Why I hate buying on Amazon

RFW

soolin said:

Firstly I feel I ought to have said for any newbies reading this that I have not and will not give reviews for cash - as a seller myself I need buyers to trust reviews and not believe them all to be fake. However, some of the companies contacting me are UK and appear to have good ratings already - but I assume they are looking to branch out into new products and want healthy reviews on those new products.

Ditto. I use Vine a bit for new products. That's within Amazon where some of their top reviewers can apply for free products which they then review (although they don't have to).

I wouldn't mind having some one star reviews that aren't related to my products removed. Amazon rarely remove reviews.

the_lunatic_is_in_my_head

Reviews on Amazon are getting worse, they merged a lot together a few years back and the products aren't always related. 

Recently I've been seeing a lot of reviews in Italian or German mixed in, presumably pulled from EU sites. 

There was talk of sellers buying their own products from multiple buyer accounts to leave positive reviews tagged as verified purchases and there was an article somewhere about the opposite happening and sellers trashing the competition with poor reviews. 

If you haven't purchased it on Amazon I don't see why you should be able to review it Amazon and Amazon should deal with underhanded tactics better than they currently do. 

It seems you can also leave a star rating without writing a review now which I find completely pointless. 

NaughtiusMaximus

the_lunatic_is_in_my_head said:

There was talk of sellers buying their own products from multiple buyer accounts to leave positive reviews tagged as verified purchases and there was an article somewhere about the opposite happening and sellers trashing the competition with poor reviews. 

If you haven't purchased it on Amazon I don't see why you should be able to review it Amazon and Amazon should deal with underhanded tactics better than they currently do. 

Restricting reviews to items you've bought on Amazon would do nothing to stop the abuses you mention. 

the_lunatic_is_in_my_head

NaughtiusMaximus said:

the_lunatic_is_in_my_head said:

There was talk of sellers buying their own products from multiple buyer accounts to leave positive reviews tagged as verified purchases and there was an article somewhere about the opposite happening and sellers trashing the competition with poor reviews. 

If you haven't purchased it on Amazon I don't see why you should be able to review it Amazon and Amazon should deal with underhanded tactics better than they currently do. 

Restricting reviews to items you've bought on Amazon would do nothing to stop the abuses you mention. 

Well you'd have to spend money to trash your competitors ratings and my sentence had two parts. 

It might also improve the quality of reviews, they are very helpful when deciding what to buy but there is a lot of pointless dross written in the reviews section.

A maximum character requirement to stop the reviews that just say "it was no good" or "I loved it" would help as well, it doesn't matter how someone felt about a product, why they felt that way is the important bit. 

RFW

the_lunatic_is_in_my_head said:

NaughtiusMaximus said:

the_lunatic_is_in_my_head said:

There was talk of sellers buying their own products from multiple buyer accounts to leave positive reviews tagged as verified purchases and there was an article somewhere about the opposite happening and sellers trashing the competition with poor reviews. 

If you haven't purchased it on Amazon I don't see why you should be able to review it Amazon and Amazon should deal with underhanded tactics better than they currently do. 

Restricting reviews to items you've bought on Amazon would do nothing to stop the abuses you mention. 

Well you'd have to spend money to trash your competitors ratings and my sentence had two parts. 

It might also improve the quality of reviews, they are very helpful when deciding what to buy but there is a lot of pointless dross written in the reviews section.

A maximum character requirement to stop the reviews that just say "it was no good" or "I loved it" would help as well, it doesn't matter how someone felt about a product, why they felt that way is the important bit. 

Amazon do have a system of weighting reviews so verified purchases count more. It's also not that easy to buy your own products and leave reviews for them. They do have mechanisms in place to stop that, albeit sometimes too late.

They've certainly tightened up their act on reviews over the last 18 months. It used to be that 3rd parties could offer to get reviews for sellers. That is no longer allowed and accounts have been closed because of it.

I also agree on the point about ratings without reviews. It's certainly pointless on negative ones. I'm fairly sure I've received some from competitors but there's not much I can do about it and they're usually one in a sea of hundreds of positives so don't make a difference.

NaughtiusMaximus

the_lunatic_is_in_my_head said:

NaughtiusMaximus said:

the_lunatic_is_in_my_head said:

There was talk of sellers buying their own products from multiple buyer accounts to leave positive reviews tagged as verified purchases and there was an article somewhere about the opposite happening and sellers trashing the competition with poor reviews. 

If you haven't purchased it on Amazon I don't see why you should be able to review it Amazon and Amazon should deal with underhanded tactics better than they currently do. 

Restricting reviews to items you've bought on Amazon would do nothing to stop the abuses you mention. 

Well you'd have to spend money to trash your competitors ratings and my sentence had two parts. 

True, but an unscrupulous seller trying to trash the competition would probably consider that money well spent. I omitted the second part of your sentence because clamping down on abuses of the review system and limiting reviews to Amazon only purchases are two different and largely unrelated issues.

It might also improve the quality of reviews, they are very helpful when deciding what to buy but there is a lot of pointless dross written in the reviews section. 

While the usefulness of the reviews does vary massively, I don't see any significant correlation between the quality of reviews and whether or not the review is a verified Amazon purchase.

A maximum character requirement to stop the reviews that just say "it was no good" or "I loved it" would help as well, it doesn't matter how someone felt about a product, why they felt that way is the important bit. 

On that we're in agreement.

Murphybear

I buy a lot from Amazon and have Prime for the next day delivery plus I watch Prime Video a lot

i always do a review and try and make it as accurate as possible.  I bought a bedside lamp from Amazon Marketplace which didn’t work.  I did a review which truthfully reflected the “not good” item and requested a prepaid label to send it back for a refund.  They contacted me and said I couldn’t have the label or refund unless I removed the review 

i was horrified and felt this was not allowed, it sounded like blackmail.  I contacted Amazon and they sorted it out, I got my label and the refund.  I noticed this firm also disappeared from the site.

Does this sort of thing happen a lot?

forgotmyname

Bought a gadget which was not the right spec. I did the same and left a poor review. Seller said they will refund
if i remove the review. Just thought nice try and started a claim. Refund appeared quite quickly where the seller
didn't even want it back.

Seller did try sending messages for a few days asking for the removal but I ignored them.   Don't sell items with fake specs.

MrsStepford

I love Amazon. I have been a Prime customer since 2012. I try hard NOT to use Marketplace because there's so much Chinese rubbish. Want to return it and you find out that the return address is in China even though the sales address was in Croydon and they expect you to fork out for signed for airmail postage, usually more than any refund. 

Amazon Assistant pops up when I'm shopping elsewhere. I bought an Eglo lamp last week. £80 on their website, £50 at Homebase and 34.99 on Amazon. I buy from Amazon, fulfilled by Amazon and from companies I recognise with Amzon shops. 

Amazon Prime is so much more than saving money on postage and goods. I watched 14 seasons of NCIS, and will be watching Nations Cup rugby for next three weekends. Movies, tennis, original TV. it's excellent. 

I will use Etsy in preference to Amazon Marketplace, really pleased with stuff there. 

If I can buy from an independent website, will often use that if same price. But Amazon Prime often beats on price. I have Kindle Unlimited which gets me free books and magazines. 

Lots of people knock Amazon but it really adds value.