<story><title>Fake Amazon reviews &apos;being sold in bulk&apos; online</title><url>https://www.bbc.com/news/business-56069472</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>lordnacho</author><text>But a cable is such a simple item to find out if it&amp;#x27;s broken, it takes 5 seconds,  plus I can just buy two and be 99% sure I have one that works.&lt;p&gt;Akerlöf doesn&amp;#x27;t seem to apply here, there&amp;#x27;s no hidden information that comes out later. With a car there&amp;#x27;s all sorts of dimensions to it that might annoy you.&lt;p&gt;Perhaps the idea is that all cables will go to crap eventually, but my detection cost is also fairly low on that. Additionally, and this is probably not a great dynamic, I can go to the website of a box-store, which will carry some of the same brands, presumeably vetted more than the junk shop.</text></item><item><author>gwd</author><text>&amp;gt; My personal experience with Amazon is that it&amp;#x27;s the shop to go to for stuff that is ok if it is broken. If I buy a cable for £10, and there&amp;#x27;s a 10% chance it&amp;#x27;s faulty, it&amp;#x27;s not a huge problem for me.&lt;p&gt;I&amp;#x27;m rather surprised at that, from someone who claims to be an economic grad.  First of all, you must realize that that 10% isn&amp;#x27;t stable: the &amp;quot;Market for Lemons&amp;quot; effect will guarantee that if nothing is done to stop it, that 10% will become 90%.&lt;p&gt;Secondly, you&amp;#x27;re not factoring in either your time or the opportunity cost of having to buy your second cable.  If you order your cable and it arrives the next day but broken, you spend at least an hour figuring out that it&amp;#x27;s broken, and then have to order another one, and then wait at least another day for it to come.</text></item><item><author>lordnacho</author><text>As an economics grad, I always wondered why online reviews existed at all. There&amp;#x27;s no skin in the game for anyone.&lt;p&gt;If your neighbor recommends you a crap lawnmower, he&amp;#x27;ll have to explain to you why he thought it was good. You can ask him questions and compare his motivations to yours. He&amp;#x27;ll also end up living next to a badly mowed lawn if he doesn&amp;#x27;t put some work into it.&lt;p&gt;The seller has every reason to pay people to write good reviews. He doesn&amp;#x27;t even need real people, it&amp;#x27;s the internet and you can invent people, complete with their own unique photos and profiles.&lt;p&gt;Basically, honesty is expensive and cheating is cheap. Why would we trust it?&lt;p&gt;My personal experience with Amazon is that it&amp;#x27;s the shop to go to for stuff that is ok if it is broken. If I buy a cable for £10, and there&amp;#x27;s a 10% chance it&amp;#x27;s faulty, it&amp;#x27;s not a huge problem for me. The other use case is where the guarantee comes from the brand. I&amp;#x27;m not sure why but I tend to think if I buy an iPhone on Amazon, it will be the genuine thing from Apple, and I have history with Apple apart from Amazon reviews.</text></item><item><author>kioleanu</author><text>Amazon has a problem with fake reviews and it seems they are ok with it.&lt;p&gt;I bought a replacement screen from Amazon and it wasn’t working properly. I thought I did something wrong so I contacted the seller&amp;#x2F;manufacturer and they told: oh yeah, it‘s defective, we‘ll just give you your money back. I agreed and then the person said „cool, now in order to process your request, please click these buttons on Amazon” and they sent me a screenshot showing how to leave a 5 star review. wtf.&lt;p&gt;I refused and asked them to process the refund. First they said they can’t process the refund technically without me pressing those buttons and then that their job depends on it.&lt;p&gt;I requested a refund through Amazon and tried leaving a 1-star review saying that the product was defective and the seller tried to condition me into giving them a 5 star review. This review was not accepted by Amazon, saying that seller feedback should be given on the seller page.  This does make sense if you have multiple sellers selling the same product, but it was not the case here. These guys were the only ones producing and selling it and if the score of 5-star reviews is from people being coerced to leave a review, then it should be there, not on the seller page where it’s very easily buried.&lt;p&gt;In the end I also contacted Amazon support with screenshots and I had to explain the problem 3 times as the customer representative said they didn’t understand what more can they do since I already received my refund. I’m the end, they said “they forwarded the message to the proper department, have a nice day”</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>bbarnett</author><text>&lt;i&gt;But a cable is such a simple item to find out if it&amp;#x27;s broken&lt;/i&gt;&lt;p&gt;5 seconds?!&lt;p&gt;Poor assumption.  You&amp;#x27;re presuming this is &amp;quot;only the types of cables you buy&amp;quot;.  Many times I buy cables to do things with devices, for which I have no working cable already.&lt;p&gt;Examples:&lt;p&gt;* My device stops syncing with my cable.  Is it the device, or the cable?  I buy a replacement cable, just in case.&lt;p&gt;Replacement cable doesn&amp;#x27;t work.  Now I think it&amp;#x27;s probably the device.&lt;p&gt;I spent time here, checking to see what&amp;#x27;s changed, maybe an update, maybe a config setting, maybe something else.  Or, is the device just broken?  Do I send it away for repair?&lt;p&gt;* I want a cable to use with something I&amp;#x27;ve had for years.  Lots and lots and lots of examples here, all sorts of devices, like serial cables to debug with routers&amp;#x2F;switches, test cables, even just an ethernet cable, if you may not have had one before.&lt;p&gt;Now you test, and you can&amp;#x27;t tell.  Is the port on the device bad?  The settings you are using to connect?  The device firmware?  A problem with the port on the computer you&amp;#x27;re using to connect to the device?&lt;p&gt;Hours and hours wasted.&lt;p&gt;Worse, you advocate buying two.  Great.  This means that no matter what, I&amp;#x27;m returning that spare cable.  Now it&amp;#x27;s not &amp;#x27;5 seconds&amp;#x27; to determine it is bad, it&amp;#x27;s &amp;#x27;no matter what, I&amp;#x27;m spending 20 minutes returning something I never wanted to begin with&amp;quot;.&lt;p&gt;Frankly, I&amp;#x27;d rather spend $10 extra on some types&amp;#x2F;classes of $20 cable, to have it pre-tested even.</text></comment>
