Amazon product "review" games - always beware

One of the "Amazon's Choice" selections (based upon percent of positive reviews) for "hard mouse pad":

https://www.amazon.com/Precision-Accurate-Non-Slip-Mousepad-Computer/dp/B07MXZNPHD

The most recent reviews:

Sarah Lalou - 5 stars - August 8, 2019 - review history: just this mouse pad

gaobi - 5 stars - August 8, 2019 - review history: just this mouse pad and a MIERES brand pet grooming table

Amy Stroman - 5 stars - August 5, 2019 - review history: just this mouse pad

Brittany P. - 5 stars - August 2, 2019 - review history: just this mouse pad and a MIERES brand cat tree

Chloe Peterson - 5 stars - June 9, 2019 - review history: just this mouse pad

Another trick - they change seller and product names on the same product in order to start offering a "new" product where they do the above "review" gaming all over again.

What I have found, is that when you are reading the reviews, some of the reviews are not for the product that you are interested in. I found one yesterday when reviewing microwaves and it was a statement about having a camera inside the oven! Camera? A camera wasn't even listed in the product description, so be careful when reviewing.

tightwad said:

What I have found, is that when you are reading the reviews, some of the reviews are not for the product that you are interested in. I found one yesterday when reviewing microwaves and it was a statement about having a camera inside the oven! Camera? A camera wasn't even listed in the product description, so be careful when reviewing.

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I have seen that A LOT and I believe it has to do with a seller simply changing names, particularly when the item is in the same general category. In other words, it's the result of shady review games being played.

Here's another scam which got really bad for a while which I haven't NOTICED as much lately (which may just be related to what I have been buying lately) - a NEW seller offers an item as "new" in the "Other sellers" listing, usually not a cheap item, for a really good price and free shipping. A bunch of people order it but never receive it. The seller disappears. Because of Amazon's buyer guarantee, at least the buyers get their money back.

I rarely pay attention to reviews. I assume that most are fake. I only buy from sellers that I can verify through Amazon. If an item I want only has one seller and the seller only lists that one item I assume it’s a scam. I’m also particular about seller names; if they don’t use proper capitalization or if the name doesn’t make sense for the product I scrutinize much more closely.

I’m sure I miss some legitimate deals but I prefer to be more confident that I’ll get what I pay for.

There are websites that analyze reviews for cheating. The one I use is:

https://www.fakespot.com

You copy and paste the Amazon URL into their search field. It then scores the reviews. However what I find more useful is to look at the review score of the entire company, rather than a single product. In the case of the mousepad above, the reviews are scored a B. But other reviews show a worrisome pattern:


I see this a lot. A product gets red-flagged, so they change the product description and drop the old one. If I see this for several products for a company, I cross them off my list.


Tony

BBowmaster said:

I rarely pay attention to reviews.

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I always do, especially on electronics terms, looking at most recent to later. That detects bad runs of items. Try that with items Amazon suddenly puts on sale. You'll often see the reason for it is a long, recent string of very bad reviews that, if the items has many good previous reviews, isn't reflected in the overall star rating. I also do what I did in the instance above when I see a bunch of recent, consecutive, five star reviews.

manixFan said:

There are websites that analyze reviews for cheating. The one I use is:

https://www.fakespot.com

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Yeah, I've got that bookmarked, but I don't use it. It has given "C" ratings of reviews to top quality electronic items where I can tell the reviews aren't fraudulent and are long and technically detailed. Their AI algorithm apparently isn't that good.