Amazon's Review Policy Change
15On October 3rd, Amazon updated its Prohibited Seller Activities and Actions in regards to reviews and included the following:
Additionally, you may not provide compensation (including free or
discounted products) for a review. Review solicitations that ask for
only positive reviews or that offer compensation are prohibited.
I remember there being a bit of a debate regarding the proliferation of compensated reviews and how they skewed the Amazon review system.
The sites that recruited “reviewers” for these discounted/free items in exchange for reviews are now scrambling to keep their business model afloat. Amz Review Trader is trying to rebrand as “ART” - but are losing sellers quickly - as the draw to provide the discount is much lower without some guarantee of a review.
I’m pretty sure most will agree that this will, at least somewhat, improve the review landscape at Amazon. Or is it too little, too late?
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Oddly enough, I’ve been contemplating this for a while.
IMO, it depends on what they do with the old reviews.
If they were to suddenly start removing those reviews, then that would be great.
Since it’s unlikely, then it would kind of be too little, too late. Especially considering how many products have those kinds of reviews.
Yes, I know that a decent amount of those compensated reviews are honest, but for the most part, you can’t really say that there’s no bias in a lot of them.
Of course, reviews to begin with are not always necessary to look at, although that depends on the product.
And then there’s always the fact that some people leave low reviews because of a bad experience with a seller, and they don’t even discuss the product.
@PlacidPenguin I know I always filter reviews by “verified purchaser” and that helps. Humorous when the number of reviews goes from (in one case from around 100 to 3 LOL)
@PlacidPenguin They’re already removing a lot of those reviews. I’ve had about 20 removed so far.
It’s about time! The damage has been done already, though.
Now if they would only crack down on the counterfeit merchandise fulfilled by Amazon and the design thieves who takes a shirt.woot design (or others) and puts it up on Amazon Merch to print (by shirt.woot) …
@narfcake I didn’t know people were doing that! That’s awful. Heck I didn’t know Amazon did shirts.
@mehbee To put it gently, it’s pretty fucked up. Some of the design thieves have been so blatant they were advertising the stolen designs!
@narfcake @mehbee
Sigh
That’s just ridiculous. (And not in a good way.)
@narfcake
What is needed is some sort of class action suit against Amazon as a co-conspirator in IP infringement.
It has to be big, or Amazon will ignore it.
@f00l I don’t know about class action, as Amazon does take them down when notified; they’re certainly better than other POD sites when it comes to this.
What needs to be done is suing the design thieves themselves; they are the ones doing it. At TeeFury, some artists have had their designs stolen and placed elsewhere the same night a shirt was featured!
A lot of designs borrow from other IP to begin with, so there’s some blurry lines in all of this. It’s akin to calling the cops on someone that stole your stash.
@narfcake
You sue one “designer”, you get another - or the same person in a new account. Amazon facilitates this and profits from it, while pretending to be innocent.
Amazon does attempt to actively police infringement in other areas such as music. If someone threatens to give Amazon a public black eye, a lawyer who has the resources, Amazon will start thinking about managing this differently.
What Amazon needs is a continuing news story about a big $ lawsuit that won’t go away, and the updates show up on buzzfeed and cnn apps.
@f00l The design thief just moves to a different platform; they won’t stop unless there’s financial consequences – that a lawsuit could bring. They’ve been using all the other print-on-demand sites before anyway; it’s just that Amazon has the lowest fulfillment costs.
Again, the tough part is that many of the designs stolen used the IP of others to begin with.
@narfcake
I know the thief will keep thieving and selling elsewhere. But I am betting the big $ comes from Amazon sales, and other other outlets only sell a tiny fraction of what an Amazon listing will sell.
In the digital era I don’t know a final way to stop piracy. But you can at least go often the ways in which the big $ are made.
I wish there were a practical way of stopping the thrives cold.
@f00l @narfcake
An equivalent to this discussion would be piracy in TV shows/movies.
Yes, I understand that torrents are not only used for piracy, but let’s be honest; they usually are used for piracy.
Even though torrent sites were seized, they kept on popping up elsewhere.
That is until the big sites were seized.
Unfortunately @f00l is right (I don’t mean it like THAT), that it is hard to stop piracy, but unless you go after the main players, you won’t really accomplish anything (think Whac-A-Mole).
Even though if you go after the major players the issue will still unfortunately continue, they will at least be severely hampered.
Hmmm… This didn’t come out exactly as I had hoped.
@f00l @PlacidPenguin Points taken.