<story><title>Fake Amazon reviews &apos;being sold in bulk&apos; online</title><url>https://www.bbc.com/news/business-56069472</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>lordnacho</author><text>But a cable is such a simple item to find out if it&amp;#x27;s broken, it takes 5 seconds,  plus I can just buy two and be 99% sure I have one that works.&lt;p&gt;Akerlöf doesn&amp;#x27;t seem to apply here, there&amp;#x27;s no hidden information that comes out later. With a car there&amp;#x27;s all sorts of dimensions to it that might annoy you.&lt;p&gt;Perhaps the idea is that all cables will go to crap eventually, but my detection cost is also fairly low on that. Additionally, and this is probably not a great dynamic, I can go to the website of a box-store, which will carry some of the same brands, presumeably vetted more than the junk shop.</text></item><item><author>gwd</author><text>&amp;gt; My personal experience with Amazon is that it&amp;#x27;s the shop to go to for stuff that is ok if it is broken. If I buy a cable for £10, and there&amp;#x27;s a 10% chance it&amp;#x27;s faulty, it&amp;#x27;s not a huge problem for me.&lt;p&gt;I&amp;#x27;m rather surprised at that, from someone who claims to be an economic grad.  First of all, you must realize that that 10% isn&amp;#x27;t stable: the &amp;quot;Market for Lemons&amp;quot; effect will guarantee that if nothing is done to stop it, that 10% will become 90%.&lt;p&gt;Secondly, you&amp;#x27;re not factoring in either your time or the opportunity cost of having to buy your second cable.  If you order your cable and it arrives the next day but broken, you spend at least an hour figuring out that it&amp;#x27;s broken, and then have to order another one, and then wait at least another day for it to come.</text></item><item><author>lordnacho</author><text>As an economics grad, I always wondered why online reviews existed at all. There&amp;#x27;s no skin in the game for anyone.&lt;p&gt;If your neighbor recommends you a crap lawnmower, he&amp;#x27;ll have to explain to you why he thought it was good. You can ask him questions and compare his motivations to yours. He&amp;#x27;ll also end up living next to a badly mowed lawn if he doesn&amp;#x27;t put some work into it.&lt;p&gt;The seller has every reason to pay people to write good reviews. He doesn&amp;#x27;t even need real people, it&amp;#x27;s the internet and you can invent people, complete with their own unique photos and profiles.&lt;p&gt;Basically, honesty is expensive and cheating is cheap. Why would we trust it?&lt;p&gt;My personal experience with Amazon is that it&amp;#x27;s the shop to go to for stuff that is ok if it is broken. If I buy a cable for £10, and there&amp;#x27;s a 10% chance it&amp;#x27;s faulty, it&amp;#x27;s not a huge problem for me. The other use case is where the guarantee comes from the brand. I&amp;#x27;m not sure why but I tend to think if I buy an iPhone on Amazon, it will be the genuine thing from Apple, and I have history with Apple apart from Amazon reviews.</text></item><item><author>kioleanu</author><text>Amazon has a problem with fake reviews and it seems they are ok with it.&lt;p&gt;I bought a replacement screen from Amazon and it wasn’t working properly. I thought I did something wrong so I contacted the seller&amp;#x2F;manufacturer and they told: oh yeah, it‘s defective, we‘ll just give you your money back. I agreed and then the person said „cool, now in order to process your request, please click these buttons on Amazon” and they sent me a screenshot showing how to leave a 5 star review. wtf.&lt;p&gt;I refused and asked them to process the refund. First they said they can’t process the refund technically without me pressing those buttons and then that their job depends on it.&lt;p&gt;I requested a refund through Amazon and tried leaving a 1-star review saying that the product was defective and the seller tried to condition me into giving them a 5 star review. This review was not accepted by Amazon, saying that seller feedback should be given on the seller page.  This does make sense if you have multiple sellers selling the same product, but it was not the case here. These guys were the only ones producing and selling it and if the score of 5-star reviews is from people being coerced to leave a review, then it should be there, not on the seller page where it’s very easily buried.&lt;p&gt;In the end I also contacted Amazon support with screenshots and I had to explain the problem 3 times as the customer representative said they didn’t understand what more can they do since I already received my refund. I’m the end, they said “they forwarded the message to the proper department, have a nice day”</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>xxs</author><text>&amp;gt;But a cable is such a simple item to find out if it&amp;#x27;s broken, it takes 5 seconds&lt;p&gt;This is so incredible false, cable quality varies greatly:&lt;p&gt;- wires, gauge and material. Copper is expensive and some cheat using aluminum or Al plated copper. Gold plated terminals, tinned copper, etc.&lt;p&gt;- wire material and single&amp;#x2F;multi strand determines resistance and current rating, along with loses in the cable.&lt;p&gt;- insulation and sleeves can be made from different materials with a lot of properties, incl. max temperature, flame retardant and so on: pvc - cheap, rubber - expensive, nylon&amp;#x2F;polyamid - expensive, silicon - very expensive.&lt;p&gt;And that just touches the basics...</text></comment>