It's hard to do for sure. Think about how you actually read through reviews when buying something though - do you start with all the 5 star reviews?
Nah, I just look at the number of reviews, good or bad. If that many people bought it, it can't be that bad. So far that's worked.
Yeah, that did happen. I was charged for a piece of crap wireless charger and a package of Hallowe’en lights. I didn’t notice the charges because it was on a card I didn’t often use and wasn’t really watching. But I was absolutely charged for that crap and Amazon confirmed the number it was charged against was mine, as did my financial institution.
Congratulations. Your wife was a target of a *different* scam so her experience tells you precisely nothing about mine. You’ll notice I didn’t say that *I* left a review. The (now cancelled) account that made the purchase using my credit card and shipped it to me made the review and purchase. I thought it was a standard “brushing” scam (which is what you dealt with) at first, but it wasn’t. Amazing, I know, that your experience does not describe the sum of human existence.
Did I say I did that? Please show me where I did. No, the scam account that ordered it did that. And I know about it because I *did* report the fraud and cancel the card, which was part of the “spot of work” to get it straightened out.
At least one person here can understand the obvious. Thank you for restoring some of my faith in the commenters here and their intellectual ability.
Didn’t hack my account in this case, but instead registered an account with a throw-away mobile and my credit card. I only wish they were sending me stuff I wanted. Instead I received a crappy wireless charger and some overpriced purple LED Hallowe’en lights. If they’d been ordering me good stuff and I got my money back as well, then I might have to convince my wife. “No, honest, I didn’t order that Apple Watch and a new 3D printer. You gotta believe me.”Hmm.. that’s a great excuse to tell my wife. Honey, I didn’t order all these gadgets… someone hacked my Amazon account and ordered them and had them sent to me…
This is a scam called “brushing” (no pun intended given what you got) and is what I thought happened to me until I realized I’d been charged for the crap I got. Brushing is used to manipulate sales numbers. What I was hit with was worse because it pushed the cost to me.Something similar happened to me. But then I did receive a decent product, although I have very little hair to straighten. Couldn't understand what the perp got out of it, but perhaps this is it? Seems a lot of effort.The perp did not use my amazon account, and amazon claimed that no one at amazon charged my credit card. I dunno, it was delivered by an amazon truck. Does anyone want a $75 value hair straightener/curler combo?
You always had to take reviews with a grain of salt and use some common sense, but years ago it seemed to be much easier to sift through reviews by looking at the lower rated ones. My spouse has been burned by Facebook marketplace, which is worse than amazon, if you can believe anything can be worse. Now I tend to buy from more trusted sources.
I do something similar - I look for reviews that actually have more than "this is great / this is terrible" in them. Because what someone dislikes may be something I like, and vice versa.
Maybe I'm confused but Amazon charged my credit card and if I didn't complain to the bank I would have paid the cost. At first I thought it was an Amazon screw up but they denied charging the card and sending the product, but then it was delivered by amazon
This is a reason not use apps or browser extensions on amazon, best buy etc. At least not while logged in. I tried out the fakespot browser extension in a linux virtual machine, not logged into Amazon, and couldn't really tell what the veracity of it was.
