldn't really wear them in public too.

---

And yes hd380s seem to have longer lasting headband than the hd280s.

They haven't all been the best sounding, or even the best value, but they've all had decent sound quality. Some of them have had exceptional sound quality.

(Darn, had to create an account to post this comment)

For a headphone geek such as myself it is ;)

I wish sites like Amazon had a feature such as “people who buy similar quality items to you, also bought this...”

D - Our analysis detected 42.1% low quality reviews

https://www.fakespot.com/product/true-wireless-earbuds-langs...

Incidentally, I started a deals & promos list of accounts on Twitter that provide the latest sales on a variety of sites. Feel free to check it out. I have no affiliation with any of the companies listed (Well, I have an Amazon associates account - but it wouldn't benefit me here, since it's other accounts posting their affiliate links)

I find @kinjadeals to have a lot of good deals, but unless it's name brand stuff, it often breaks or wears down after a few months.

Check out Deals and Discounts by @pogue25: https://twitter.com/pogue25/lists/deals-and-discounts?s=09

I resorted to buy only Amazon Basic cables for the PC/monitor/TV and Anker cables/charger for the mobile phones. It is not the cheapest option but you still get high quality for a low price and you don't have to deal with any shady shops.

I bought that 3 years ago. I think mine is doing okay but you can tell from the reviews that it wasn't a quality cable. I doubt Amazon has really up'd their game since then.

All my effort was for nothing. The vendor just delisted that item and re-listed it again, so no one would even read my review unless they bothered to read reviews for a delisted product.

I guess I could have re-posted my review in the new listing, but it was too much trouble, so I never bothered to do so.

So they were "very disappointing", but not "very disappointing" enough to refuse a free pair, at their expense?

> That manipulation technique

Perhaps, since you were happy to accept the headphones, they believed your original negative review was not sincere, but itself a manipulation technique to get a freebie or special offer in return for a more positive review. (Which I suspect is not unheard-of for some buyers on Amazon.)

To be clear: Although I don't know you I don't believe that is what you did (most people don't do that), what I mean is the company may be used to some people trying that kind of thing, and accepting the product for free may be a hint that you're willing to do what they asked.

However, what kind of "positive review" did they want? A review where you pretend not to be disappointed, or simply an update to your review stating something like: "while I don't believe these are worth $65, and returned them, I can't fault the customer service in trying to make up for my disappointment"?

Because I don't see anything at all wrong with the latter; and it's certainly more reasonable than leaving a negative review of a product which you were happy to accept at the 'right price'.

Why should anyone take part in this?

If a company decides to give away free items, and gets nothing in reply that's their problem... I am happy when people do not sell their kidney for pennies: and as a single costumer you usually don't have the power to fight back large corporations: then sometimes the most convenient reaction is to keep both the free gifts and your kidney ;) And if many people do this, it may eventually get them out from business, win-win

edit: Thinking over, I partly agree with the previous comment. If they expect you to update your review, honesty may be the most ethical, so e.g. one can start it with: "They have sent me a free item after I returned mine and gave them a 2 star review..." ;)

> Why should anyone take part in this?

Where did I say buying positive reviews was an ethical marketing strategy or that people should take part in it? I don't think that and I didn't say anything even remotely like it in the post you're replying to.

They said that the pair I got and returned was defective and "want to make things right" by sending me another, free pair.

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B077N5LCP3/

F rating on fakespot, and 1500 visibly fake 5-star reviews. Innocent customers have already started falling in trap and you can notice that from recently created 1 star reviews. How many customers will be burned before the overall rating will go down due to real reviews?

Paid reviews from professionals are more dangerous. I just have to hope the companies' greed prevents them from paying enough for a good review.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confirmation_bias