I got an Instagram ad for a free device from a popular product seller on Amazon. I clicked out of curiosity, expecting it to be some sort of scam. Instead, it took me to a page hidden on the manufacturer’s official .com website.

The deal was that I had to go to Amazon.com, search for a specific keyword, scroll until I found their product, buy it, and then forward my receipt to the company. They would then PayPal me the entire cost and I got to keep the product.

They didn’t even ask for a review, although maybe that request would come after I bought it. Up front, they were simply vying for search ranking.

The margin on some of these products is so high that companies can buy their way in to high search rankings and reviews.

Is there a way to prevent gaming the system like this, perhaps other than whistleblower rewards? I imagine even with whistleblower rewards companies would just employ third-parties for plausible deniability claiming it's a simply the actions of a bad actor trying to get them penalized.

Edit to add: perhaps substantial whistleblower rewards for employees of companies doing the bad actions but the top one or two employees/founders might be the only ones in the know.

A whistleblower checkbox "seller had promised to compensate me for this review (this report won't be shown on the review or visible to the seller, and you won't be penalized for this)" may make an impact. Game the game. Collect those flags for a while without visibly affecting anything, if enough are collected - verify existence of those paid reviews (to avoid report abuse attempts to shut down legit sellers), and then take action.

Bad actors would probably start using it against competitors just like the fake 5 star review attacks. It's really interesting how seller competition evolves, anything that can be used to punish a bad seller ends up being used as a way to frame a competitor.

Yeah, it's why I ultimately think opt-in verified identity networks are how we counter that; not necessarily an easy task to educate people why, educate what's acceptable/unacceptable, and for them to trust the leadership/governance of that ecosystem to be willing to have a unique ID so a bad actor, even if simply.in a timeout for misbehaving, can't circumvent integrity systems by creating another account under fake or stolen identity; a cascading or hierarchical or decentralized-like system for different nodes of trust-identity verifiers may be useful or a good idea, or not, and then can have umbrella organizations that determine which subs or arguably smaller managed-curated networks are trustworthy with their processes/protocols - which can be "random spot tested" via umbrella organization's verification mechanisms to check for integrity; that's unnecessarily complex or it allows for different existing verification platforms to aggregate - but they may not be willing to integrate with such a system as attempt for competitive factor/leverage.

Sure, the very same day such feature would be available. That's why I explicitly mentioned need of independent verification. It's impossible to verify every seller out there, but individual sellers can be verified. Those tips must be merely signals to focus, never to penalize a seller solely based on the flags.

Also, the existence of the checkbox itself must have some chilling effects on the sellers by changing their risk perception. Those days it's just a common knowledge that those "leave us a review and we'll reward you with a $X gift card" is not penalized in practice. A checkbox with a PR campaign would send a contradicting signal, making this practice more scary.

A resourceful fraudulent sellers' cabal (if there are such things) could try to poison the well by paying users to tick this checkbox in random reviews (wasting marketplace's resources by muddying the waters), but this doesn't sound scalable and doesn't feel like a realistic scenario.

Anyone know how these sellers get your email address? I had a similar experience. The product met 90% of what I needed but the advertised 10% did not, and that 10% was critical for what I needed to do. I left a 2 or 3 star review (I forgot).

I kept getting spammed to my personal e-mail. I was not sure if they were sending through Amazon system or directly - my guess was directly. Later on I did modify my review. I reduced it by 1 more star.

There's third party services that performs reverse lookup of bad reviews to find the buyer identity and contact info. The whole purpose is to circumvent the Amazon customer contact process.

I left 1 star review for a product, and the seller tried continuously to solicit withdraw or revision of the review. I attempted to update the review calling out this behavior with screenshot of the email and Amazon wouldn't approve it. Ultimately, they replaced it with a product revision and immediately got another 20k reviews with near 5 star rating.

There's very little anonymity for buyers given all our digital crumbles. The entire digital economy's purpose is to track and identify you as a consumer. On top of this, how reviewers are paid via affiliates is the wrong incentive model. I'm not sure how this could be fixed, but I would be interested in a service that flipped the information asymmetry and gave me insight on the company selling the product and their trust worthiness. Company ownership would be icing on the cake since brands change hand so frequently (see example: https://toolguyd.com/tool-brands-corporate-affiliations/).

There's a tool called fakespot which would analyze the reviews and give the product a grade. It has the right idea but I think these professional sellers have circumvented them...

Just like you, I also updated my review when I downgraded my star review. My first attempt was rejected by Amazon and I made my update more brief in order to pass their review process.

I wouldn't say Amazon is turning a blind eye to it - but actually helping the cause in order to get turnover of products. If it hurt their bottom line (just like bad publicity like this would) they'd stop it.

I bought a USB hub on Amazon and in the box was a postcard offering me a $20 voucher for a review if I “enjoy the product”. I wrote a review mentioning this and Amazon rejected it. There’s no way they don’t know what’s going on.

