I thought you were screwing with me but you're not. Not only is it back but it has even more reviews than it did before. Before it was in the 4000s now it's in the 5000s. This isn't even willful ignorance, They are putting their thumbs in their ears, their fingers in the air, leaning forward and sticking their tongue out at their customers and regulators. This is a middle finger to all of you; Not just customers, but also small businesses like ours that would be tarred and feathered by every local and federal authority if we tried to get away with doing the same. And Amazon's going to get away with it. God bless America.
@@rossmanngroup Watching your video and reading the comments makes my blood boil man. It seems like nowadays nothing on the internet is real anymore. I know the internet has always been a place to be very careful with. But it's getting to a point where I have deleted my Instagram and other social media accounts and stopped using online shopping all together after getting scammed on Facebook market place and also amazon. Instagram etc. seem to have more and more bot accounts and lots of "influencers" who promote horrible products without any shame. There's actually a really good video if a German youtuber called "Marvin" who set up a complete fake creme brand with website etc. and said it contains Uranium and asked influencers to help promote and shockingly a lot of them promoted this fake product. He actually used Vaseline which was quite funny to see actually. anyway I am trying to see the silver lining, maybe as the world is getting more and more aware of these things it may help to push local physical businesses again which would actually be nice. Keep up the great work man. btw English is definitely not one of the hardest languages to learn haha but im sure you know that and just said it to sound nice ;)
@@rossmanngroup They exposed the scam! If you go in one of the product pages now it shows a color 0white (the ac) *and* (4.6)/Sj.119 which is just a bracket for farm doors.
amazon NOT removing frauds/scams from its website, is exactly the same as why facebook or google allows ads for scams to run on their platforms = they make money from it and they don't care who it hurts, as long as it makes them richer
There are also some obvious pattern as well: they always bought it for someone else, often an elderly person who aren't techsavy. Overly formal speech with outdated phrases and expressions, just compare and contrast with the scam emails.
Another sign I have found is reviews that say they will list positives and negatives, and then their only negative was "not buying this product sooner."
I saw a Lockpicking Layer video a few years ago where the lock he was opening was garbage, but came with a "give us a 5* review and we'll give you a $10 rebate on the lock"
I say this to all my friends: When looking at reviews on Amazon sort by 1 star reviews, you’ll generally come to one of two conclusions: either these people are idiots and its obviously user error otherwise you can conclude that there might be legitimate problems with the product or the item is a scam.
That's far more reliable than looking at the positive reviews but I wouldn't put it past them to leave negative reviews on a competitors product in order to make theirs look better.
Darn someone else can prove what you are saying I am sure you have found their CLICK BAIT logo? You would think BILLIONERS would be honest? They AIN'T...
@@coprilettodelnapoli5466 Even though "honest" begins with a consonant, the "h" is silent, so the word begins with a vowel sound. This means that "an" is the proper indefinite article. In the future, if you insist on trying to correct people over trivial grammatical matters, I would recommend doing a quick web search first to make sure that you aren't the one who is wrong.
I also think it's interesting when a product on Amazon has a 4.5 star rating, but 15-20% of the reviews are 1 star. I wonder what kind of math they're using?
Prolly some kind of weird, weighted average bullshit or something. Likely based on a million different factors that no regular reviewer can hit, but an army of review farming droids can get down pat in under an hour.
Amazon doesn't care if item descriptions are correct. For example, months ago I reported a powdered drink mix that claimed in multiple places in its description that it's caffeine-free, despite caffeine being listed as one of the ingredients in the product (along with a review stating the same, and reviews from others also pointing this out)...the page is still up, and still claims to be caffeine-free. And until it actually costs them money, they will continue to not care.
Thank you Louis. I submitted an entirely factual negative review of a truly bad product and Amazon would not publish it because it "did not meet our criteria." I am now buying from established, reliable sources, not Amazon.
Of course. You instead want to get the MOTBSIRTBRUBILI instead, the one that looks identical to it, has the exact same description except with different bullet point characters and titles, has the exact same product images, but costs $1 more. You of course don't want to get the $1.50 cheaper one that has the exact same product description.
Another thing is companies giving their products to you for free in exchange for only 5 star reviews. They tell you if you don't want to leave a 5 star review, not to leave anything else and send the product back for an exchange. Weird how they think even a 4 star review would be negative. The most trustworthy ones are in the 2 to 4 range.
My friend says the best way he finds real reviews is looking at 3 star reviews. It is usually the best way to get honest evaluations of a product's pros and cons. A 3 star review will typically be firm but fair. Critical of its flaws but praising what is done right.
@laubknight It is the auto dealership buyer purchase review/survey system, which in itself is all screwed up. The survery gives you a 1-5 rating, but the manufacturer when they go over them to pay the dealership considers everything but 5 a fail. 1-4 = fail 5 = pass. Making the whole review you do a complete sham since you can't make an honest review.
The really crazy thing is that Amazon could EASILY put an end to this nonsense by simply not allowing edits to descriptions for existing listings! Or at the very least, having a button that shows prior versions of a listing along with edit dates so you can easily correlate which reviews are for which product. Hell, even Facebook has an edit history button on the comments for a post.
@@Jirodyne Oh, I agree, but I understand that honest mistakes can happen (typos, etc.). Things like that should be allowed to be edited, but changing the product entirely shouldn't be an option. As I said, a the very least, Amazon could implement an "edit history" button easily.
Every time I have ever had to call Amazon Customer Support I get a guy that sounds like he is working from down town India. He asks me my name and what I called about. He then puts me on Hold for about 25 minutes and then hangs up. EVERY SINGLE TIME!!!!!!!
bro ive only ever used the chat thing, get connected quick, will refund something if it never arrives no problem, whatever the problem is, only rarely i had to call and that was to get in contact with the local delivery people for something. but like half a dozen times something never came or maybe got stolen from outside and they refunded or sent another no questions asked. plus you can respoond at your own time. i wouldnt waste time with the phone, never had to wait more than 5 mins except once maybe, and ive done this dozens of times of the years
Probably the same people who run scam call centers at night. Go watch Scammer Payback, Scambaiter, Trilogy Media, or any number of other scambait TH-cam channels and you'll understand what I'm talking about.
@@BroonParker Yeah ..John,Tim, Robert, Mike, Steve, Richard, Matt, Alex, Josh, Brian, Paul, Chris, Dan, Eric, Jason, Bob, Ryan, David, Mark, Greg and James!!!! If you hear Tony, Frank, Tom, Roger, Enzo, Gio, Cio, Leo you might be talking to a real person.
Back in 2013 when Amazon got the cloud contract for all the government agencies including the NSA, CIA, etc etc, I knew that it would be great for Amazon and not so good for us....
I'm convinced that the "manual" in "manual review" on large platforms actually just refers to you having manually triggered a die roll on their side of whether 'thing X' can stay up.
“Manual review” usually refers to a human checking if the automated process is running correctly The fact someone probably did this and concluded “yup, everything appears to be in working order!” speaks volumes about the sort of automated algorithms they have running there
When I made a comment that Amazon should be investigated for their business practices,people defended Amazon by saying that you can just return items, completely missing the point.
Id be tempted to scam the scammer, do the steps to get the card, use the card, then edit the review to 1 star and explain that they paid you for the review
Louis im very glad you decided to talk about the problem where the reviews are talking about entirely different products. I noticed this a couple years ago when looking at items and noticed that the reviews were talking about glass bowls and stuff when i was looking at a listing for something else entirely. It's a serious exploit that a lot of sellers are using to make sales by piggybacking on 4 or 5 star reviewed item pages.
I love that you made this video and Amazon has a commercial on Prime Video talking about how serious they are about getting rid the fake reviews. Coincidence? I think not. Keep up the great work Mr. Rossmann.
"Sir, we're getting many complaints about fake reviews on many products. What should we do?" "Make a video telling our customers that we're working on it." "Okay. How should we start getting rid of the fake reviews?" "What?"
@@CharEl7236 The First Amendment is only about the government and how it cannot silence speech. Corporations are not the government. The issue here isn't a constitutional one but a matter of Amazon's fraudulent behavior.
