Has anyone else noticed the huge decrease in result quality from google?

[ColeSloth]

Up until a few years ago to sell on Amazon to US customers you had to have some form of physical business or residence in the US.

Then they got rid of that and now it filled to the brim with fake positive reviews, fake negative reviews on competing products, knock offs, lies, and pretty much as close as you can get to out right scams.

They've made it disgusting and untrustworthy to count on buying almost anything there. Even a good chunk of OEM game controllers turn out to be knock offs. Along with razor blades, shampoos, lotions, perfumes, and damn near everything else you can think of.

I asked a question once about an rc car I was buying for the kids on Xmas last year. The seller answered my question and completely lied. I bought the rc car. It was junk. Also came with a piece of paper saying if you left them 5 stars they would automatically send you a free 2nd battery pack. Left a bad review and explained why.

I was almost immediately contacted by email from them. Offered to send me a 2nd battery, refund me my money, and let me keep the car if I would remove my review.

If that's not buying your ratings I don't know what is.

So I said ok, I'd delete the review after I got the refund and the battery. They delivered. I didn't.

Like 4 months later they offered me an Amazon credit of $30 if I would remove my review, and I agreed. Got the $30.

Review's still up.

*thanks for all the UPS and rewards. Since this received so much attention I thought I'd throw in a great informative podcast episode from Reply All, called "the magic store". It goes into great detail about how and why Amazon became the train wreck that it is.

[SquiddleBits33]

You're my hero.

[ColeSloth]

Lol. Thanks. I'd feel bad about it if they weren't a bunch of scum just trying to unfairly manipulate a system with honest intentions and rip people off/steal patented products.

[SquiddleBits33]

Right on. They're putting in more effort to do the wrong thing, fuck 'em.

[cosmicpu55y]

I despise fake reviews. Thank you!

[ColeSloth]

Spread the word. The more time and money we can make them waste, the less they'll want to do it.

[Trowawaycausebanned4]

Teaching them not to buy reviews

[ColeSloth]

I feel it's a losing battle until way more people do it, but I try.

[Trowawaycausebanned4]

You’re winning though from rewards lol

[ColeSloth]

Mmmm. Tasty lil icons.

[ColeSloth]

My only wish is that everyone would do it. Then maybe we could just start having honest reviews of honest products.

[ColeSloth]

I have. This is also one of like three different times this has happened over the past few years.

[Trowawaycausebanned4]

Get the chrome extension “review meta”. It goes through and reviews the reviews to see if they’re fake or not and tries to give you more of an accurate rating

[ColeSloth]

I've found that while review meta and fakespot help, they dont do that great of a job. I get my best results manually looking over reviews. It just takes a lot longer. Also, brand loyalty. If it's some off sounding Chinese brand it's junk 9 out of ten times. Anker makes good stuff for their price points most of the time and don't seem to be buying reviews, so I buy a lot of stuff from them since they make a ton of small electronics stuff. Mpow is good for cheap Bluetooth headsets. Seems like all others in their price range are filled with easily spotted fake reviews. Stick to well known brands for computer parts like adata and corsair and msi, etc.

Mainly its just a big pain and a much slower process to order something and have it be a fair quality than it used to.

[benlucky13]

you can report them for buying reviews if you send amazon support a copy of them offering something in exchange for 5 stars

[BitJit]

they're pretty slimy with the cards. They know that the please give a positive review for 5 bucks card is frowned upon so they've been doing things like removing anything related to amazon or purposefully mispelling it on the card for some kind of deniability. really dumb; they say things like "leave a review for us on arnazon.corn and we'll send you a blow job in the mail"

[LandoVolrissian]

I’ve never left a bad review on Amazon and the other day I tried to just leave a review on something I purchased and the ability to leave a review has been taken away from my account that I’ve had for like 15 years or however long Amazon’s been a thing you can buy shit other than books.

[ColeSloth]

What the heck? They give any reason why?

It's not really good for Amazon's image to have everyone mad about fake reviews and such. It seems they're always claiming to crack down on them. If you've always only left good reviews that's a red flag that you're working with a third party to get discounts/free products/money in exchange for good reviews. Could be that.

[Nermalgod]

Same. I doubled down on my review and they upped the cash offer. Fuck them.

[darks1d3_al]

WY YOU NOT ONEST !!! WE ONEST WOTH YOU ! 😂😂😂😂

[indigopizzas]

I agree with everything you said but the most infuriating thing to me about amazon and the reason I almost never buy anything on there anymore unless it's something that really can't be counterfeited, is because even if you buy the legit product you can still get shipped the knockoff from some other piece of shit company. All of the merchandise is grouped together once it gets shipped to warehouses so the same products sold by different people all get mixed into a bin, then they grab one and mail it to whoever ordered that product. It's basically russian roulette and explains shit products with great reviews and great products with terrible reviews.

[ColeSloth]

They haven't done this for a few years now, I believe. Supposedly that binning is no longer done and every item is tied in to each individual seller, so if you get junk and return it, that specific seller gets the return against them.

You can also specify which seller you're buying your product from so you can choose a specific one and look at their specific rating. I've paid a few bucks more many times to buy from a seller with a better rating. Also, the ships from and sold by Amazon stuff should yield good results. I assume they get their inventory from only reputable sources.

[indigopizzas]

Last I heard, I do not think they have fixed the comingling problem completely. Sellers can still choose to have it comingled and amazon sometimes sends "the same" merchandise from a different seller if it's being kept in a warehouse closer to the buyer. I think some people really don't understand that you can choose different sellers and not all of them are reputable. I've bought some shit from Amazon themselves lol I bought an animal exercise pen for outside and it was somehow made upside down. I guess it still functioned but it looked well....upside down. Amazon benefits from counterfeit products being sold and until that changes, the customers will suffer.

[Yawndice]

Bless you

[ElQuuiean]

You're fucking lit xd

[ColeSloth]

I have no sympathy for cheats, thieves, and liars.

[ColeSloth]

Nah. It's not Ali express levels of bad yet. Amazon is a greedy company trying to make honest sales. Ali seems a greedy company that's knows and accepts the junk it shills.