Try:
https://reviewmeta.com/amazon/B07FTFFY24
https://www.fakespot.com/product/28pcs-wood-burning-kit-crea...
While fakespot gave D, it gave it for other reasons. What really happened there - seller completely replaced product on that page with another one. Read existing reviews to understand what is going on.
One more example - https://reviewmeta.com/amazon/B07FSW8VMQ - just read reviews to see how ridiculous it gets.
Not all of them are easy to detect. This seller added soldering iron as a variation to a wood burning unit - https://reviewmeta.com/amazon/B07D9H5H9Y - even by reading reviews you can't easily figure out fakeness of it. (https://www.fakespot.com/product/vastar-wood-burning-kit-44p... Fakespot gave A)
This type of blackhat stuff happens right now right and left. It is even cheaper/quicker/easier than paying reviewers for reviews now.
The first example is a little trickier since the first time we analyzed the product, the title had already been changed. (You can click on the "Title History" link for any product).
We're working on being able to detect when these changes/variations are normal or being used to deceive shoppers. It's extremely easy for a human to immediately tell, but much harder to train a computer to do it. For example, a seller might have a t-shirt with different product variations: "Large Blue", "Medium Green". These are very different words, but obviously a legit reason to have a bunch of variations.
Here's more info about Review Hijacking: https://reviewmeta.com/blog/amazon-review-hijacking/ and here's an article that BuzzFeed News recently did: https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/nicolenguyen/amazon-rev...
This is a crappy game of cat and mouse, and if producers are willing to exploit Amazon's system, they'll exploit ReviewMeta. The only thing that protects ReviewMeta at this point is that it's a niche service.
It'd be nice to see a mechanism that recognizes trusted reviewers, but even that can be exploited I suppose.
Technically speaking, of course ReviewMeta can be "gamed", but it would require much more effort on the part of the seller to generate reviews in such a way that it wouldn't set off any warnings on our side. Basically force them to be very deliberate in their efforts. It would just add yet another hoop for sellers to jump through, making it that much more difficult on their part.
Aww man this bums me out. I love the critical (detailed) reviews, they're the first thing I look for on amazon.
Any guesses as to what guidelines were violated?
(That's my other Amazon story. One time, I bought some bicycle tires on Amazon. They sent me the wrong model, mountain bike size instead of road bike size. I wrote them a detailed email describing what they sent me and what they should have sent. "We're so sorry!". The next day, two identically wrong tires arrived. I complained and they refunded my money. I now had to find a way to use four mountain bike tires, and I still had no road bike tires. 2 riding days lost. An hour writing emails lost. And I still had no bike tires. I bet 99% of people would call that "great customer service". I think it's terrible. (Amazon did eventually remove the listing in question, so that's nice.))
We all can look at reviews and make our best guess, but at the end of the day, it's always going to still be a guess. At ReviewMeta, we aren't claiming to know all the answers. We try our best to ensure everyone knows it's an estimate (you're actually forced to click an I agree button before accessing the site) and we also provide all our work so you can use the numbers to help you make a more informed decision.
If you're going to create a fake account to promote your items, you could give your items 5* and then copy other reviews on other products exactly (including # of *s) to make the account look more legitimate.
Here are some relevant quotes:
> "I personally believe that somehow Holy Stone is able to game the system beyond what even Faskespot can detect. A DroneDJ source confirms that Holy Stone uses “black hat” techniques to game the system."
> Among other tricks, Holy Stone is likely getting 100s of reviews from people who were provided product in exchange for a promise of a good review. These reviews pass the test as original reviews, but not the test of being unbiased reviews. I also think Holy Stone must be doing something to appease unhappy customers in exchange for not providing a negative review. It’s just too good to be true. Just 6% of reviews of the HS100 have 1, 2, or 3-star rating. That’s unheard of for drones. Unheard of unless you are looking at a Holy Stone drone.
They don't bother now because there's no significant userbase for these tools. That'd change quickly if Amazon built it into their system.