@@LilFeralGangrel Hmm, true true now that I come to think about it. I would like to think that an American company would have a moral obligation to be respectful of peoples words and criticisms no matter how harsh it could get. That’s just part of my thoughts on it tho.
@@LilFeralGangrel"corporations are not the government" technically true, but in practice in the US you can definitely see that they have some power over it. why else would they be able to count as people, no "donation" limit to politics, as that would limit free speech, yet be an entity that cant be jailed
A US judge just slapped the big G saying that it is improperly monopolizing online searches. This and Amazon getting slapped with being considered a distributor is finally two pieces of good news I have been waiting to hear in our tech dystopia. Now please, if only please, this means more than 0.05% of their revenue they need to worry about as a penalty.
Skip to 3:05 if you want to avoid the history & backstory of my older coverage. Detailed timestamps below to make this more digestible, as this is my most important video on Amazon to date, and I want to make it as easy to absorb as possible. TIMESTAMPS: 00:00 - Hey everybody how it's going 00:11 - Amazon scam 00:30 - Amazon quality going down 00:49 - Amazon reviews used to matter! 01:51 - Amazon's dangerous products 02:14 - Sellers bribe customers for good reviews with impunity 03:05 - START OF TODAY'S VIDEO 03:08 - Praise for archive.org & Australia government website archives 03:44 - Scam air conditioner 04:24 - review photos not product listed - EXHIBIT A 05:14 - 2500+ reviews in 13 days - EXHIBIT B 06:32 - 16000 BTU IMPOSSIBLE to achieve at 850 watts - EXHIBIT C 07:50 - bad reviews new, good reviews old - EXHIBIT D 08:23 - First review of AC sounds fake, broken english - EXHIBIT E 09:08 - personal anecdote 11:09 - punchline of personal anecdote 12:00 - EXHIBIT E CONTINUED DISCUSSION 12:38 - Reviews quickly changed from good to bad - EXHIBIT F 12:51 - Reviews appear to be of different products - EXHIBIT G 16:42 - Written reviews finally disappear, rating drops from 4.4 to 3.1 stars 17:03 - AFTER amazon reviewed the product page, Fraudulent 16k BTU rating is still in title and specifications of product - EXHIBIT H 17:11 - 4.8-4.9 star ratings for product listed under 3.1 star rating, giving customer impression product is still highly rated - EXHIBIT I 18:37 - ACCURATE NEGATIVE REVIEWS DELETED. These reviews were objectively correct in pointing out 850w cannot provide 16000 BTUs - EXHIBIT J 19:28 - Reviewers were confirmed to be verified purchasers were deleted - EXHIBIT K 19:44 - Smaller LLM can figure out the negative review was objectively correct in 2 seconds 20:27 - Amazon punishes honest sellers 20:46 - Boring technical background 23:17 - Dangerous items reported 8 months ago still on Amazon 23:39 - I don't hide behind "this is my opinion" to absolve myself of liability - THIS IS ALL OBJECTIVELY TRUE & EASILY PROVEN 23:48 - Amazon claims reviews are TRUSTWORTHY & reviewed by REAL INVESTIGATORS, that sellers who break these rules are banned - EXHIBIT L 24:51 - CSPC ruling needs teeth to punish Amazon or nothing will change 25:09 - FCC fines are 0.02% of annual profit for breaking laws and violating privacy policies in the worst way possible. 25:33 - Amazon might allow MORE scamming into the future if fine is negligible. 26:11 - Government agencies often ENCOURAGE poor behavior with their actions 26:54 - FCC and FTC encourage privacy violations and warranty law violations 27:25 - AWS runs the internet 28:31 - Why Amazon will NEVER BE PUNISHED FOR BREAKING THE LAW! 28:37 - How Amazon could be fined: enforcing antitrust law 29:41 - The government as much as they do means Amazon is not getting fined 30:22 - AWS being immune to punishment isn't perfect: but better than amazon store AND AWS being immune to law enforcement 30:47 - Antitrust used to exist in the United States, but doesn't anymore 31:50 - Explanation for audio out of sync issues 33:08 - Praise of Davinci Resolve Studio 28:11 - AWS runs the internet
I think last year, I left a comment on one of your videos about an incident I had with Amazon Customer Service. I called the official number, an Indian accent lady answered. I state my business and she transfered me to "the correct department" with another Indian accent guy. In less than 30 seconds, that guy was asking for my Amazon account's password. I reported it to Amazon and commented it to you and Coffeezilla I think. Amazon did nothing at all. Why do I need to give anyone my password to reclaim a product that got stolen at my building's gate?
I pretty much only read the 1 star reviews. If they sound legit I usually don't buy. Some of the 1 star reviews are like "it came broken in shipping" or "the customer service was shit and I never got to use the product." Yes, valid complaints but not ABOUT THE PRODUCT. But if they sound real, with detail, and are bad, I'll skip the product.
yea i also go to view most recent reviews to get a good idea on how frequently 1 stars are, also skip anything where people are shittin on the size of something that explicitly states the size
@@benstanfill363 sometimes honestly, I sometimes read the Amazon reviews for the hilarity of them. It's amazing how many people don't even know how to write a review.
Until we learn that 'the competition' hands out gift-cards for leaving 1-star reviews.... Nothing is sacred anymore these days! 😆 (in general, like you, I 'believe' the 1-star reviews)
Just last night, i was looking at reviews for a book on Amazon. Nearly all the reviews had the FULL name of the book and the author in the review. It was so weird, considering the book name is very long. Most people would not take the time to write out the name and author of a book they're reviewing! Rather they would say things like "This was a good book" or "This book was a blah bla blah." After a while, I started to wonder if the reviews weren't formulated by AI b/c they had this 'perfectionist review' feel to them...almost essay like.
If a teacher gets hold of the idea that you should all put your book review on Amazon as a class project or a homework, then you don't need bots to mess up the reviews. I know people who do this.
Given that sellers can take over review profiles for unrelated products, maybe it’s good to explicitly state what you are reviewing and include a picture. Amazon won’t do anything, but at least people looking at reviews could see that your review was for something else.
One of the most important life lessons I first learned as a young lad was this "Evil prevails when Good stands by and watches". This is the entire issue with our current society. All the good people are either to afraid to intervene due to what may or may not happen to them due to their actions or good people stand by due to laziness, or they simply aren't that many good people in the world. Inevitably it is why I despise my unvoluntary existence among a society controlled by a bunch of evil people whos greed rules every aspect of their mind, body and soul.
@@uzlonewolf Or... don't shop on Amazon at all. Ace hardware has free shipping on something that costs the same as something on Amazon. If I had Prime, it would cost more. I also find I spend less on crap I don't needs without an Amazon account. Now I probably DON'T need a 3M masking gun either, but I have to paint the upstairs and it'll help a LOT.
@@uzlonewolf Seriously, have you ever thought of just not using scamazon? Seeing all the fraudulent and faulty products sold there leads me to believe most people now swear by the maxim "give me convenience or give me death."
@@uzlonewolf Seriously, have you ever thought of just not shopping there? Seeing all the fraudulent and faulty products sold there leads me to believe most people now swear by the maxim "give me convenience or give me death."
@@ArtieKendall Same, I cancelled my Prime and deleted my account after Louis got banned for reporting on Amazon locking that one guy out of his home because a driver allegedly said the doorbell was being racist. Haven't bought a goddamn thing off their platform since and I've done my best to tell other people to do the same.
Past-washing is one of the worst practices on sites like Amazon. To capitalize on 5-star spam, and then send out crap, is the whole business model of the site at this point. Let's see if Lina Khan at the FTC has any fun she'd like to throw Amazon's way, hmm?
So I got approached by one of those scam review companies. Didn't know it was that till a bit later. I decided to see how this 'work from home at your own pace' thing played out. Basically what happens is they play with the rules. They have some part of the company that will actually buy the products but then immediately return them. Which is a 'verified purchase' but then they will pay you in some form of crypto currency(and it's only the one they want you to use of course), in exchange for you creating whatever wording and rating you want. I was blown away at this kind of thing. Such BS. All I had to do was log into a website of theirs, type in my review and their system handled everything else. I got a first-hand look into this scam industry and now know this is a thing for an absolute fact. Just stunning.