FWIW, Amazon is lagging when is comes to POD, as they only offer shirts. Yes, it may be a matter of time, but no(?) thanks to the shoddy screen grabs sales and the Anvil blanks, the “printed/fulfilled by Amazon” isn’t a positive.
Word is that Amazon is where Joel ended up, so hopefully he is there to clean up and keep things clean in the future.
@PlacidPenguin
No IP piracy is great. But this example is not equivalent to home use piracy. In this example this person didn’t just steal in order to have free personal use or entertainment. This person stole in order to make money from the theft.
Both destroy the right-holder’s control over the product and deny profits to the rights-holder. Design-theft for profit also dilutes or destroys awareness of who the artist is.
@f00l @narfcake
True, wasn’t a great example, but… An article
I won’t complain about a good thing being too late - even if it is about three years too late.
Might this drive the scoundrels underground?
I’m glad to hear this but only because it’ll save me time. I hate having to scroll through all of those types of reviews looking for the purchase verified reviews. Never really thought about them damaging Amazon, I’m shallow that way.
@mehbee If you click on, say, one star reviews or “see all reviews”, then you get a choice to only see verified reviews. Wish that would be the default.
@Kidsandliz
Thx for the tip.
@Kidsandliz Yes, that should be the default full stop. I’ll start doing that because I have decided not to buy something because I can’t find a verified purchase review.
@mehbee Just as a heads up: I’ve received a lot of free/discounted items for review, and many of them show up as “verified purchase.” I don’t know why or how, but if you’re really trying to weed those out you still want to look for the disclosure.
@DaveInSoCal Well that sucks
@mehbee I hear you. It’s frustrating that there’s no real way to avoid them if you choose. Amazon should allow buyers to filter “discount” reviews, which would eliminate any that were purchased with a promo code. That would make the biggest difference.
That being said, there are a LOT of honest promo reviewers who provide FAR more detail in their reviews than “full price” reviewers. I think people will come to miss those reviews.
This is definitely good news. Fingers crossed they pull all those recruited reviews.
Bottom line is, I ignore all compensated reviews and I want to believe it was my personal complaint to amazon in mid-august that led to this. You can thank me later.
@ahhhpancakes Thank you. I’ve been meaning to do the same but never did.
I’ve gotten offers for free stuff from vendors through Amazon for crap I’ve purchased. Mostly different versions of something I’ve purchased & reviewed already…
I’ve reviewed a lot of things, all stuff I’ve purchased. Not sure how I’ll review the free stuff, though it would still be an honest review.
@daveinwarsh
It might be an honest review, according to your best intentions.
It would not be a useful review to any buyer, and makes it more difficult for a buyer to find reviews that are useful.
The only useful reviews are those where a purchaser deliberately bought a product, paid a normal price for it. and then gave a review.
I hope persons who left compensated reviews, or reviews for freebies and promotion items would consider removing those reviews. It would make life better for the rest of us.
@f00l Actually, one of the two items I’ve gotten is a “Pest Repeller” plug-in electronic thing to keep mice, bugs & crawly things out of areas. It’s been in my well-house for 6 weeks and there’s still damn spiders in there. I was about to give it a very poor rating (1 star). You think I shouldn’t review it??
@daveinwarsh
I think even @f00l would have to agree that if you’re leaving a poor rating even though you got a discount, that it would still be useful.
The whole thing with compensated reviews, is that they tend to be 5 stars, and despite saying it’s an unbiased opinion, the reviewer is still usually biased (even if they don’t admit it).
@daveinwarsh
A compensated reviewer who does accurate negative reviews is prob the only type of compensated review that wouldn’t bother me so much.
But really, you can just not leave a review and have a similar social outcome, perhaps a better one.
Suppose that you and others who received it free or discounted leave one star reviews and then no-one buys the item. Result: no one buys a shitty product.
Suppose there are no reviews, or bad reviews. Someone buys the thing anyway. The buyer finds that the product is crap. The buyer is tempted to leaves one-star review. These terrible reviews from gullible and remorseful purchasers eventually pile up, thus discouraging future buyers. Natural selection, so to speak.
But if you leave a review, even a bad one, for a freebie or discounted item, you are still corrupting the review system which has been abused to the point that it actually imitated its abusers, the original criminal type reviewers, and became a source of abuse in itself toward normal customers.
So, on the whole, I would rather than no one leave compensated and free stuff reviews, even negative ones. The damage to the review system may be greater than the gain from a single negative review that’s accurate.
Just MHO.
