[tomsaffell]

Does it bother anyone else that the three customer reviews on the product page all give five stars, and all three reviewers received the product for free in exchange for an 'unbiased' review? (And that fact is only visible if you click each 'see more' link at the end of the truncated review). I just have a hard time believing this practice doesn't create bias, even if unintentional.

I'm finding I have to work harder to parse meaning out of Amazon reviews than I did a few years ago. I don't see how this benefits Amazon, but I also don't see them doing much to fix it.

[adventured]

Amazon has begun firing off lawsuits against review stacking companies specifically to fight this type of problem.

http://money.cnn.com/2015/10/18/technology/amazon-lawsuit-fa...

[Wingman4l7]

Good for them -- BS reviews are poisoning one of Amazon's most valuable datasets: the gigabytes of human-created product reviews.

[Wingman4l7]

Some companies will provide the product "for free" but then -- and here's the kicker -- require the product to be returned or they'll charge you for it. I can realistically see an unbiased review coming from that process, but not one where the reviewer gets to keep the product for free.

[kiliancgn]

It is typical in the "Private Label Business" to generate the first reviews using this technique. And Amazon only allows this in their TOS if the product was provided for free.

I would be interested to build a tool which tries to analyze the reviews e.g. using Natural Language Processing (NLP) or Machine Learning techniques to get the "real" picture for a given product. NLP could help to identify the most criticized aspects for a given product so a potential buyer does not have to go through any single review.

I am not an expert in NLP/ML though. Any ideas how this could be done?

[ck2]

Completely ignore amazon reviews.

They are mostly bogus these days.

Unless you can find 3 star reviews, I usually read those.

[crapolasplatter]

I only find value reading the negative reviews as they are likely the ones done by real buyers.

Most people don't put any effort into writing a positive review for a product that does what its suppose todo or exceeds expectations.

I than take all the negative reviews and see the common reason for the product failure than determine if that is a concern for me ,before buying.

[mulmen]

If you think a review is bogus you could always click the "no" button to indicate that the review is not helpful.

You can also report the review and tell Amazon that you think the review is bogus.

Do you have any data to back up the claim that most of the recent reviews are bogus?

[ck2]

Yeah, all the ones that start with "I received the complimentary product" in some form.

That's a bogus review, it's paid. You might argue free product is not payment but the IRS would then like to have a word with you (ask the people who got "free" cars from Oprah).

[tass]

This is fairly anecdotal, but I've read some people's experiences with free products for reviews. They received products while they were giving good reviews. The products stopped once a bad review was posted.

Amazon also gives free products for review (Amazon Vine) but these are made very clear with a banner above the review, and will remain part of the program so long as they continue to receive a high number of 'helpful' votes on their reviews.

[crapolasplatter]

"Do you have any data to back up the claim that most of the recent reviews are bogus?"

Yes, after buying numerous products with great ratings and discovering that the people who rated the product negatively were often right about their complains.

From what I have seen people don't put to much effort to praise products, however they take the time to complain when they feel unsatisfied or burnt by a product.

I'm not trying to convince you or anyone but this methods has worked rather well for me.

[muddi900]

But tech blogs get review items all the time. Youtube game reviewers too. Most published film critiques are due to free critics screenings.