I'm not even an electronics expert, but when I saw 16k BTU, I knew that something is wrong, because a few years ago i spent an entire weekend shopping for AC units to coop the huge main room in our house which includes the living room, dining room and kitchen, along with vaulted ceilings, so I wanted to get a very powerful unit, but 12k BTU is the most I could find on any window unit using a US style 120v plug. Also, those standup units like that dont work worth a crap, theres no way its 16k.
That would be 16k BTU of gross output of the heat pump, of course the actual amount of heat the entire solution is able to get out of the room is about 50% of that. Source: I got one of these portable PoS ACs (not from Amazon ofc). These portable units are a scam in and of themselves, it's just the wrong way to do AC.
@@YS_Production No, you literally cannot get 16k BTU from a 120v plug. Not even at the source. And certainly not at the 800w listed on the item. Did you not watch the video where louis talks about it several times?
@@YS_Production Moreover, if a heat pump was generating 16k BTU, it would be generating 16k BTU, not 50% of that. Once the transfer into thermal energy is complete, there is nothing else happening to reduce the efficiency. The efficiency loss occurs as it transfers from electricity to thermal radiation.
I just purchased a handheld, battery powered air compressor for our bikes, etc. It was on prime day so about $60. My son also bought one on his account. We both got a letter in the US mail stating that if we give the item a 5 star review we'd get a $40 Amazon gift card for doing it. Our compressors do work decently well so far but this is a pretty blatant case of buying inflated reviews.
When you buy your ham from a local butcher who has taken over a 150 year old family business. ... and EVEN THEN you need to be wary when the gen Z son takes over.
No, I haven't been having a lovely day Louis. Thanks for asking. In fact, I just made myself some tea to drink, have a deep breath and (sorry for this I guess) watch your video and have some joy seeing you shred them to pieces and scream because you get logically upset (literally logically upset which makes living life in hard mode). I actually do hope you are having a lovely day. Edit: Hearing you trying to make an impression of your grandma's broken English with acento Italiano... my day is made. Thank you!! Edit#2: Thanks to people like your grandma who live 30 years in the US and never learn English is why I currently have a job as an interpreter. So I thank your grandma! Grazie mille, molto gentile.
Not surprised that an Amazon worker wouldn't care. The worst employer with the worst working conditions and the worst pay. Surprised if they'd be sane still, never mind responsible.
consumer protection laws are bad everywhere. Last year,here in Greece ,the banks were found guilty of charging way to much for commissions per transaction. They made more than 2billion euros while the Greek government ruled a fine of 45million euros. Guess how that changed their practices.....it didn't
I had no idea that Louis was Italian. I love his interpretation of his grandma. It's quite endearing. It cracks me up. I wonder if she is still with us... Much respect for going to the trouble of creating chapters on this video. It made it a breeze for me to find the funny grandma part to share it with my mom. 👊🏻 Louis should do a special episode, possibly with sous chef Mr. Clinton, in the kitchen cooking one of his grandma's Italian recipes. That would be epic. 🇮🇹👨🍳🐈⬛ Who knows, he could be the next Food Network Star! ⭐
Speaking of A/Cs TH-cam has been allowing those ads where some company drop ships those little swamp cooler cubes and advertises them as A/Cs even though they aren't. I have reported the ads to Google many times, and they did disappear for a while, but then this past week, they have come back, and now they are using AI voice overs from TH-cam tech influencers like Practical engineering to falsely advertise their products. I have multiple screen recordings of the different advertisements and was even thinking about calling out Google and TH-cam for allowing the BS.
Up in Canada I get advertised resistive heaters that are supposed to heat your room in seconds (technically correct is the best kind of correct if they don't specify the temperature rise in that time). They then have some sob story about how a student in some under-funded school used some physics principle I forget (related to the Bernoulli principle) to build a heater for the classroom. He was then kicked out of school when he refused to sell the patents to the heating and cooling industry (which is NOT how schools or patents work).
When reviews begin to make comments about features that the product that you're looking at doesn't have, then that is a gigantic warning sign that the entire review process is a scam.
It used to be just cheap Chinese products and such that had a greater probability to be a scam/illegitimate, now it is growing to be virtually any household product that you look up. A lot of people are just quitting Amazon and going literally anywhere else.
I reported a Facebook ad for a website claiming to sell scale figures. They normally sell for well over $100 and it had them listed often for $25 or so. Facebook said it wasn't a scam 😂 even after manual review 🤣
In response to your anecdote at 9:08, my own mom (approaching 70, so not a digital age person) has alienated several family members when she started texting... We found out that some of her last conversations with some people she was trying to catch up with went something like: "My dog died and I broke my arm and I might have cancer so I'm waiting on test results for that..." "Sorry to hear that LOL" She thought for I-don't-know-how-long that LOL meant "Lots Of Love."
Amazon product pages show the average review for all variations of items sold under that Parent-ASIN. 3P sellers learned this and list completely unrelated products under a single P-ASIN and rotate through availability/products but the reviews stay. This is why you see random products in the reviews. It is not new and been happening for years and Amazon does not care, 3P sellers print them money.
It's called review merging. If you google it you will see lots of tutorials for sellers on how to achieve this and get unrelated product reviews to show under a different one.
@@cjpack ASIN = Amazon SKU, so as @l0gic23 mentions below all the variations of a product (size, color, etc.) are different ASINs that fall under a Parent ASIN for grouping. 3P = third party seller, someone selling on Amazon. They may use Amazon fulfillment for shipping or ship direct 1P = first party, Amazon is the seller and shipper
The algorithm did it again!!! TH-cam un-subscribed me from you & many of my favorite channels (you, gamersnexus, linustechtips, & 20+ others) I’m sad disgusted and fed up how do I get involved directly with the right to repair movement. Thank you for the many years of honest and professional takes on how real the struggle is. I’ve been an enthusiast and hobbyist my entire life for computers. I have adhd and get it. Repairing & Restoring devices gives me real satisfaction when I see how much I can better their day. Thank you for the many years of excellence in public service Louis!!!🎉🎉🎉🎉🎉😊
That's good point Louis on the fining part. If it's such a small amount they won't care, here in the UK businesses can be fined a percentage of their gross income. And I believe this should be standard to keep industry standards up, and encourage best practices.
Louis, I seem to remember this happening to the Dymo label people. They decided to DRM their label printer which everyone hated, but because Amazon let them put this new printer in place of the old one (that printed any manufacturers' labels) they piggybacked on a stupidly large amount of 5 stars, it used to be a great printer! Not sure if Dymo backpedaled or not, when my Dymo printers died I went elsewhere for the first time since the serial connection first generation printers.
I've met people like your grandma and they are always the nicest people. I can see her doing that in my mind when you were talking about it. Thanks for the glimpse in your past.
I think that the root of the problem is that fast delivery is not available from the post or any other delivery service. What used to be a decent bookstore had to develop their own delivery service, but such a thing is not profitable without more deliveries than books. The bookstore morphed into a general store where anyone can rent shelf space for their products. Who is it that needs to differentiate themselves with fast delivery? The junk you would not buy, if you saw it in person at a real store. It has to be junk since the "bookstore" is still profitable. Most of the cost to the customer of the shiny gimmicky trinklets they buy goes to pay for your shopping experience, not to pay for raw materials or product development or especially not labor.
Louis: Grandma, I'm fighting a losing battle against greedy corporations and a government that doesnt punish them appropriately when they get caught! Grandma: Ah, thats a-nice! 😊
I checked out the listing. If you scroll down the page, there is so much fake product information, my head is spinning. They claim it's an air conditioner, heater and a dehumidifier. It can cool to 16 degrees celsius (61 degrees F). Rated 4.2 with 4790 ratings. These numbers change often.
That fuse video... I remember that one SO clearly, as I had an "Oh crap" moment as soon as I saw the EXACT same box I had gotten off Amazon not a week prior. Immediately paused the video to go remove it, then came back to finish. This is not just some case of buying a knockoff arduino chip or something that might not support future firmware updates... we're talking literal matters of life and the alternative to living, potentially, or at least severe damage due to fire. Big yikes. There really needs to be more accountability if we're to trust Amazon at all now.
