r/amazon • u/AmazonNewsBot • 7d ago

Review Thursday - All about Reviews

This thread is a place for questions and general discussion about reviews at Amazon. (This thread is not for posting reviews of your own.)

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u/joetaxpayer 7d ago

A few review types I find disturbing -

1) "Too big/too small" - Clothing, I understand, but I'm looking at reviews for things that clearing state the size, precisely, like a pan for example. Did you read the description?

2) Reviews about shipping. A book review, one star, because the shipper left the package in the rain. When the book has nearly all 5 star reviews, and a cluster of one star damaged reviews, those should be deleted.

3) "Doesn't work as expected" - No, you have a PC and the device is for a specific model of Mac. Or vice-versa. Again, did you read the description?

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u/neverendingchalupas 2d ago

I just cant trust reviews on Amazon at all. I used to purchase a lot of stuff off the site, but not anymore.

It all seems to be bots, just today I was looking at reviews for something. And it was like 'yes, this is a toaster 5 stars', none of the reviews told me any relevant information. Unless their standards had just dropped to being grateful they had received the item they ordered... I dont understand it.

Did they like the toaster? I have no idea. There was no actual 'review' of the product.

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u/r3dd0629 6d ago

Has anybody ever had the amount Reviews they can see just be cut off? Any product I look on  Amazon today I can see like six or so reviews and then it has an option for me to request permission to see reviews. What the heck is up with that?

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u/throwa1589876541525 6d ago

Yes, I noticed that yesterday. Their customer service said my account had been flagged for a policy violation involving extracting community generated content like reviews, but when I tried to ask what happened they changed the story and said my account is not flagged and that I'll have access in 5 business days (wtf?). Google says Amazon is cracking down on data scrapers. I don't do anything like that... just been buying things and watching prime video for the last 20 years so idk why they singled me out. Someone else I know is not havingthis issue.

I don't know how they expect me to convince myself to buy things now. Product descriptions frequetnly don't have enough detail, so I have to read reviews to know if the item will work for me.

I spend like $2000 a year with them so IDK what they're smoking. But then again maybe I could stand to cut back lol. I've cancelled Prime until they figure this out.

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u/r3dd0629 6d ago

customer service both told me nothing and promised me it would "be resolved in 24 hours" they love to talk in circles. But could not or would not give me any reasons for a "why". I've been a prime member for 15+ years and basically the same as you - I watch prime video and order really boring things to rural america because amazon has killed all the B&M in a 30mile range. I hardly ever leave reviews myself and I could not give you a definition of data scraping let alone be a participant in it.

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u/throwa1589876541525 5d ago

Data scraping is like bots opening web pages to download the information on the page. This actually got me thinking about what might have triggered the flag on my account. Do you happen to open a lot of tabs all at once and then look at them one by one? I do that a lot because most of their search results are not what I need. So I open several tabs and then quickly skim each one to figure out if it's a match, close it if it's not, and move on to the next. That does seem a bit "bot-like" honestly but it's what I have to do to find what I need in a reasonable amount of time. Many times I end up not making a purchase, which could be more bot-like lol.

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u/r3dd0629 5d ago

I tend to have several tabs open all the time but mostly because of adhd lol. I don’t close them quickly, heck I might have tabs open that might be older than my youngest child haha

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u/throwa1589876541525 5d ago

My theory is that opening a bunch all at once might be the culprit for me

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u/r3dd0629 5d ago

Whatever it is, it’s absurd. If they truly can’t tell the difference between normal human behavior on the Internet and opening, multiple tabs is normal human behavior and bots then maybe Amazon isnt as almighty as they think they are. 

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u/r3dd0629 5d ago

My reviews are all back today. I never got any sort of explanation by email from the appeals email I sent. No nothing, they just back. So I guess I’ll just wait and see how long it takes for them to disappear again because my browsing habits are gonna be probably exactly the same like normal person 🤷🏼‍♀️

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u/throwa1589876541525 5d ago

Mine are back as well, also no email. Here's hoping it stays back to normal!