'Fakespot' Removed From Apple's App Store After Complaint From Amazon [Updated]

[turbineseaplane]

Amazon should buy Fakespot, not ban it.

Why would Amazon want an app to exist to highlight all the bogus reviews all over their website/App?

Or are you suggesting they buy it and then screw with it so even people thinking they are weeding out BS reviews -- aren't...and then they happily proceed ahead with buying something on Amazon anyhow?

Dystopian brilliance there actually!

 

[fernelius]

The bigger question is: How did this app make it through Apple’s review process?

I wouldn’t expect Apple’s review process to ensure that the app developer has Amazon’s permission in this case. Had they had Amazon’s permission, it would have been fine. The larger question, I would offer as others have, is why a company would spend the time they claim to have developed this app in clear violation of Apple’s requirements without having Amazon’s permission in place.

I have been incredibly frustrated with Amazon’s customer service and lack of management of reviews to the point that I decided to quit buying from them last October (and haven’t since). I contacted multiple customer service people when a company kept offering me money to take down my technical review of their product, which pointed out both good and bad qualities. Amazon Customer Service wouldn’t address it despite one talking about how horrible this vendor was to me on the phone and claiming they would see it was addressed. I kept sending them a PDF with all the emails with the vendor, which continued to grow. I kept asking for them to quit contacting me, and they kept offering me money. I even contacted Jeff Bezos by his public email address. He (or more likely his team) sent it to Amazon UK who claimed they had no recent orders from me, which was true — my order was with Amazon USA. I continued with Bezos’s team for a whιle and concluded it was an absolute waste of my time. Other reviews on Amazon for the same vendor even pointed out they were posting the review to get a free gift. Others stated they had been offered money for the review. Even captures of these reviews were included in the PDF packet for their easy reference. The company is still selling the same product to this day.

 

[Localcelebrity]

I am honestly surprised that the Fakespot Product team thought they could get away with this one. This is totally on them.

Either extend your platform to be a Browser app with this functionality with other retailers as well, or make a plug-in.

Of course Amazon was going to raise hell. If you want to be a flee on the back of a giant be good at it.

 

[turbineseaplane]

The company is still selling the same product to this day.

That's all Amazon cares about -- mo' money

 

[confirmed]

Why would Amazon want an app to exist to highlight all the bogus reviews all over their website/App?

Or are you suggesting they buy it and then screw with it so even people thinking they are weeding out BS reviews -- aren't...and then they happily proceed ahead with buying something on Amazon anyhow?

Dystopian brilliance there actually!

I’m suggesting they buy it and integrate it directly within their site and App. Let marketers and manufacturers write all the fake reviews they want. But Amazon can create trust with their customers by attempting to limit the impact of the fake reviews.

 

[turbineseaplane]

I’m suggesting they buy it and integrate it directly within their site and App. Let marketers and manufacturers write all the fake reviews they want. But Amazon can create trust with their customers by attempting to limit the impact of the fake reviews.

The problem is that Amazon seems to simply prefer making as much money as possible off anything and everything that sells on their site - real, fake, knockoff or otherwise.

It's fun to think about a more wholesome Amazon that actually cared about these issues, but they don't.

I personally know management at a prominent shoe company that had to finally stop selling on the site as they had no interest in dealing with the endless knockoffs -- even worse, the company was put in the position of honoring repair/replacement/CS situations with people who'd bought FAKES from Amazon.

Amazon doesn't care one iota about "creating trust"

 

[confirmed]

The problem is that Amazon seems to simply prefer making as much money as possible off anything and everything that sells on their site - real, fake, knockoff or otherwise.

It's fun to think about a more wholesome Amazon that actually cared about these issues, but they don't.

I personally know management at a prominent shoe company that had to finally stop selling on the site as they had no interest in dealing with the endless knockoffs -- even worse, the company was put in the position of honoring repair/replacement/CS situations with people who'd bought FAKES from Amazon.

Amazon doesn't care one iota about "creating trust"

I get that. And you’re obviously not wrong, otherwise they would’ve built this themselves. I just don’t actually understand it from a business perspective. What’s the issue with the customer seeing real reviews? If I’m turned off of buying one product, I’m not going to give up and forget I ever wanted that “thing”. I’m going to find the better version. And if Amazon has my trust, I’m going to find that on Amazon.