Man, you hit the nail on the head and hard. I just hope Amazon would clean up its act. You know you’d think they’d have enough money saved up that they could clean up their own act and all. A couple years ago I had to return a product to them and I got mad and I put a negative review on that product and then on all the other comments below that were two stars and below I would click on the comment was helpful tab and I would go down the page one at a time And click on all the negative reviews and after about 30 minutes of me doing that Amazon takes the clicker button away from me and I can’t click it no more so somebody was watching paid attention and then shut me down from liking the negative comments ha-ha ha, ain’t that some $hit!?!! 🤣
Really appreciate the audio tone on this video, Louis! An actual problem for me has been the missing midrange and highs, for a year or more. Listening through iMacs and moto phone. Thank you. If I'm wrong perhaps TH-cam is fixing things for me.
I went back and I've reported the same previously black and decker washer i bought that has turned into a no name product but still has all the good reviews, at least 4 different times over 2 years and it's STILL up.
Yeah, at least I KNOW anything brand name is counterfeit on Aliexpress, but on there the reviews are real, and the prices are reasonable. I don't go there for brand name products, but I do go there for random items that I can't find elsewhere. You can buy absolutely anything there. So handy when you need weird fasteners or unusual router bits.
@Patrick-857 i've used aliexpress a lot, and i will say that asian clothes specifically will have a lot of fake reviews that are fortunately insanely obvious and it's much easier to know what products to avoid than it is on amazon nowadays. other product types however don't have fake reviews as often as on amazon though.
I love how you do your research, how you provide valid details and facts about scams and such things related to this, especially the parts where you add a lil bit of your life experiences which is very entertaining. Keep it up Louis and never change!👍
I hate amazon. Never have I even gotten a good product. If I see something I want on amazon my first question is "can I buy this somewhere in person?" It defeats the idea of amazon.
Bought a mobo from Amazon. Didn't realize it had bent pins when it arrived. Sent it to Silicon Valley repair to resocket the board. You'll get a kick out of this! *TURNS OUT THE BOARD WAS MISSING SEVERAL SMDS AS WELL!* Don't really feel like returning it as it's far too late. Never ordering a board from Amazon again. PS Louis if you're reading this I'd love to hear more stories about your family
This item i bought had 800 reviews. All were 5 star. I bought the item. Realized only after that the reviews were for other products.... i know truly no item gets all 5 stars but i know people get paid for some. I got the item and it was horrible. I sent it back. I reported them and was left on read. AND MY REAL REVIEW was not accepted because I made a reference to the fake reviews. The fake reviews were deleted after they were almost sold out.
More and more, I find myself enjoying in-person shopping more. Not having to deal with Amazon constantly losing my packages and delivering them to the wrong house, not having to deal with all of the scams, and not having to deal with the obscene shipping costs is genuinely refreshing. Online shopping only made in-person shopping better and more enjoyable.
Well, looks like Amazon gets worse over time like everything else in the last 10 years. Is it just me, or the bigger a company gets, the more trash it becomes?
Louis! I read an article earlier saying the consumer product safety commission determined Amazon can be held responsible for defective goods sold by third-party merchants on its online marketplace. Amazon "bears legal responsibility for their recall." Is this a win? A small step forward? Will anything good come out of this?
The Australian gov is a mixed bag with cyber stuff. They have a pretty poor cyber security record and we have an appalling metadata retention regime. But they do have a general ethos (federal and states) that citizens are entitled to access to data.
@DW11111no, capitalism is exactly the problem who always create economic giants that will always finish to take controls of government in a corpocracy.
@DW11111for real it's so frustrating. "My government officials take billions in bribes to spend tax dollars supporting these failing garbage apps and businesses, pass laws protecting the big guys, allowing every major business to offshore production, and ruin competition at the cost of natural capitalism, and it makes me so MAD, OMG CAPITALISM SO BAD DURRR"
Amazon lists prices on sale but it's actually original price. Also, they sell products for way more than retail value, but offer them on sale to limited customers with a discount (but still actual retail price) to leave a review to get people to pay the scam price. I paid $60 for a "$300" vacuum. After receiving it, there's no way it's worth $300. It compares to other $60 vacuums in terms of quality and performance.
“English is one of the most difficult languages to learn.” I really don’t think that it is. There are objectively many more languages with all sorts of nuances that are unfathomable and very difficult to grasp for foreigners. Like mine first language - czech. English is objectively pretty straightforward.
English is hard because there are so many (often conflicting) rules but at least we don't have pointless item gender, strict word ordering, much declension etc.
3 days ago I ordered an Electrical Device from Amazon, Made In China. Took 4 hours to Arrive. Vancouver, Canada :D There is a Warning on the front which States: "DANGER: EVACUATE ALL LIVNING THINGS BEFORE USE" [sic on Livning] DAMN SON!!! That's a Serious Warning. And fair enough... it's for a frightening Ozone Generator. All the rooms of my house smell like...Nothing Now.
To be fair, ozone generators can be very dangerous to pets and people (especially if they are in poorer health). It can cause permanent lung damage if you inhale it for prolonged periods, too.
Besides policing reviews, or at least investigating clearly fraudulent reviews, they NEED to change to 10 Stars, or better yet, a scale of 100. You read reviews on a product where the majority of the reviews reveal the product is a fail and it STILL has 4.4 Stars, WTF?
Didn't last long. It's back to 5288 reviews.
I thought you were screwing with me but you're not. Not only is it back but it has even more reviews than it did before. Before it was in the 4000s now it's in the 5000s.
This isn't even willful ignorance, They are putting their thumbs in their ears, their fingers in the air, leaning forward and sticking their tongue out at their customers and regulators. This is a middle finger to all of you; Not just customers, but also small businesses like ours that would be tarred and feathered by every local and federal authority if we tried to get away with doing the same.
And Amazon's going to get away with it. God bless America.
@@rossmanngroupLet’s hope they get fined by us europeans just like Apple is going to, because they don’t want to comply with EU law.
And the reviews still are for other products, they probably just temporarily removed them and put them back up
@@rossmanngroup Watching your video and reading the comments makes my blood boil man. It seems like nowadays nothing on the internet is real anymore. I know the internet has always been a place to be very careful with. But it's getting to a point where I have deleted my Instagram and other social media accounts and stopped using online shopping all together after getting scammed on Facebook market place and also amazon. Instagram etc. seem to have more and more bot accounts and lots of "influencers" who promote horrible products without any shame. There's actually a really good video if a German youtuber called "Marvin" who set up a complete fake creme brand with website etc. and said it contains Uranium and asked influencers to help promote and shockingly a lot of them promoted this fake product. He actually used Vaseline which was quite funny to see actually. anyway I am trying to see the silver lining, maybe as the world is getting more and more aware of these things it may help to push local physical businesses again which would actually be nice. Keep up the great work man.
btw English is definitely not one of the hardest languages to learn haha but im sure you know that and just said it to sound nice ;)
@@rossmanngroup They exposed the scam! If you go in one of the product pages now it shows a color 0white (the ac) *and* (4.6)/Sj.119 which is just a bracket for farm doors.
amazon NOT removing frauds/scams from its website, is exactly the same as why facebook or google allows ads for scams to run on their platforms = they make money from it and they don't care who it hurts, as long as it makes them richer
_IT'S ALL ABOUT THE MONEY!!!111!!1!11111!!!111!1_
And we can gargle their balls.
Or take our wallets elsewhere.
And we can gargle their balls.
Or take our business elsewhere.
Amazon needs that money. The next season of Rings of Crap is expensive.
Amazon cares more about abuse of it's "web services" than abuse of the storefront.
A dead giveaway at fake reviews for me is when their comments sound just like the advertising specs the company tells you.
There are also some obvious pattern as well: they always bought it for someone else, often an elderly person who aren't techsavy. Overly formal speech with outdated phrases and expressions, just compare and contrast with the scam emails.
Another sign I have found is reviews that say they will list positives and negatives, and then their only negative was "not buying this product sooner."
