How many positive reviews on Amazon?

MoneyMon555

Just getting a general idea of how other people gauge this.

How many positive reviews do you need to see before you are confident that the product hasn't been artificially manipulated on Amazon to 'look good'?

Just a general/rough idea - I wonder if I am too cynical and set the bar too high?

flaneurs_lobster

Don't really have a number, but I used to think that I could tell the fake reviews from the real ones just by their linguistic construction and tone.

I guess that since the TechBros have spent seventy gazillion billion dollars making AI write like a human I wouldn't now be so sure.

BridgetTheCat

More than 80% 4 and 5 stars. But I actually read the 2 and 3 star reviews to see what they’re complaining about because it’s often nothing to do with the product itself.

Jemma01

Amazon does the free product exchange for a review, so I don't trust the positive ones out right, I look for certain things that needs someone who genuinely uses the product to comment about. It's been a while since I bought much from there because of this. It gotten so bad everything seemed like a lie.

If a product has 5 reviews and one of them mentioned specifically what I'm after, I'll take it. Likewise if a product has 1k+ mostly 5* but one negative review had what I'm looking for, that would be it.

I do know ppl who literally rely on the overall score without reading reviews.

flaneurs_lobster

Amazon does the free product exchange for a review, so I don't trust the positive ones out right,

I'm not a huge Amazon purchaser, maybe 4-5 items a year. I'm not familiar with this wrinkle, is it an actual documented feature/requirement?

Jemma01

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/comment/82059907#Comment_82059907

there is a program called Amazon Vine certain reviewers are invited to (depends on their reviewer rank), they get to receive free stuff in exchange for a review. I believe that Amazon now marks them as Vine reviews but they weren't at the start of the program and it was very shady you could sense something wasn't right when someone suddenly sounds like a seller rather than a reviewer. But now sellers getting by with the other "social media reviews" in exchange for free products that has no marker. I lost faith in reviews.

mac.d

I've always did a combination of looking for mostly 4* and up reviews as well as reading through some of them (both the positive and negative reviews) and then tend to favour those with photos/videos.

I find it much more difficult to judge nowadays, a combination of knowing there's so many AI/fake and also paid for reviews, along with having less faith in reviews, all the Chinese stuff and difficulty in finding UK sourced products just makes me buy far less than I used to from Amazon.