A Boring Dystopia

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Pictures, Videos, Articles showing just how boring it is to live in a dystopic society, or with signs of a dystopic society.

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We can't have legitimate consumer reviews interfering with our profits, now can we? (lemmy.world)

submitted 10 months ago by pivot_root to c/aboringdystopia

34 comments fedilink hide all child comments

An ad that showed up as I was browsing through the news. Bloody ridiculous...

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[–] [email protected] 88 points 10 months ago (3 children)

I used to be part of Amazon's program where you get free items to review. It's even worse than people think.

I left negative or neutral reviews that just don't appear on the listing, or the seller will contact you directly offering you more free things to upgrade your review, or they'll just relist their crappy broken product and hope the reviewers write positive reviews (a lot of reviewers would just get free stuff and then write something positive without actually testing it).

Amazon reviews are totally unreliable, and even those sites and extensions that try to determine if a product's reviews are legitimate aren't very effective.

I just ask people directly to share their experiences now or create a post on Lemmy because it's so bad.

[–] dual_sport_dork 45 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (1 children)

Also what they'll do is the product listing switcheroo, where they'll sell some commodity item that's not necessarily crap and get a ton of positive reviews generated for it, legitimate or otherwise. Then the seller will update the product listing to refer to a completely different item, but all the reviews from the old product are remain attached to it.

A lot of online retailers also filter out negative reviews for things. Sometimes this is because they're shyster bastards, but sometimes it's because the manufacturer(s) of said items bully them into doing it. Two I have personal experience with are Cyclegear/Revzilla, and Rocky Mountan ATVMC. Both of these retailers will refuse to publish negative or middling reviews for their private label "bands" in order to make themselves look better. That's Tusk for Rocky Mountain, and Bilt/Sedici for Cyclegear/Revzilla.

[–] WhatAmLemmy 19 points 10 months ago

The switcheroo is why I always start with the product name and model if I review anything. Amazon reviews are designed to be gamed this way though, so you should always check reviews elsewhere.

This can work in your favour sometimes as well. In the past I've complained that the product sent to me did not have the same brand or model name as the listing. I got a full refund ($110) and I kept the product, which has actually turned out to be pretty good. You gotta make companies pay for anti-consumer practices.

[–] phoneymouse 12 points 10 months ago (1 children)

I wasn’t even in any program, but once I left a bad review on a screen protector for my phone, and the company offered me $45 to remove it. That’s how much they care.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Take the $45 and leave the review up

[–] SoleInvictus 13 points 10 months ago

That has happened to me a few times. I'd take the money and update the review to mention how they attempted to bribe me to leave a false positive review.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 10 months ago

At this point I only trust reviews that have pictures or videos of the product.