Or when they've obviously only posted reviews for fake products, or only posted that one review...
Ah yes, I too have replaced my shower head with a full sized air conditioner. Showering has never been better!
Cool
But was it sturdy and easy to assemble? And how is the picture quality?
@@0LoneTech it assembled itself, did my taxes, and repaired my neighbor's 1992 Honda Civic
Would you say that it was a ... Breeze?
Let the Freon wash over you. Now that's a cold shower!
I saw a Lockpicking Layer video a few years ago where the lock he was opening was garbage, but came with a "give us a 5* review and we'll give you a $10 rebate on the lock"
I say this to all my friends: When looking at reviews on Amazon sort by 1 star reviews, you’ll generally come to one of two conclusions: either these people are idiots and its obviously user error otherwise you can conclude that there might be legitimate problems with the product or the item is a scam.
That's far more reliable than looking at the positive reviews but I wouldn't put it past them to leave negative reviews on a competitors product in order to make theirs look better.
most recent works well. the bots upvote their own. most recent show real reviews with decent consistency
I look at the 2s and 4s.
Absolutely!
Darn someone else can prove what you are saying I am sure you have found their CLICK BAIT logo? You would think BILLIONERS would be honest? They AIN'T...
Whats bs is how hard they make it for legit sellers to sell stuff but allow the chinese companies to do what ever tf they want.
I feel this in my soul 🤬
@@TheInternetComplaintDepartment Ebay...same.
I have not been able to leave an honest review on a garbage product for years they get denied because of
*_" misleading information "_*
Fascistbook, puketube etc,,,,😢
*A honest
@@coprilettodelnapoli5466 yuore* moment
@@coprilettodelnapoli5466Lol bro, 'an honest' is the correct English spelling, back to school for you.
@@coprilettodelnapoli5466 Even though "honest" begins with a consonant, the "h" is silent, so the word begins with a vowel sound. This means that "an" is the proper indefinite article.
In the future, if you insist on trying to correct people over trivial grammatical matters, I would recommend doing a quick web search first to make sure that you aren't the one who is wrong.
I also think it's interesting when a product on Amazon has a 4.5 star rating, but 15-20% of the reviews are 1 star. I wonder what kind of math they're using?
I always thinked it's because the older reviews were canceled with time.
Prolly some kind of weird, weighted average bullshit or something. Likely based on a million different factors that no regular reviewer can hit, but an army of review farming droids can get down pat in under an hour.
could be that the second one is language specific
crystal math
Amazon math... That's a nice!
Amazon doesn't care if item descriptions are correct. For example, months ago I reported a powdered drink mix that claimed in multiple places in its description that it's caffeine-free, despite caffeine being listed as one of the ingredients in the product (along with a review stating the same, and reviews from others also pointing this out)...the page is still up, and still claims to be caffeine-free.
And until it actually costs them money, they will continue to not care.
It just means that they include the caffeine free.
If Amazon ignores your complaint, you may have to escalate to the FTC.
Dumping one's Amazon account is one of the finer things in life.
Thank you Louis. I submitted an entirely factual negative review of a truly bad product and Amazon would not publish it because it "did not meet our criteria." I am now buying from established, reliable sources, not Amazon.
Products with names like HSBDOTU4UAHBDIRJR might be a scam?!
I love my HSBDOTTU4UAHBDIRJR!
It's-a nice!
That's literally my brother's Laptop model code.
to be fair, whenever I buy a hard drive from newegg it always has some long ass name like HUH721010ALE601
Of course. You instead want to get the MOTBSIRTBRUBILI instead, the one that looks identical to it, has the exact same description except with different bullet point characters and titles, has the exact same product images, but costs $1 more. You of course don't want to get the $1.50 cheaper one that has the exact same product description.
At least it's better than HSBDOTU4UAHBDIRJS. Those guys!
Another thing is companies giving their products to you for free in exchange for only 5 star reviews. They tell you if you don't want to leave a 5 star review, not to leave anything else and send the product back for an exchange. Weird how they think even a 4 star review would be negative. The most trustworthy ones are in the 2 to 4 range.
My friend says the best way he finds real reviews is looking at 3 star reviews. It is usually the best way to get honest evaluations of a product's pros and cons.
A 3 star review will typically be firm but fair. Critical of its flaws but praising what is done right.
I focus on 2-4-star reviews simply because those are less likely to be fake.
@laubknight It is the auto dealership buyer purchase review/survey system, which in itself is all screwed up. The survery gives you a 1-5 rating, but the manufacturer when they go over them to pay the dealership considers everything but 5 a fail. 1-4 = fail 5 = pass. Making the whole review you do a complete sham since you can't make an honest review.
The really crazy thing is that Amazon could EASILY put an end to this nonsense by simply not allowing edits to descriptions for existing listings! Or at the very least, having a button that shows prior versions of a listing along with edit dates so you can easily correlate which reviews are for which product. Hell, even Facebook has an edit history button on the comments for a post.
No no, they should not even be allowed to Edit. They should be FORCED to removed and delete the product and page, and make a NEW one to fix it.
they want you to spend. they will never do anything that could deter you from spending.
Fascistbook 😢
@@Jirodyne Oh, I agree, but I understand that honest mistakes can happen (typos, etc.). Things like that should be allowed to be edited, but changing the product entirely shouldn't be an option. As I said, a the very least, Amazon could implement an "edit history" button easily.
@@mattelder1971 edit history on fb is great, wish yt had it.
Every time I have ever had to call Amazon Customer Support I get a guy that sounds like he is working from down town India. He asks me my name and what I called about. He then puts me on Hold for about 25 minutes and then hangs up. EVERY SINGLE TIME!!!!!!!
bro ive only ever used the chat thing, get connected quick, will refund something if it never arrives no problem, whatever the problem is, only rarely i had to call and that was to get in contact with the local delivery people for something. but like half a dozen times something never came or maybe got stolen from outside and they refunded or sent another no questions asked. plus you can respoond at your own time. i wouldnt waste time with the phone, never had to wait more than 5 mins except once maybe, and ive done this dozens of times of the years
We've all met that guy on the phone. He IS Customer Service.
Probably the same people who run scam call centers at night. Go watch Scammer Payback, Scambaiter, Trilogy Media, or any number of other scambait TH-cam channels and you'll understand what I'm talking about.
@@BroonParker Yeah ..John,Tim, Robert, Mike, Steve, Richard, Matt, Alex, Josh, Brian, Paul, Chris, Dan, Eric, Jason, Bob, Ryan, David, Mark, Greg and James!!!! If you hear Tony, Frank, Tom, Roger, Enzo, Gio, Cio, Leo you might be talking to a real person.
Scamazon.
Underrated comment.
Back in 2013 when Amazon got the cloud contract for all the government agencies including the NSA, CIA, etc etc, I knew that it would be great for Amazon and not so good for us....
love it! Hilarious! thanks!
Just being able to entirely change the product from what it originally was, on a site with customers leaving reviews, makes no sense at all
It does if you're a scammer.
I'm convinced that the "manual" in "manual review" on large platforms actually just refers to you having manually triggered a die roll on their side of whether 'thing X' can stay up.
“Manual review” usually refers to a human checking if the automated process is running correctly
The fact someone probably did this and concluded “yup, everything appears to be in working order!” speaks volumes about the sort of automated algorithms they have running there
virtual d20 rolled lol
When I made a comment that Amazon should be investigated for their business practices,people defended Amazon by saying that you can just return items, completely missing the point.
Amazon shoppers:🐑
The amount of emails I've gotten over the last few years that asked me to make a review in return for gift cards is insane.
Id be tempted to scam the scammer, do the steps to get the card, use the card, then edit the review to 1 star and explain that they paid you for the review
I just got one of those yesterday. My wife said to do it, but I said not until we know it's actually a good product! How many people just do it tho?
i once had a seller email me 4 times asking me to change my review to 5 stars. i complained to amazon twice, i doubt they did anything about it.
You guys are getting gift cards? 😭
@@legionofanonGoat💯
Flashlights on Amazon are like, “100k Lumens, 5 stars, waterproof
, uses 2 AAs.”