@f00l as a buyer, negative reviews are much more useful to me than no reviews. I assume a product with no reviews is new. Negative reviews are very useful, because they tell me specific information. Perhaps the buyer didn’t like the item for a reason that won’t impact me, such as the color being off when I plan to place the item in a hidden spot or paint it. Or not coming with required screws when I have a closet full of them. Sometimes it’s right on target, and lets me know this isn’t the right product for me. Very often, negative reviews mention a similar but better product, which leads me to look at something I hadn’t found on my own.
@moondrake
Amazon has banned all compensated and freebie reviews anyway, if I understand their new policy.
So a reviewer should not review such products, in order to protect the user’s account.
Perhaps Amz should follow up and at least make someone take an extra mouse click to view any reviews other than those by verified purchasers, at least for non-entertainment products.
There is no reason to have that restriction on book, movies, music. Yet.
I would like Amazon to add a prohibition for reviews for anything received free, or as part of a promotion.
And then I would like Amazon to start removing all reviews that mention compensation, in case the persons who left those reviews don’t have the grace to do it themselves.
This would leave the angry reviews and the reviews that were compensation but the reviewer won’t admit it up. But it might return “useful honesty” to being the social norm for reviews in the site.
You once had the feeling that most reviewers were really trying to be helpful, and understood that a number of compensated review was just like a bad traffic jam to the reader. A reader wastes time and gets no-where.
Compensated and freebie and promotional reviews destroyed the idea of Amazon reviewers being part of a trustworthy community.
The one exception I wonder if Amazon might allow is ARC book reviews. Publishers have been sending out freebie Advance Reviewer Copies to reviewers for at least half a century, if not far longer - perhaps publishers have been doing this for centuries. I don’t know the history.
At first these copies went to people who would publish the review or mention the book in traditional channels - in newspapers, magazines, talk shows and the like, and also to bookstores and book distributors. With the Internet, those copies started going to bloggers, and then to anyone who left a lot of book reviews on Amazon, Goodreads, and any other reading and books site.
These copies are usually bound differently and are smaller, with smaller type, and less physically attractive than a normal book. I own a few I picked up on EBay when I had trouble finding a regular copy (for instance, for a U.K. book with no publishing contract in the US yet. I know I own an ARC from EBay of a PD James book. Some people collect ARC versions of books as a hobby.
The reviews have the qualities you would expect - for “serious” books, you get serious reviews, even by amateurs on Amazon or Goodreads.
General fiction and the mystery/thriller genre do reasonably well with review quality.
Genre fiction that gets gobbled up by readers en masse - esp anything YA, romance, and unfortunately, much fantasy and SF - gets the gush treatment.
With romance, everyone always seems to love everything, whether the reader paid or got a freebie. With YA, SF, and fantasy, a lot of reviews have a “moonstruck silly immature” quality which is a commentary on the reviewer, not the books. And these genres seem to spark absurd flame wars and takings sides and trashing the disbelievers. Again, the quality of the review has little to do with whether the book was paid for - many reviews in these genres are simply useless, and the only thing to do is to sort by quality or helpfulness of review.
In non-fiction, the same rules apply. Serious topics usually get thoughtful treatment by persons whose thoughts are worth the reading. Silly topics, trendy stuff, and highly partisan topics (politics, economics, religion, anything new age, cult or off-beat health and medicine books that will “transform your life” and lots more) types of books attracts swarms or garbage reviews, whatever the qualities of the book.
Again, the only thing to do in these areas is sort by “most helpful” or whatever Amazon is calling the “review the review” grading results.
@f00l I feel like book reviews have their own rules, really. You invest time in reading a book - no matter the money spent, you’ve spent your own time. So I think that the cost of the book is almost negligible in this instance. Whereas with most product reviews, the discount received has likely increased the value of the product to the reviewer.
@Thumperchick
Yeah, reviews of creative arts and media trad products such as books, much, audio theater and narrative, film, might be exempt. Diff cultural behavior sees to apply.
I don’t know what Amz’s policy is for media reviews.
@f00l with book and film reviews, I am not looking for “quality”, but rather enjoyability. There are a lot of very good books I wouldn’t enjoy reading, and some not very good ones that I’ve really enjoyed. I developed a taste for YA fiction in recent years, and while I find it very relaxing and much of it uplifting, none of it is classifiable as Great Literature. So in book reviews I look for reviewers who seem to seek the same literary elements I do, and take their advice on reading material.
@moondrake
For entertainment reviews, I sort by quality and scan a few in each star rating. That gives me an idea pretty quickly.
