I wasn’t even in any program, but once I left a bad review on a screen protector for my phone, and the company offered me $45 to remove it. That’s how much they care.
Comment on We can't have legitimate consumer reviews interfering with our profits, now can we?
LinkOpensChest_wav@lemmy.dbzer0.com 9 months ago
I used to be part of Amazon’s program where you get free items to review. It’s even worse than people think.
I left negative or neutral reviews that just don’t appear on the listing, or the seller will contact you directly offering you more free things to upgrade your review, or they’ll just relist their crappy broken product and hope the reviewers write positive reviews (a lot of reviewers would just get free stuff and then write something positive without actually testing it).
Amazon reviews are totally unreliable, and even those sites and extensions that try to determine if a product’s reviews are legitimate aren’t very effective.
I just ask people directly to share their experiences now or create a post on Lemmy because it’s so bad.
phoneymouse@lemmy.world 9 months ago
eatham@aussie.zone 9 months ago
Take the $45 and leave the review up
SoleInvictus@lemmy.world 9 months ago
That has happened to me a few times. I’d take the money and update the review to mention how they attempted to bribe me to leave a false positive review.
Astronautical@sh.itjust.works 9 months ago
At this point I only trust reviews that have pictures or videos of the product.
dual_sport_dork@lemmy.world 9 months ago
Also what they’ll do is the product listing switcheroo, where they’ll sell some commodity item that’s not necessarily crap and get a ton of positive reviews generated for it, legitimate or otherwise. Then the seller will update the product listing to refer to a completely different item, but all the reviews from the old product are remain attached to it.
WhatAmLemmy@lemmy.world 9 months ago
The switcheroo is why I always start with the product name and model if I review anything. Amazon reviews are designed to be gamed this way though, so you should always check reviews elsewhere.
This can work in your favour sometimes as well. In the past I’ve complained that the product sent to me did not have the same brand or model name as the listing. I got a full refund ($110) and I kept the product, which has actually turned out to be pretty good. You gotta make companies pay for anti-consumer practices.