Louis im very glad you decided to talk about the problem where the reviews are talking about entirely different products. I noticed this a couple years ago when looking at items and noticed that the reviews were talking about glass bowls and stuff when i was looking at a listing for something else entirely.
It's a serious exploit that a lot of sellers are using to make sales by piggybacking on 4 or 5 star reviewed item pages.
I love that you made this video and Amazon has a commercial on Prime Video talking about how serious they are about getting rid the fake reviews.
Coincidence? I think not. Keep up the great work Mr. Rossmann.
"Sir, we're getting many complaints about fake reviews on many products. What should we do?"
"Make a video telling our customers that we're working on it."
"Okay. How should we start getting rid of the fake reviews?"
"What?"
@@gnomeam 🤣
Amazon refused me the right to leave a review after I bought a massager that died after 2 weeks 😂😂
Guess they don’t like the first amendment 😑
@@CharEl7236 The First Amendment is only about the government and how it cannot silence speech. Corporations are not the government.
The issue here isn't a constitutional one but a matter of Amazon's fraudulent behavior.
@@LilFeralGangrel Hmm, true true now that I come to think about it. I would like to think that an American company would have a moral obligation to be respectful of peoples words and criticisms no matter how harsh it could get. That’s just part of my thoughts on it tho.
Amazon probably thought that a NotoriousRawDogger could not be trusted to use the massager for the purpose for which it was sold.
@@LilFeralGangrel"corporations are not the government"
technically true, but in practice in the US you can definitely see that they have some power over it.
why else would they be able to count as people, no "donation" limit to politics, as that would limit free speech, yet be an entity that cant be jailed
A US judge just slapped the big G saying that it is improperly monopolizing online searches. This and Amazon getting slapped with being considered a distributor is finally two pieces of good news I have been waiting to hear in our tech dystopia.
Now please, if only please, this means more than 0.05% of their revenue they need to worry about as a penalty.
I've never heard "the big G" used to refer to anything but God and I was very confused for a moment
People need to complain to the FTC before they will investigate.
@@theflyingspaget I suppose. I'll call the Windows guy "Billy G."
Skip to 3:05 if you want to avoid the history & backstory of my older coverage. Detailed timestamps below to make this more digestible, as this is my most important video on Amazon to date, and I want to make it as easy to absorb as possible.
TIMESTAMPS:
00:00 - Hey everybody how it's going
00:11 - Amazon scam
00:30 - Amazon quality going down
00:49 - Amazon reviews used to matter!
01:51 - Amazon's dangerous products
02:14 - Sellers bribe customers for good reviews with impunity
03:05 - START OF TODAY'S VIDEO
03:08 - Praise for archive.org & Australia government website archives
03:44 - Scam air conditioner
04:24 - review photos not product listed - EXHIBIT A
05:14 - 2500+ reviews in 13 days - EXHIBIT B
06:32 - 16000 BTU IMPOSSIBLE to achieve at 850 watts - EXHIBIT C
07:50 - bad reviews new, good reviews old - EXHIBIT D
08:23 - First review of AC sounds fake, broken english - EXHIBIT E
09:08 - personal anecdote
11:09 - punchline of personal anecdote
12:00 - EXHIBIT E CONTINUED DISCUSSION
12:38 - Reviews quickly changed from good to bad - EXHIBIT F
12:51 - Reviews appear to be of different products - EXHIBIT G
16:42 - Written reviews finally disappear, rating drops from 4.4 to 3.1 stars
17:03 - AFTER amazon reviewed the product page, Fraudulent 16k BTU rating is still in title and specifications of product - EXHIBIT H
17:11 - 4.8-4.9 star ratings for product listed under 3.1 star rating, giving customer impression product is still highly rated - EXHIBIT I
18:37 - ACCURATE NEGATIVE REVIEWS DELETED. These reviews were objectively correct in pointing out 850w cannot provide 16000 BTUs - EXHIBIT J
19:28 - Reviewers were confirmed to be verified purchasers were deleted - EXHIBIT K
19:44 - Smaller LLM can figure out the negative review was objectively correct in 2 seconds
20:27 - Amazon punishes honest sellers
20:46 - Boring technical background
23:17 - Dangerous items reported 8 months ago still on Amazon
23:39 - I don't hide behind "this is my opinion" to absolve myself of liability - THIS IS ALL OBJECTIVELY TRUE & EASILY PROVEN
23:48 - Amazon claims reviews are TRUSTWORTHY & reviewed by REAL INVESTIGATORS, that sellers who break these rules are banned - EXHIBIT L
24:51 - CSPC ruling needs teeth to punish Amazon or nothing will change
25:09 - FCC fines are 0.02% of annual profit for breaking laws and violating privacy policies in the worst way possible.
25:33 - Amazon might allow MORE scamming into the future if fine is negligible.
26:11 - Government agencies often ENCOURAGE poor behavior with their actions
26:54 - FCC and FTC encourage privacy violations and warranty law violations
27:25 - AWS runs the internet
28:31 - Why Amazon will NEVER BE PUNISHED FOR BREAKING THE LAW!
28:37 - How Amazon could be fined: enforcing antitrust law
29:41 - The government as much as they do means Amazon is not getting fined
30:22 - AWS being immune to punishment isn't perfect: but better than amazon store AND AWS being immune to law enforcement
30:47 - Antitrust used to exist in the United States, but doesn't anymore
31:50 - Explanation for audio out of sync issues
33:08 - Praise of Davinci Resolve Studio
28:11 - AWS runs the internet
Oh boy, scam air...
Guaranteed to blow worse, than any of Rossman's sponsored air products.
An informative yet unfortunate highlight.
why would we skip your absolute ear-honey? you silly
Your smart videos exposing bad practices from various tech companies always makes my day lovely! KEEP UP THE EXCELLENT WORK!
I think last year, I left a comment on one of your videos about an incident I had with Amazon Customer Service. I called the official number, an Indian accent lady answered. I state my business and she transfered me to "the correct department" with another Indian accent guy. In less than 30 seconds, that guy was asking for my Amazon account's password. I reported it to Amazon and commented it to you and Coffeezilla I think. Amazon did nothing at all. Why do I need to give anyone my password to reclaim a product that got stolen at my building's gate?
Great story about your grandmother.
I pretty much only read the 1 star reviews. If they sound legit I usually don't buy.
Some of the 1 star reviews are like "it came broken in shipping" or "the customer service was shit and I never got to use the product." Yes, valid complaints but not ABOUT THE PRODUCT.
But if they sound real, with detail, and are bad, I'll skip the product.
Ditto. I always go to the negative reviews first.
Saw a 1 star review for a resin wristband for a watch. The review read "it looks like it's stone but it's plastic." yes... That's what resin is.
yea i also go to view most recent reviews to get a good idea on how frequently 1 stars are, also skip anything where people are shittin on the size of something that explicitly states the size
@@benstanfill363 sometimes honestly, I sometimes read the Amazon reviews for the hilarity of them. It's amazing how many people don't even know how to write a review.
Until we learn that 'the competition' hands out gift-cards for leaving 1-star reviews.... Nothing is sacred anymore these days! 😆 (in general, like you, I 'believe' the 1-star reviews)
Just last night, i was looking at reviews for a book on Amazon. Nearly all the reviews had the FULL name of the book and the author in the review. It was so weird, considering the book name is very long. Most people would not take the time to write out the name and author of a book they're reviewing! Rather they would say things like "This was a good book" or "This book was a blah bla blah." After a while, I started to wonder if the reviews weren't formulated by AI b/c they had this 'perfectionist review' feel to them...almost essay like.
Yes, AI has a very distinctive tone that everyone needs to learn to recognize! Survival skill for the dystopian future.
@@jessicav2031there's no way that level of suspicion won't be abused in a dystopia...
If a teacher gets hold of the idea that you should all put your book review on Amazon as a class project or a homework, then you don't need bots to mess up the reviews.
I know people who do this.
Given that sellers can take over review profiles for unrelated products, maybe it’s good to explicitly state what you are reviewing and include a picture. Amazon won’t do anything, but at least people looking at reviews could see that your review was for something else.