Actually, I own so much un-watched, un-read, un-listened-to stuff I won’t get to what I own in my lifetime. I don’t have to shelve and dust the digital stuff, which gives me an excuse to have zero self-discipline and purchase interesting stuff on sale for $1 or $2.
I have found this discussion very educational and interesting. It has fulfilled my immediate curiosity about what several “opinion leaders” here at the meh.com site think about Amazon’s review policies.
(Non-compensated reader although I receive special mediocre benefits through the meh VMP program)
@therealjrn
You have been compensated by being entertained by drivel and silliness in the Meh site. Admit it.
I believe you should, in future, put a disclaimer disclosing that you have received free entertainment value from this site on all your reviews here.
Has anyone asked about @cshillaber’s opinion on this?
@narfcake
I believe you did.
This explains why ART stopped harassing me to review an item that I still hadn’t received.
It was my first experience with them, and I had already figured it would of been my last since I received emails about every two days to review a thing that I hadn’t received. I wonder how many people reviewed items they hadn’t even gotten because of the harassing emails.
@RiotDemon I’ve had that happen a few times for a product that was coming from overseas. There should have been a “dude, slow shipping is slow, quit bugging me” button.
I still don’t get why Amazon seemingly allows “product” reviews that are obviously commentary on some aspect of the delivery of the item. I often see things, for example, a DVD or game, that are all 4 or 5 stars except one 1-star that says something like “case same cracked, should have used more bubble wrap”. If they’re too dim to know the difference between a product review and seller feedback, then their option should not count.
@Starblind
Those not-relevant reviews are annoying, but there are philosophical and business reasons to not police such reviews also. Even if the reviewer is a dimwit.
Free speech is going to allow for a lot of useless speech. What makes free speech s reason to always carry earplugs is speech that us generated and compensated for commercial reasons (which always obeys the rule of exponential growth to some degree).
*EXCEPT VINE REVIEWS, THEY ARE AAAAA-OK!
@thismyusername there is a reason for that
amazon has rules for the VINE program and generally speaking, VINE owner are knowledgeable in the area of the product, they also receive the product from amazon not the seller.
@communist right so all the other ones who give away product for reviews are bad, but when amazon gives away products with giant profit margins for reviews its good. got it.
@communist
no more snagshout for me
@connorbush I’m still getting review items, but mostly from facebook sellers. I created a wordpress site to review, then share on social media. It doesn’t have nearly the range that an Amazon review received, but the sellers can share it anywhere else they want so hopefully they find it useful.
I just started doing the discount reviews like a month ago… Is it all my fault?
@medz
Nah. @Ignorant had something to do with it.
@medz Make a website and do them there or on facebook. Here’s mine: HumbleDave.com.
@DaveInSoCal
Will the Douglas Adams quote of the day be everyday?
@PlacidPenguin yes. But i only write them during lunchtime.
@DaveInSoCal
@PlacidPenguin Updated!
I got an email from a guy who introduced himself as saying that he helps companies get reviews for products on Amazon.
He asked me how I’d like to try out products and get reimbursed.
He wrote that due to the change about compensated reviews, I’d have to order products like normal, and he’d refund my purchases via PayPal.
While I told him fine, I’m still undecided if I should do it.
He sent me a partial list of items which I could choose from, including this dashcam.
While I don’t NEED one, since I’d be reimbursed, the dashcam would be free.
There upside to doing this would mean that I can convert my Amazon balance to PayPal funds (and have more of a reason to buy a Nexus 5X or Pixel (the smaller version)).
The downside would be that if I don’t get reimbursed, I’m kinda stuck.
Thoughts?
@PlacidPenguin That has always been against Amazon’s TOS. It’s considered “receiving compensation.” You also bear the additional risk of not receiving any reimbursement.
You CAN accept the paypal reimbursement if you’re going to review on a 3rd party platform (like your own website, or social media), just not on Amazon.
All in all, the recent change in TOS was designed to eliminate all reviews received in exchange for a free/discounted product (excepting Amazon’s Vine program). While some idiot reviewers are playing lawyer and trying to interpret the new rules to fit their perception, the reality is that Amazon doesn’t need to prove anything in court. They simply ban reviewers and sellers when they think the rules might be broken. There’s no appeals process.
tl;dr don’t do it if you plan on reviewing on Amazon, it’s fine if you’re going to review somewhere else. Either way you run the risk of not getting reimbursed.
@DaveInSoCal
OK, thank you for that.
It’s not worth risking getting banned for a free dashcam (even if I don’t mention that I got the item for free).