Top Reviewers On Amazon Get Tons Of Free Stuff - biased reviews, another WTF of many.

[RKP5637]

I hope I'm posting this in the right place on DU. I've always wondered about a lot of the Amazon.com reviews, some of them are just way too slick. I've written some reviews on Amazon as a purchaser, and then I've noticed I sometimes get unhelpful votes for no apparent reason. It just made me wonder ... I came across this. I well might stop reviewing on Amazon.com as I thought it was just regular purchasers submitting some reviews, now, I see the deck is weighted so the credibility of Amazon reviews has fallen way down for me.

http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2013/10/29/241372607/top-reviewers-on-amazon-get-tons-of-free-stuff

You're on Amazon.com. You're buying, say, a toaster, and you're checking out the customer reviews. You assume the people writing these reviews are people like you — people who wanted a toaster, went online and bought one. As it turns out, a lot of reviews on Amazon are written by people who are nothing like you. They're written by elite reviewers who are sent free merchandise to review products. In other words, it's possible that the guy reviewing that toaster you're looking at wasn't in the market for a toaster to begin with and didn't pay a cent for it.

As of Tuesday, Michael Erb was the No. 1 customer reviewer on Amazon. He has reviewed everything from doorbells to travel mugs to toothbrushes. "I have so many Bluetooth speakers, it's ridiculous," he told me. "I've got enough lithium ion batteries in my house to blow up a city block."

As Erb has risen up the ranks among Amazon reviewers, the stream of free stuff has grown because manufacturers have started sending stuff directly to him to review. "I have to admit it has probably caused a little bit of a strain on my marriage because my wife goes crazy," he says. "Literally every other day there's UPS boxes piled up at the door."

[Nye Bevan]

1. You can identify such reviewers by the "Vine Voice" label on their reviews (nt)

[RKP5637]

2. Interesting! Thanks! n/t

[yeoman6987]

5. I write reviews to Amazon

but only for movies or TV shows that I watch. I do buy a ton of other stuff but I always ignore their plea for me to review. I have a hard time thinking I need to review a sweater or toy or whatever I purchase. My review score is 66 percent, but I could care less really. I just have fun reviewing movies and TV shows. And if I help just one person one way or the other then that is all that matters to me.

[RKP5637]

11. I do some reviews too, but basically of products I've bought. I get unhelpful votes too sometimes

IMO for absolutely no apparent reason. I was reading today that for books, movies, etc. it can sometimes be a snake pit relative to reviews ... lots of people/groups promoting their books, etc. and then the competition tearing them apart. I guess Amazon is working to try to clean that up.

[madfloridian]

7. Nevermind... I found this link at Amazon to Vine Voices.

http://www.amazon.com/gp/vine/help

[GeorgeGist]

3. Apparently he's been demoted, Michael Erb now ranks No. 67,873

http://www.amazon.com/gp/cdp/member-reviews/A2N2FJ2WS0MWTV


Or NPR fell for his spiel without a blush.

[RKP5637]

4. That, would be a Warp Speed fall from grace. n/t

[lovuian]

6. I've noticed the reviews are suspect

be careful

[RKP5637]

8. I've also noticed on some products when I give a moderate to bad review, I get

unhelpful votes, like paid shills go around dinging people because they rated a product poorly.

[madfloridian]

9. Did not know they have a whole page for their top reviewers.

Interesting. So they are not that secretive about it? I never thought about it.

[RKP5637]

10. I had absolutely no idea either. I had thought everyone reviewing was basically other

customers. That said, I had thought some of the reviews were exceptionally verbose and detailed. I know I can be verbose myself, but I doubt I would ever write the exceptionally elaborate reviews on Amazon that I've seen for some products. What sort of torqued me off today, was I looked at my profile/reviews, and noticed a number of unhelpful votes. I thought my reviews were great! at least to me.

... then, I noticed a pattern wherein on my more critical reviews I would get unhelpful votes ... making me wonder if someone goes around marking reviews as unhelpful to demean the value of the reviewer/review because it was critical of their product(s) on Amazon.

Still, I find the reviews helpful ... usually they have provided very good information for me. Ha, here's a good one ... one product on Amazon is 'iffy' if it works well or not ... so I said, if one wants to try it, do so before the return date has passed, and I got unhelpful votes for that, like WTF.

[dixiegrrrrl]

12. Amazon also favors some sellers over others, and slows buyer's mail delivery.

Amazon is involved in a commercial dispute with the book publisher Hachette, which owns Little Brown, Grand Central Publishing, and other familiar imprints. These sorts of disputes happen all the time between companies and they are usually resolved in a corporate back room.

But in this case, Amazon has done something unusual. It has directly targeted Hachette’s authors in an effort to force their publisher to agree to its terms.

For the past month, Amazon has been:

--Boycotting Hachette authors, refusing to accept pre-orders on Hachette’s authors’ books, claiming they are “unavailable.”

--Refusing to discount the prices of many of Hachette’s authors’ books.

--Slowing the delivery of thousands of Hachette’s authors’ books to Amazon customers, indicating that delivery will take as long as several weeks on most titles.

http://www.thebookseller.com/news/child-grisham-patterson-amazon-protest.html

[RKP5637]

13. Damn, Amazon is more sleazy than I had ever thought.

[conservaphobe]

14. I wish I could land a gig like that.

Some people have all the luck.

[RKP5637]

15. It would be nice! I did some reviews when epinions.com was around, they

used to pay you a little based on reviews and ratings. I think they sent me $10. Mine were all honest, just reviewing stuff I had actually purchased. I don't know if they still do that or not, I thought they has stopped. I see their web site still works ... http://epinions.com

[nolabels]

16. The answer is to read as many reviews as you can stomach

And the more reviews there and you read the better chance you have. Try alternating also, from most to least recommended, from oldest to newest. Sometimes the products change and other times the whole line is included in the same review.

Also figure, people originating this or parts of the story might have vested interests of many we don't know about.

I would suspect at first glance something from today's NPR might be biased also

[RKP5637]

17. ... hmmm, same here, when I saw NPR. There are so many shenanigans

anymore it gets more and more difficult to cut through the BS. Yep, all good recommendations you make!

[nolabels]

19. The best thing i like about Amazon or just being able to buy something online in general

Is that you can get things you need that nobody carries locally, fast if needed and without having call every Tom, Dick and Harry in the phone book. Yea price is important but when you need a part for a piece of equipment that's down and it's costing four hundred to a thousand dollars or more a day because it's not working then prices become secondary to the issue.

[RKP5637]

21. Yep, same here. I use Amazon a lot, really have never had problems. n/t

[pecwae]

18. Happened to me as well.

I've only done a handful of reviews and wind up with scads of unhelpful votes. I just stopped doing them. I wasn't even aware that free stuff was given to reviewers. Now I feel better about my decision to stop reviewing and my decision to stop the Prime ripoff.

[jmowreader]

20. I really hate Amazon's "everything needs a review" policy

Last year I bought three Ethernet cables. I use cables of different colors because it's easier to troubleshoot the network later on, so I ordered a red one, a white one and a purple one. (I already had a blue one.) About a week later I got an e-mail from Amazon asking for three reviews...one for each cable. What are you going to say about an Ethernet cable? They either work or they don't, and they're either long enough or they're not.