One of the most important life lessons I first learned as a young lad was this "Evil prevails when Good stands by and watches". This is the entire issue with our current society. All the good people are either to afraid to intervene due to what may or may not happen to them due to their actions or good people stand by due to laziness, or they simply aren't that many good people in the world. Inevitably it is why I despise my unvoluntary existence among a society controlled by a bunch of evil people whos greed rules every aspect of their mind, body and soul.
I love how TH-cam recommended this video twice
MONEY
I got this video am for my husband. He takes lunch to work with it every day! I give 5 satrs! Great gift for children or grandparents.
Haha, small enough to be used by man or woman, will make you very happy 😂
So good I will buying three more of it.
Cancel your PRIME! Amazon does NOTHING good for anyone that interacts with them, only varying degrees of harm.
I would, but then I'd be giving them even more money in shipping fees.
@@uzlonewolf Or... don't shop on Amazon at all. Ace hardware has free shipping on something that costs the same as something on Amazon. If I had Prime, it would cost more. I also find I spend less on crap I don't needs without an Amazon account. Now I probably DON'T need a 3M masking gun either, but I have to paint the upstairs and it'll help a LOT.
@@uzlonewolf Seriously, have you ever thought of just not using scamazon?
Seeing all the fraudulent and faulty products sold there leads me to believe most people now swear by the maxim "give me convenience or give me death."
@@uzlonewolf Seriously, have you ever thought of just not shopping there?
Seeing all the fraudulent and faulty products sold there leads me to believe most people now swear by the maxim "give me convenience or give me death."
@@ArtieKendall Same, I cancelled my Prime and deleted my account after Louis got banned for reporting on Amazon locking that one guy out of his home because a driver allegedly said the doorbell was being racist. Haven't bought a goddamn thing off their platform since and I've done my best to tell other people to do the same.
How about the fact that Amazon allows sells of supplements to hide the FDA black box warning that would have to be prominently displayed in a TV ad?
Ooh boy.. black box labels are scary, potentially permanently life degrading... doctors will routinely hand out black box labeled anti-biotics.
Past-washing is one of the worst practices on sites like Amazon. To capitalize on 5-star spam, and then send out crap, is the whole business model of the site at this point.
Let's see if Lina Khan at the FTC has any fun she'd like to throw Amazon's way, hmm?
So I got approached by one of those scam review companies. Didn't know it was that till a bit later. I decided to see how this 'work from home at your own pace' thing played out. Basically what happens is they play with the rules. They have some part of the company that will actually buy the products but then immediately return them. Which is a 'verified purchase' but then they will pay you in some form of crypto currency(and it's only the one they want you to use of course), in exchange for you creating whatever wording and rating you want. I was blown away at this kind of thing. Such BS. All I had to do was log into a website of theirs, type in my review and their system handled everything else. I got a first-hand look into this scam industry and now know this is a thing for an absolute fact. Just stunning.
I'm not even an electronics expert, but when I saw 16k BTU, I knew that something is wrong, because a few years ago i spent an entire weekend shopping for AC units to coop the huge main room in our house which includes the living room, dining room and kitchen, along with vaulted ceilings, so I wanted to get a very powerful unit, but 12k BTU is the most I could find on any window unit using a US style 120v plug. Also, those standup units like that dont work worth a crap, theres no way its 16k.
That would be 16k BTU of gross output of the heat pump, of course the actual amount of heat the entire solution is able to get out of the room is about 50% of that. Source: I got one of these portable PoS ACs (not from Amazon ofc). These portable units are a scam in and of themselves, it's just the wrong way to do AC.
@@YS_Production No, you literally cannot get 16k BTU from a 120v plug. Not even at the source. And certainly not at the 800w listed on the item. Did you not watch the video where louis talks about it several times?
@@YS_Production Moreover, if a heat pump was generating 16k BTU, it would be generating 16k BTU, not 50% of that. Once the transfer into thermal energy is complete, there is nothing else happening to reduce the efficiency. The efficiency loss occurs as it transfers from electricity to thermal radiation.
Thats about as ridiculous as those fake 1TB flash drives that cost like $20 which are still everywhere on Amazon.
They changed it to 16,000 watts
I just purchased a handheld, battery powered air compressor for our bikes, etc. It was on prime day so about $60. My son also bought one on his account. We both got a letter in the US mail stating that if we give the item a 5 star review we'd get a $40 Amazon gift card for doing it. Our compressors do work decently well so far but this is a pretty blatant case of buying inflated reviews.
hehe, bike air compressor with inflated reviews
@@nopenoperson9118 I made a joke and didn't even catch it! 😁
When are we NOT getting effed?!
When none of us spend. Good luck trying to not spend time.
When you buy your ham from a local butcher who has taken over a 150 year old family business.
... and EVEN THEN you need to be wary when the gen Z son takes over.
No, I haven't been having a lovely day Louis. Thanks for asking. In fact, I just made myself some tea to drink, have a deep breath and (sorry for this I guess) watch your video and have some joy seeing you shred them to pieces and scream because you get logically upset (literally logically upset which makes living life in hard mode).
I actually do hope you are having a lovely day.
Edit: Hearing you trying to make an impression of your grandma's broken English with acento Italiano... my day is made. Thank you!!
Edit#2: Thanks to people like your grandma who live 30 years in the US and never learn English is why I currently have a job as an interpreter. So I thank your grandma! Grazie mille, molto gentile.
Not surprised that an Amazon worker wouldn't care. The worst employer with the worst working conditions and the worst pay. Surprised if they'd be sane still, never mind responsible.
what i love is amazon curating reviews and not letting bad reviews get posted
consumer protection laws are bad everywhere. Last year,here in Greece ,the banks were found guilty of charging way to much for commissions per transaction. They made more than 2billion euros while the Greek government ruled a fine of 45million euros. Guess how that changed their practices.....it didn't
I had no idea that Louis was Italian.
I love his interpretation of his grandma. It's quite endearing. It cracks me up. I wonder if she is still with us...
Much respect for going to the trouble of creating chapters on this video. It made it a breeze for me to find the funny grandma part to share it with my mom. 👊🏻
Louis should do a special episode, possibly with sous chef Mr. Clinton, in the kitchen cooking one of his grandma's Italian recipes. That would be epic. 🇮🇹👨🍳🐈⬛
Who knows, he could be the next Food Network Star! ⭐
Speaking of A/Cs TH-cam has been allowing those ads where some company drop ships those little swamp cooler cubes and advertises them as A/Cs even though they aren't. I have reported the ads to Google many times, and they did disappear for a while, but then this past week, they have come back, and now they are using AI voice overs from TH-cam tech influencers like Practical engineering to falsely advertise their products. I have multiple screen recordings of the different advertisements and was even thinking about calling out Google and TH-cam for allowing the BS.
I experience the same issues as you. They don't seem to give a shit.
Up in Canada I get advertised resistive heaters that are supposed to heat your room in seconds (technically correct is the best kind of correct if they don't specify the temperature rise in that time).
They then have some sob story about how a student in some under-funded school used some physics principle I forget (related to the Bernoulli principle) to build a heater for the classroom.
He was then kicked out of school when he refused to sell the patents to the heating and cooling industry (which is NOT how schools or patents work).
When reviews begin to make comments about features that the product that you're looking at doesn't have, then that is a gigantic warning sign that the entire review process is a scam.
crap company. crap products. crap policies.
It used to be just cheap Chinese products and such that had a greater probability to be a scam/illegitimate, now it is growing to be virtually any household product that you look up. A lot of people are just quitting Amazon and going literally anywhere else.
"We ban people criticizing our platform outside our platform but we won't ban sellers that bring us money" - Amazon, based on their behavior
I reported a Facebook ad for a website claiming to sell scale figures. They normally sell for well over $100 and it had them listed often for $25 or so. Facebook said it wasn't a scam 😂 even after manual review 🤣
I’ve had so many people in my family fall for the Facebook scams, Facebook loves the scammers because that’s how they make money.
Oh FB is even worse, I wouldn't buy a pencil from a FB advert.
