[acangiano]

Running anynewbooks.com, this is only one of the abuses I routinely see happening on Amazon. Most of the other abuses are related to the review system. There are so many fake and spiteful reviews, that in many cases it's really hard to judge a book based on the reviews.

I absolutely love Amazon, but they need preventive measures against these forms of manipulation.

For example:

- Prevent people who haven't bought the book from Amazon to leave a review. People may still abuse the review system, but it will be less people, and they'll make the author and publisher slightly richer in the process.

- If you complain about a book not being as good as advertised, you need to provide proof. Explain in detail what is wrong with it, and provide photographic proof, a scan, or send the book back for inspection. Issue a refund by all means, but don't just trust them and pull the book from the shelves.

Right now, anyone could tank any new book published on Amazon with very little work on their part.

[jdminhbg]

Amazon doesn't require a purchase to leave a review, but it's worth noting that if have purchased it through Amazon, they'll tag your review with a little "Amazon Confirmed Purchase" badge.

Requiring a purchase through Amazon would drastically cut down on the number of reviews they would get; lots of people own lots of books and movies and albums they purchased before Amazon existed and can give good reviews of them. I don't think it's reasonable to expect Amazon to shut those reviews out.

[acangiano]

I meant it as a change for new books coming out, not for, say, your favorite Pink Floyd album. Existing products/reviews should be, for better or for worse, left in place of course.

[axomhacker]

Part of why Amazon is great is it being a place where you go to research things. I'd hate it if they close reviews to only people who have bought stuff at Amazon - it'll take away too many good reviews.

[Klinky]

I think a lot of businesses are going to be looking at the profit potential of each product. If a large amount of people are buying the book & asking for a refund, eventually the overhead costs of processing returns & refunds will make it not worth carrying it anymore. This could definitely be abused if someone orchestrated a large purchase & return campaign. I highly doubt merchandisers want to get into the business of arbitration over the merits of the merchandise with their customers. Although there are less customer service inclined companies that make a business out of selling bad merchandise & haggling with the customer about returns, but that's not Amazon's business. They will probably just follow the money & if something is controversial they're not going to take a hit on their profits to stand up for it.

[tomp]

> This could definitely be abused if someone orchestrated a large purchase & return campaign

I don't think so. For a very popular book, the resources needed for this would be enormous, as there would be thousands of other, legitimate buyers.

For less popular books, noone would bother anyways.

[Klinky]

It would depend on how the algorithm worked & the policies are setup. In many cases those with lower volume products are held to more stringent standards than those with higher volume products just due to base costs. If a certain product is spiking in customer complaints or returns relative to similar volume products, then the distributor will probably cut their losses. Also what's considered low volume to Amazon is probably different than what a person making a living selling books or apps would consider low volume.

[epo]

I think that requiring that you must have purchased the item before you can leave a review is key.

Of course giving a bully pulpit to people who can leave consequence-free complaints and negative feedback is key to Amazon's bogus sense of "community".

[bugsy]

Hm, looking up a couple products I have recently bought, very few reviews for them say "Verified Purchase". Yet most of these reviews are helpful. The useless ones are ones that say things like "Received it quickly!" from purchasers confused that they are not buying from ebay.

So following your protocol would get rid of these useful reviews which benefit me and others.

In the case being discussed, the customers that returned it as "not as described" did in fact purchase it from amazon, otherwise they would not be able to return it to amazon. So they would still be included.

[epo]

I personally don't value the opinions of people who just leave reviews out of a desire to see their words appear on a website somewhere (and the irony of writing this doesn't escape me).

I do agree with your view (directly below at the time of writing) that the root problem may be Amazon's refund mechanism which requires you to provide a reason. "Not as described" covers everything from "you said it was a book, I received a bag of carrots" to "I didn't understand it" or "I didn't agree with it".