FTC is Prodding the Tech Giant To Punish Fake-Review Schemers (vox.com) 29
An anonymous reader shares a report: Amazon recently banned some sellers of large Chinese electronics brands like Aukey and Mpow that reportedly do hundreds of millions in sales on the shopping site each year. The bans followed a database leak that appeared to tie some of the brands to paid-review schemes, which Amazon prohibits and says it strictly polices. But while some press coverage implied that Amazon took these actions in response to the database leak, internal employee messages viewed by Recode show that pressure from the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) led to at least one of the notable bans.
Communications between Amazon employees viewed by Recode also appear to expose an inconsistent punishment system in which employees need special approval for suspending certain sellers because of their sales numbers, while some merchants are able to keep selling products to Amazon customers despite multiple policy violations and warnings. The leaked internal messages also revealed several other instances in recent months of FTC inquiries pressuring Amazon to take action against merchants engaging in fake-review schemes. Amazon has long said that it aggressively polices fake reviews, but the frequency with which the FTC has pressured the company to police merchants that run paid-review programs has not been previously known.
Communications between Amazon employees viewed by Recode also appear to expose an inconsistent punishment system in which employees need special approval for suspending certain sellers because of their sales numbers, while some merchants are able to keep selling products to Amazon customers despite multiple policy violations and warnings. The leaked internal messages also revealed several other instances in recent months of FTC inquiries pressuring Amazon to take action against merchants engaging in fake-review schemes. Amazon has long said that it aggressively polices fake reviews, but the frequency with which the FTC has pressured the company to police merchants that run paid-review programs has not been previously known.
Tech Giant? (Score:5, Insightful)
Who allows crappy headlines like this to be posted?
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That's exactly what I was thinking. Amazon isn't a tech company. It's an online retailer.
Amazon's total tech footprint, beyond its internal logistics and its website, is its Kindle, Fire, and Amazon Basics stuff, which makes it only slightly more of a tech giant than Barnes & Noble, and exactly as much of a tech company as Walmart.
Re:Tech Giant? (Score:5, Insightful)
That's exactly what I was thinking. Amazon isn't a tech company. It's an online retailer.
Amazon's total tech footprint, beyond its internal logistics and its website, is its Kindle, Fire, and Amazon Basics stuff, which makes it only slightly more of a tech giant than Barnes & Noble, and exactly as much of a tech company as Walmart.
By any chance have you heard of Amazon Web Services?
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Like AWS itself, those are quite literally all tools that were created for internal use at a company whose primary business is selling goods.
Releasing your internal tools to the public does not make you a tech company, no matter what those internal tools look like, no matter how many people use them.
As best I can tell, only about five or six percent of Amazon's employees are employed writing code, and about that many work in other parts of their corporate offices. That leaves somewhere in the neighborhood
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They offer almost exactly zero online services to end users
I'd like some of whatever you're taking, but in a smaller dose.
They have lots and lots of online services to end users. The fact that you're unaware of them doesn't mean they don't have them.
Digital content, Amazon Video, Delivery services, Amazon Business, Amazon Drive, Amazon Publishing, etc etc. All end user services.
They also do in-home stuff for end users, like in-home assembly services (chairs, desks, treadmills, cribs, nightstands, wine racks, TV wall mounting, etc etc)
They're a tech company and they
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They have lots and lots of online services to end users. The fact that you're unaware of them doesn't mean they don't have them.
Digital content, Amazon Video, Delivery services, Amazon Business, Amazon Drive, Amazon Publishing, etc etc. All end user services.
Most of the services on that list are retail product sales, or at least very closely tied to retail product sales. Even their publishing services (which I have used personally) are still principally designed for enabling vendors to sell products to consumers, whether physically, digitally, or both. They're a retailer, just with more vendor support than average.
The remaining services (Drive and Amazon Business) are almost certainly internal tools that they built to support their primary business (retail sa
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Most of the services on that list are retail product sales, or at least very closely tied to retail product sales.
Doesn't matter. They are indeed a tech company, even if not the kind most people think of. Most people think Google is a search company, but they're not- they're really an advertising company that started out in the search arena.
The remaining services (Drive and Amazon Business) are almost certainly internal tools that they built to support their primary business (retail sales) and then decided to make more broadly available to make a little extra money.
That's exactly what happened, and then they morphed from a company that sells stuff to the biggest provider of cloud services that still sells stuff.
That "little extra money" from AWS now dwarfs the sales from the Amazon marketplace. 17 or 18 times as much, last I heard.
You have a c
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You have NO idea what you're talking about, none.
AWS is roughly 18 times the size and revenue of the Amazon Marketplace.