Speaking personally, Amazon has lost my trust (or never earned it). So at least in my case, by not offering a trustworthy method of finding good products, they don’t just lose the sale of that single product, they lose me as a customer. It’s for this reason, from a business perspective, the decision to not build customer trust feels like laziness rather than greed.

 

[Kierkegaarden]

The thing is, it's not just fake/influenced reviews on Amazon - it's EVERYWHERE.

Your Google search results? Pretty much every top spot for 'best X' is from SEO optimization and total garbage.

Those products youtubers are recommending to you? Paid ad spots are essentially bribed with free products.

Reddit used to be a good source of information, but lately there is a ton of fake feedback. Some of them are obvious and you can ignore, but I fear the reviews/comments that were written very authentically that were actually fake.

At some point here I think trusted individuals will have a lot of value where we can go to them as authorities. Particularly cranky, critical, negative ones that are willing to dig into the flaws and not fear losing sponsorships or free stuff.

You’re right — every system designed to help people will try to be gamed at some point. And the people that engage in this are proud of the creative ways they can cheat and mislead people. It’s disgusting, and this is the world we live in.

 

[turbineseaplane]

Speaking personally, Amazon has lost my trust (or never earned it). So at least in my case, by not offering a trustworthy method of finding good products, they don’t just lose the sale of that single product, they lose me as a customer. It’s for this reason, from a business perspective, the decision to not build customer trust feels like laziness rather than greed.

Same for me (I buy almost nothing there now -- requires a really unique situation for me to use them).

I'm not sure we are right about the greedy/lazy part though.

I'm **very** convinced they do whatever works to make the most money and ignore most all drawbacks to that approach.

 

[rpmurray]

Back in the day it used to be much easier for me to find what I was looking for on Amazon. Now my searches list all kinds of junk that doesn't even match the search terms I entered. When I do find an item, I wish I could be sure the reviews were for that item, but it seems Amazon will lump reviews for a lot of items in the same category together so you never know if the review is for the item you're interested in, or a different model of it, or something similar to it.

 

[twistedpixel8]

I am more tired of fake people creating fake reviews.

Reading “real” Amazon reviews is completely pointless anyway. Here’s a few examples:

“Haven’t opened it yet but box looks nice and I like pink. 5 stars.”

“I’m too stupid to read the instructions and now I feel insulted. 1 star.”

“I used it once for the wrong purpose and then I ate it. 3 and a half cookies.”

 

[Apple_Robert]

Reading “real” Amazon reviews is completely pointless anyway. Here’s a few examples:

“Haven’t opened it yet but box looks nice and I like pink. 5 stars.”

“I’m too stupid to read the instructions and now I feel insulted. 1 star.”

“I used it once for the wrong purpose and then I ate it. 3 and a half cookies.”

I agree that reviews of that caliber are worthless. And sadly, Amazon is replete with such reviews. I may have to go back to reading robot views. At least they were more cogent.

 

[turbineseaplane]

Reading “real” Amazon reviews is completely pointless anyway. Here’s a few examples:

“Haven’t opened it yet but box looks nice and I like pink. 5 stars.”

“I’m too stupid to read the instructions and now I feel insulted. 1 star.”

“I used it once for the wrong purpose and then I ate it. 3 and a half cookies.”

Along these lines - wouldn't it help immensely if they, as a starting point, only hosted any reviews for "confirmed purchases"?

It's amazing to me that's an option you can toggle on and off.

I get that they probably want to be "the review place", but it sure opens up the fraud door to not need to have even purchased the product to "leave a review".

I've also seen so many "reviews" where they say, in effect, "I don't have this yet, but I'm really excited about it!! 5 stars!!"

 

[pianoman359]

The bigger question is: How did this app make it through Apple’s review process?

Easy. Like this…

 

[kuwxman]

Yes, this app was breaking the rules. The bigger issue here, however, is Amazon itself. They continue to breed a site that lets scammers succeed, on the selling and buying side.

What was being counted as a fake review by FakeSpot vs what is Amazon turning a blind eye to? This site likes to rip on Google, but I’d argue Amazon is a worse company multiple times over.

