Saturday, November 03, 2018

Amazon reviews now unreliable - negative reviews filtered (Anker example)

Amazon reviews have long been helpful to me, and were once a big part of Amazon’s value proposition.

That is no longer true. Amazon is filtering out negative reviews.

I learned this after attempting to review Anker bluetooth earbuds I bought for Emily’s birthday. The power switch was defective. That wasn’t a complete surprise, I have a similar pair and I often have to push 2 or 3 times. Anker should have spent another 10 cents on that part.

Amazon made the return easy, but when I tried to write a review I got this notice:

Screen Shot 2018 11 02 at 10 12 04 PM

“Sorry we are unable to accept reviews for this product …”

I then switched to Emily’s account. There I was at able to start a review, and even able to give in a two star overall rating. When I clicked 1 star for material quality however the “unable to accept reviews” notification appeared:

Screen Shot 2018 11 03 at 12 18 40 PM

This is, of course, worse than if Amazon removed all product reviews. They are promoting systemic bias in their closed world. The Fox model is catching on elsewhere, Apple is doing something similar with the Mac App store.

2 comments:

  1. Ha, I ordered the same earbuds and had the same failure. I hadn't bothered to post a negative review, but now I will try.

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  2. It's been going on at least a month: Re: Reddit,

    https://www.reddit.com/r/mildlyinfuriating/comments/9nkddm/careful_with_those_amazon_basics_items_no/?ref=share&ref_source=link

    ReplyDelete