Are user reviews on Amazon reliable?
Tomorrow and the day after tomorrow, Monday and Tuesday, the Amazon Prime Day 2021, a bit confusing name for what is not a day, but two in which the e-commerce platform launches the most interesting offers of the year. It does it, in addition, to the beast, offering thousands of products with discounts that can go from the ridiculous to the truly attractive, including promotions that last as long as the same appointment, others that last hours or just a few minutes while supplies last. Thus, Amazon Prime Day is an ode to more exacerbated consumerism, but it is also a good opportunity to get something you need at a more affordable price than usual, so it is normal that tomorrow and the day after you take a look or two at your shopping cart, wish list or wherever you have signed up the products you want. This is one of the 10 tips for Amazon Prime Day that we gave you a few days ago. The most important, in fact. The advice is: avoid compulsion. In its extended version, add to it the prior monitoring of the items you intend to buy, their normal sale price, offers from other suppliers and a budget of what you are willing to spend. It is the best way not to get lost among so many interesting offers of things you do not need. This strategy, of course, includes reviewing the opinions of other people who have bought what you are looking for, but what you have doubts about. Along with the question and answer section that accompanies the description of each product sold on Amazon, user reviews are one of the most useful tools a priori available to the indecisive buyer. Because surely you have read information in both directions. I myself have come across a couple of articles this week that deal with the subject, in the opposite sense of each other. The first was published by the communicator Enrique Dans on his blog, in addition, about his own experience, for which he had been censored the review of a product that turned out to be a frog and which he scored with the minimum allowed. And yes, he made a mountain of sand out of his grain, but compiling a recommended series of articles from other media in which they question some of Amazons procedures, such as customer ratings and even the supposed suitability of the Amazons Choice.  In summary, Amazons review system would be highly flawed, both due to the automated censorship algorithms of which Dans would have been a victim, quite prone to failure according to his example, to Amazons coexistence with important sellers, to widespread fraud between sellers and not so important  It is to read everything and not trust anything anymore. They tell that in the second article I came across, published in Xakata and in which they also compile a series of third-party articles with interesting data for the matter at hand. With a difference: this is about what Amazon is doing to try to prevent the purchase of positive evaluations and the example on which the rest of the information pivots is overwhelming: the expulsion of two important sellers, leaders in their segment within the platform . It so happens that these are sellers who despite incurring practices prohibited by Amazon, they sold quality products, judging by the comments on the news of their expulsion that can be found in the articles and on social networks , if these comments are reliable, that of all doubts one already. And it is that there are attempts to buy positive reviews of the most regrettable, to the point of offering the buyer of a product a gift voucher or a money transfer almost equivalent to the price of the product itself. This is another of the most common and most effective tactics, according to the data collected in the cited articles and many others that can be found with a simple search. They are effective, yes, until the reward proposal reaches a journalist. That was the reason why Amazon expelled these last sellers from its platform: because the case was made public in a well-known medium. Because knowing each other, these practices have been known for a long time and the e-commerce giant does not seem to have done much to prevent them, that is known; as it does not seem to be doing anything to avoid the outrages that its system commits against customer comments that are not objectionable under any logical parameter. But beware that everything does not end here, because if Amazon customers are susceptible to being ignored, sellers are also in a similar situation. At least the little ones. And with the same weapon: the reviews. It is a less discussed topic, but information about which you can also find if you search. Sellers fearful of bad ratings as a result of the rogue user on duty who will try some trick or turn around a wrong that corresponds to them to their detriment and without the ability to respond that is beneficial to them. Go to know. So sorry if you were hoping to find a satisfactory conclusion when you finished reading this article, but there isnt. All thats left is the caveat that you cant trust Amazon user reviews any more than you trust the product description. Which leads me to rethink my own presence on the site, but not literally. I myself am an Amazon user and tomorrow and the day after I will be taking a look in case any of the products that I have pointed out becomes available; and yes, some review that another I have left over time. I have reviewed them all to add my own conclusions  to realize that they are all positive. I have then gone through my order history to realize that I have barely returned three or four things in the last three four years. And I have bought a lot, and not just for me. I want to believe that the reason for having published only positive reviews is that I have a good eye, I worry about searching, reviewing and comparing, before buying, and that I only buy what I need or some occasional bullshit  And when it comes to the Returns, all were for ex post changes or because I had no other way to verify that it was exactly the product I wanted, so leaving a negative review did not make sense either. Because thats what happens when this type of news is published.