 

[kingtj1971]

Really -- your best bet for dealing with product reviews is doing a little bit of filtering of your own on them. How many reviews does a product have, total? If we're talking only "dozens", then several 5 star fake reviews can really push the product's ranking up unnaturally high. If we're talking thousands? Then that's a good sample size to be confident the number of stars for the product is fairly accurate.

It's also about reading the text of the reviews. Does it sound like a legitimate review by someone who really used the product? A lot of the fake reviews I've seen tend to be short, with generic comments about it being the "best one they ever used"... that sort of thing. Others are blatant copy/pastes from reviews written before by somebody else, for a different item. So doesn't hurt to highlight a chunk of a suspect review, and Google that string of text. See if it matches other reviews.

I can't say I really went wrong with almost anything I bought from Amazon, but I was already looking for a specific, known quality brand of an item, or stuck to items that have been sold for a little while and had large numbers of overall good reviews.

 

[Rocko99991]

Fakespot hurts Amazon, Amazon asks for it to be removed.

 

[turbineseaplane]

It's also about reading the text of the reviews. Does it sound like a legitimate review by someone who really used the product? A lot of the fake reviews I've seen tend to be short, with generic comments about it being the "best one they ever used"... that sort of thing.

That sort of methodology is fraught with potential for error -- and you won't even know it necessarily.

 

[fernelius]

Back in the day it used to be much easier for me to find what I was looking for on Amazon. Now my searches list all kinds of junk that doesn't even match the search terms I entered. When I do find an item, I wish I could be sure the reviews were for that item, but it seems Amazon will lump reviews for a lot of items in the same category together so you never know if the review is for the item you're interested in, or a different model of it, or something similar to it.

When I’ve seen this happen, it appears to be an Amazon seller that re-appropriates a listing for another item. This is incredibly shady — build up a good rating on one product and change it to a “new” product that is completely different and sell that. The new item, then, carries the good rating of the old but isn’t anything like the old — probably not even manufactured by the same company. Looking through reviews will demonstrate they are talking about completely different products — items that would be sold in completely different departments at Target/Walmart/Game/LuLu/etc. This should be disallowed by Amazon and easily caught by a well-trained AI algorithm. If Amazon keeps a history of photos and descriptions for items, which they should, it would be easily proven on their side.

 

[turbineseaplane]

This should be disallowed by Amazon and easily caught by a well-trained AI algorithm. If Amazon keeps a history of photos and descriptions for items, which they should, it would be easily proven on their side.

Which means that Amazon simply doesn't care.

This isn't a new site, nor are they dumb

There is money in "looking the other way" on all this stuff.

 

[macrumors_12345]

Surely Amazon's complaint centered on the fact that the service provided no useful information.

They're Amazon reviews. Of course they're fake. Why do you need an app to tell you that?

 

[fernelius]

Along these lines - wouldn't it help immensely if they, as a starting point, only hosted any reviews for "confirmed purchases"?

It's amazing to me that's an option you can toggle on and off.

I get that they probably want to be "the review place", but it sure opens up the fraud door to not need to have even purchased the product to "leave a review".

I've also seen so many "reviews" where they say, in effect, "I don't have this yet, but I'm really excited about it!! 5 stars!!"

I’ve seen lots of these as well, and I think they result from Amazon sending email to purchases trying to get them to post a review of the product they ordered. I see the same in questions where they email the purchaser to see if they would answer a question posted against the product. I think requiring confirmed purchases would be helpful, but it will leave a big hole if Amazon keeps doing this. I’ve turned off all those emails because they were just clogging up my inbox when I did purchase from Amazon, but I think they do a lot to encourage meaningless (even misleading) reviews.

I think Walmart was doing this a lot as well, and I turned those off.

 

[SFjohn]

Lots of great reviews for ALL the top caskets!



View attachment 1807322

I will settle for chemical cremation thank you. No casket required! 😉

 

[turbineseaplane]

I will settle for chemical cremation thank you. No casket required!

John just saved a couple grand!
Smart man!

Five stars for that

 

[smoking monkey]

The simple answer to all this is stop buying crap we don't need. Instead buy local and support your local sellers. It may cost more up front, but if you spend less often and only buy what you really need, then the amount you spend won't be any different. Most people are unable to tell the difference between a want and a need unfortunately.I bet everybody could go through their place and find a trailer full of stuff they could dump immediately.