Selling stuff is a very minor part of what Amazon does. The AWS cloud services branch is where the money is. They could literally drop the Amazon store entirely and it would make only a tiny difference in their bottom line.
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Not true. AWS is only about 10% of Amazon's revenue [cnbc.com].
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That's interesting. I've worked with lots of Amazon devs and managers and they have consistently said that AWS was the real cash cow for Amazon. It may well be they were lying, or they may have been referring to infrastructure.
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Some Tips for Shopping Amazon... (Score:3)
1. Compare by unit quantity (count, volume, weight, etc.): https://bangyourbuck.com/
2. Filter-out the crap reviews (don't depend on Amazon of the FTC): https://reviewmeta.com/
3. Only consider items with at least 1000 reviews (for items expected to be popular). This allows new products to have time in buyer's hands, and for problems to arise.
4. Take a very close look at items that have more 1-star reviews than 2-star or 3-star. These low reviews can sometimes take a while to arrive, and is the reason for the prior tip.
5. Prefer items whose 4-star and 5-star reviews sum to over 90%. This can be a little rare, but always avoid going below the mid-80s. Notice that I look at the top reviews last: They're really not that important until there are enough to matter.
6. Put items on your Shopping List (instead of in your cart), then let them sit at least overnight, but preferably for a week or so. This will not only help avoid impulse buys, but will also help avoid items that "churn" to escape negative reviews. So many times I've seen an item start with great reviews, then sink, then disappear. ALWAYS do this with electronics, especially accessories like USB hubs or Bluetooth headsets. Junk on Amazon seems to come and go like boomerangs...
Using the above approach cuts my time on Amazon and gets me quality products at great prices.
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Also Tip 0.5: Don't.
The trouble with not shopping Amazon... (Score:2)
Example: I don't buy groceries from Amazon, because there's a grocery store nearby.
Absolutely everything I order from Amazon is something I can't get some other way. Because shopping has always sucked. You drive to the store to get something you want, and... they ain't got it.
Yeah, there are other sites like Amazon I could use instead. The problem with those other sites is they're like Amazon in every way. It's the nature of things.
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One more thing: I don't pay too much attention to the Seller rating or number of sales. Yes, of course established highly-rated sellers are great. But the new upstarts can also be great, but may need a little time to find their way. So I focus on the products, and only look at the Seller to break a tie.
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And another thing: Be sure to check the price search engines before making any significant purchase on Amazon. I've been amazed how often Walmart, Target, Ikea, Home Depot or Lowe's will have the same (or better) deal, with same-day pickup if you are in a rush.
This always applies if you are not a Prime member. If you are a Prime member, remember to check for free shipping, or allow for shipping costs.
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3. Only consider items with at least 1000 reviews (for items expected to be popular). This allows new products to have time in buyer's hands, and for problems to arise.
Two words of caution on this one. First, most of the products caught up in this sweep had well over 1,000 reviews. Beware new products or niche products with what feels like too many reviews. Also, expensive niche product probably won't hit that 1,000 threshold. I'd not expect a $900 oscilloscope to have a ton of reviews.
The other, bigger issue is this: Make sure the reviews are for the product you are looking at. Scammy sellers can actually hijack old listings for completely different products. I have no
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I save a lot of money every week by adding stuff to my Amazon cart, then waiting a day.
I go back and look at it and I remove 95% of it, sometimes 100%. After a day of reflection I realize that it's mostly just shit I don't really need and don't really want.
As in, I thought I wanted it (at the time) but a day or two later I realize that, nah, I don't really want it after all.
The stuff that stays in there for a day or two may get purchased, depending what I actually need.
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Wall of text has some good points. Basically, though, I try to look elsewhere than at Amazon these days, though the others have similar rating problems. And practically everything I've bought at Amazon in the last year or 2 has come with a "leave a 5-star review and get a $10 rebate" or something like that in the box. I do my best to not leave such a review. Then: I also skim but mostly ignore the 1-star reviews; many of them are obviously from other sellers trying to drag the seller you're looking at down.
Re:Leave us a five-star review and get $10 off (Score:4, Funny)
I'm thinking a bunch of Amazon employees got mod points.
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The biggest issue with that is that it is ILLEGAL to post a review you get rewarded for without declaring that in the review itself.
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The biggest issue with that is that it is ILLEGAL to post a review you get rewarded for without declaring that in the review itself.
Illegal where? You need to be more specific when discussing global topics in a global forum.
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It violates Amazon's terms of service, so they can ban you from making further comments or even from buying stuff. But illegal? [needs citation]
Oh really... (Score:1)
The TFC might want to prod the FCC into punishing the cable companies for posting many millions of comments against net neutrality first.