Amazon's user-generated product reviews. Can they be fixed?

[Jonas]

Now I've only ever bought one thing on amazon.com, but I will often read their user product reviews. They're sometimes good and sometimes not.

I know problems with these reviews are:
1) A lot of times on these review sites, people and companies will do fa_ke product reviews to praise their own products with multiple accounts and do the same to competitors. It's rather hard to require proof of purchase and even if the proof does happen, someone really dedicated can actually buy lots of products with many accounts just to leave fa_ke reviews.
2) Even for real reviews, only people with overly positive or overly negative reviews of the products tend to review them so it's hard to be balanced.

I do really like product reviews and amazon's reviews have lots more products and more reviews than any other site, but question is, can the problems mentioned above with them be fixed?

[ebaykilla]

i depend on amazon user reviews and i find them to be relatively accurate and good.

[ashyuk]

Do the product reviews affect where it shows up in results?

[rsot]

No ashyuk - reviews dont have influence on that - the amount of product purchased far outweights the results.

[nobody999]

you can actually go to craigslist and there are offers from people that will pay you to write a favorable product review on the item they are selling on amazon.

[Brainbuster]

I can't stand f_ke reviews on Amazon.
I have a system now for reading mainly the 4 star and 2 star reviews,
and also clicking a few more times to find out the reviewer's review history (or lack thereof).

As far as people on craigslist offering payment to write a favorable review,
I'd write the favorable review, get their payment, then edit my review to expose them, "This company pays people like me to leave positive reviews."

[kockedoff]

Originally Posted by Brainbuster

I can't stand f_ke reviews on Amazon.
I have a system now for reading mainly the 4 star and 2 star reviews,
and also clicking a few more times to find out the reviewer's review history (or lack thereof).

As far as people on craigslist offering payment to write a favorable review,
I'd write the favorable review, get their payment, then edit my review to expose them, "This company pays people like me to leave positive reviews."

Most people are willing to pay for an honest review, there is nothing drone with that