I had purchased a set of 10 earbuds for $10 or something. They were horrible, like really bad with muffled sound. It had a card that if I post a review they’ll give me $15 gift card.

I wrote a review with how bad they were and also made a note of the $15 gift card offer. Last I checked my review was not deleted and it was available. I don’t think it made any difference though since the product is full of 5-star reviews claiming they are audiophile quality earbuds.

Just curious if you had also reviewed the hub or just that it had a gift card offer?

I had a similar situation (with a pair of $25 earbuds). Amazon took my review down for "promotion", presumably because I included a picture of the card with an email address to contact if you wanted to be compensated for your review. Probably 75% of my deleted review was about the item itself.

I had a similar experience with a USB-C hub I bought from a brand recommended by wirecutter (not the exact model as it was "replaced by a newer model". I plugged it into a brand new laptop and I got a warning about it drawing too much power, which persisted when I plugged several other devices. I returned the hub and have been getting spammed by these emails ever since. That has made me very wary of buying anything from Amazon now without a good recommendation from someone I personally know.

Recently I bought and returned to amazon around 5 different USB SD card reader.

Turns out they all used the exact same USB hub/combo card reader chip.

This chip burns enough power at idle to heat up almost 30°C above ambient.

After enough testing I found out that on many motherboards, you can turn on USB power saving per port. This effectively get the device to consume almost nothing at idle.

But this only works on those ports. Anything indirect; for example apple usb-c to USB + HDMI dongle; the device would be burning power and heating up.

Same behavior on all three major operating systems. What matters is the motherboard ability to control power to a single USB port as far as I can tell.

Are you saying that the hub drew more power when more devices were plugged in (expected)? Or that the hub broke the USB-C port on your laptop, such that when you unplugged it, any device you plugged in directly thereafter also reported drawing too much power?

Hubs drawing too much power was an issue with USB-A hubs as well -- to mitigate this you want a hub that is independently powered (that is, has its own DC barrel plug and wall wart).

You can also find hubs that charge laptops (Thunderbolt 3/4, or USB-C PD, assuming you have a compatible laptop) although you want to be very careful about the choice of charger and cable since a short can brick just about anything that's not properly protected on the USB-C port (basically most non-Macs).

> without a good recommendation from someone I personally know.

I’ve always thought there’s a big opportunity here for principle component analysis or other dimension reduction. The reviews you see could be filtered down to people who have reviewed other things similarly to you, like how Netflix gives different ratings for the same show depending on what else you’ve watched.

It’s almost like establishing trust. If someone has rated that USB hub 5 stars, you probably don’t want their opinion on a restaurant either. It would also give a real incentive to leave honest reviews, which would help collect data from the massive group that currently just doesn’t care.

I’m not familiar with this, but how does a hub draw “too much power”? Wouldn’t it be limited by whatever the max output of the USB port is and not be able to draw more than that?

My guess would be either (1) the device asks for more than can be provided or (2) the device just draws more than can be provided and the host detects the voltage sag.

> Thanks to the Amazon review system

Why are you blaming Amazon? What would you change?

You probably know before online stores had their own review systems, it was full of fake review sites (still is) and fake forum product endorsements.

This is not a problem that's here "thanks to the Amazon review system".

If sellers didn't receive purchasers email addresses through Amazon, they wouldn't be able to pull back channel crap like this.

I’ve purchased a lot of products where printed advertisements for schemes like this were included in the box. I haven’t noticed the solicitations in my email - maybe I don’t read those emails because they look like spam?

Amazon must receive a ton of reports of stores doing shady things like this. I know I've sent some. They seemingly spend very little attention to these reports, because it's not like they have to care at all.

This thread is literally about them caring, tho.

I had a similar experience after writing a poor review for a down comforter. They offered to refund about 40% of the purchase price if I adjusted my review. With purchased items I've also gotten cards offering a freebie if you send them an email with your order # - some vendors are honest and just send the free item, but others want a (good) review before they send the bribe err gift.

Beside having your email, do they have your address or is that only amazon?

Else, and I know that its not worth your time, but couldn't you accept their request, change your review, receive the gift card, redeem it, and change review back with a short statement of what happened. I mean, as I understand it, what are they gonna do? (I they do have your address though, I would not play games either)

Yes. I got harassed by a seller for months both via emails and post for a 1 star review on amazon. It's actually pretty logical that they have your postal address since they need it for shipping.

> change review back with a short statement of what happened. I mean, as I understand it, what are they gonna do?

Your review will simply not pass amazon's moderation - they actively censor this stuff.

Talking about it in the review is annoyingly likely to get the review removed for being "off topic". You're supposed to report the merchant to amazon directly and only review the product.

> Beside having your email, do they have your address or is that only amazon?

Well, Amazon does not give out buyer e-mail addresses either, so the seller must've figured it out some other way (or via an Amazon bug).

Unless the item was fulfilled by Amazon, the seller gets your physical address (so they can ship out the item).