In response to your anecdote at 9:08, my own mom (approaching 70, so not a digital age person) has alienated several family members when she started texting... We found out that some of her last conversations with some people she was trying to catch up with went something like:
"My dog died and I broke my arm and I might have cancer so I'm waiting on test results for that..."
"Sorry to hear that LOL"
She thought for I-don't-know-how-long that LOL meant "Lots Of Love."
Amazon product pages show the average review for all variations of items sold under that Parent-ASIN. 3P sellers learned this and list completely unrelated products under a single P-ASIN and rotate through availability/products but the reviews stay. This is why you see random products in the reviews. It is not new and been happening for years and Amazon does not care, 3P sellers print them money.
It's called review merging. If you google it you will see lots of tutorials for sellers on how to achieve this and get unrelated product reviews to show under a different one.
ok ill bite, whats a Parent-ASIN? whats a 3p?
@@cjpack ASIN = Amazon SKU, so as @l0gic23 mentions below all the variations of a product (size, color, etc.) are different ASINs that fall under a Parent ASIN for grouping.
3P = third party seller, someone selling on Amazon. They may use Amazon fulfillment for shipping or ship direct
1P = first party, Amazon is the seller and shipper
my Mexican grandmother never bothered to learn English either after 35 years in the country, lol. thank you for your time sir, i appreciate it.
Amazon reviews may as well not exist at this point
The algorithm did it again!!! TH-cam un-subscribed me from you & many of my favorite channels (you, gamersnexus, linustechtips, & 20+ others) I’m sad disgusted and fed up how do I get involved directly with the right to repair movement. Thank you for the many years of honest and professional takes on how real the struggle is.
I’ve been an enthusiast and hobbyist my entire life for computers. I have adhd and get it. Repairing & Restoring devices gives me real satisfaction when I see how much I can better their day.
Thank you for the many years of excellence in public service Louis!!!🎉🎉🎉🎉🎉😊
Ya'know what would be nice? A replacement site that sells USA made products.
That's good point Louis on the fining part. If it's such a small amount they won't care, here in the UK businesses can be fined a percentage of their gross income. And I believe this should be standard to keep industry standards up, and encourage best practices.
Please file a formal complaint with the FTC with all this evidence.
I'm sure the FTC would send them a strongly worded letter.
Louis,
I seem to remember this happening to the Dymo label people. They decided to DRM their label printer which everyone hated, but because Amazon let them put this new printer in place of the old one (that printed any manufacturers' labels) they piggybacked on a stupidly large amount of 5 stars, it used to be a great printer!
Not sure if Dymo backpedaled or not, when my Dymo printers died I went elsewhere for the first time since the serial connection first generation printers.
I like Amazon for fast delivery’s but that’s about it. But even their “fast delivery” isn’t fast anymore 🤷♂
Hasn't been fast for 3 years now if you can even find the product you want.
Mr. Rossmann, you are amazing. Please, please, please make sure you have a decent attorney BEFORE you get hit with baseless defamation suits!!!
I've even seen items where the top reviews said they were delicious... but the item was some piece of electronics. Yum, lead-free solder!
I ordered one of these AC units and was amazed by the built in digital picture frame and shower head....
Cant Amazon be held accountable for fraud?
It fills my heart with so much joy, that someone this smart is calling out their bs so methodically!
The irony is, if it was some small business, they'd probably slap them with max fines to eliminate competition.
I've met people like your grandma and they are always the nicest people.
I can see her doing that in my mind when you were talking about it.
Thanks for the glimpse in your past.
I think that the root of the problem is that fast delivery is not available from the post or any other delivery service. What used to be a decent bookstore had to develop their own delivery service, but such a thing is not profitable without more deliveries than books. The bookstore morphed into a general store where anyone can rent shelf space for their products. Who is it that needs to differentiate themselves with fast delivery? The junk you would not buy, if you saw it in person at a real store. It has to be junk since the "bookstore" is still profitable. Most of the cost to the customer of the shiny gimmicky trinklets they buy goes to pay for your shopping experience, not to pay for raw materials or product development or especially not labor.
Louis: Grandma, I'm fighting a losing battle against greedy corporations and a government that doesnt punish them appropriately when they get caught!
Grandma: Ah, thats a-nice! 😊
Holy heck, so that's apparently one of the causes of audio delay the longer the video gets.
Thank you!
Thank you for calling out the corporate criminals like Amazon. I'm tired of the bullshit.
13:06 Big Tech: Quick! Write that down! Somebody put a camera in an AC and send it to Louis' house! We got him this time boys!
@@l0gic23 And of course it will need an internet connection for security reasons.
And it will require a subscription.
I checked out the listing. If you scroll down the page, there is so much fake product information, my head is spinning. They claim it's an air conditioner, heater and a dehumidifier. It can cool to 16 degrees celsius (61 degrees F). Rated 4.2 with 4790 ratings. These numbers change often.
That fuse video... I remember that one SO clearly, as I had an "Oh crap" moment as soon as I saw the EXACT same box I had gotten off Amazon not a week prior. Immediately paused the video to go remove it, then came back to finish. This is not just some case of buying a knockoff arduino chip or something that might not support future firmware updates... we're talking literal matters of life and the alternative to living, potentially, or at least severe damage due to fire. Big yikes. There really needs to be more accountability if we're to trust Amazon at all now.
OMG your rabbit trails makes this channel so much fun and seriously enjoyable! Thank you Louis!
The scammers are the sellers AND the moderators.
At this point any fines can just be considered the cost of doing business. There needs to be a bigger shakeup.
Man, you hit the nail on the head and hard. I just hope Amazon would clean up its act. You know you’d think they’d have enough money saved up that they could clean up their own act and all. A couple years ago I had to return a product to them and I got mad and I put a negative review on that product and then on all the other comments below that were two stars and below I would click on the comment was helpful tab and I would go down the page one at a time And click on all the negative reviews and after about 30 minutes of me doing that Amazon takes the clicker button away from me and I can’t click it no more so somebody was watching paid attention and then shut me down from liking the negative comments ha-ha ha, ain’t that some $hit!?!! 🤣
Thank you for the entertainment and your energy! Plus, of course, your facts!!
Imagine how dangerous with ear and eye protection or electrical resistant gloves. People could die.
And probably do.
Really appreciate the audio tone on this video, Louis! An actual problem for me has been the missing midrange and highs, for a year or more. Listening through iMacs and moto phone. Thank you. If I'm wrong perhaps TH-cam is fixing things for me.
Hey hey Amazon became just like aliexpress and ebay where they sell 9.000.000 mAh power banks and 100.000.000 lumen flashlights :D
I trust eBay and AliExpress sellers more these days.
I went back and I've reported the same previously black and decker washer i bought that has turned into a no name product but still has all the good reviews, at least 4 different times over 2 years and it's STILL up.
i was trying to link it but youtube as usual is overzealous in their attempts against spam and hitting regular users
lmao cant even list anything remotely similar sounding to a link and you get auto deleted.
I won't buy anything from Amazon as you can't be certain if any of the products are genuine or counterfeit.
Yeah, at least I KNOW anything brand name is counterfeit on Aliexpress, but on there the reviews are real, and the prices are reasonable. I don't go there for brand name products, but I do go there for random items that I can't find elsewhere. You can buy absolutely anything there. So handy when you need weird fasteners or unusual router bits.
@Patrick-857 i've used aliexpress a lot, and i will say that asian clothes specifically will have a lot of fake reviews that are fortunately insanely obvious and it's much easier to know what products to avoid than it is on amazon nowadays. other product types however don't have fake reviews as often as on amazon though.
I love how you do your research, how you provide valid details and facts about scams and such things related to this, especially the parts where you add a lil bit of your life experiences which is very entertaining. Keep it up Louis and never change!👍
Thank you!
I hate amazon. Never have I even gotten a good product. If I see something I want on amazon my first question is "can I buy this somewhere in person?" It defeats the idea of amazon.
Bought a mobo from Amazon. Didn't realize it had bent pins when it arrived. Sent it to Silicon Valley repair to resocket the board. You'll get a kick out of this! *TURNS OUT THE BOARD WAS MISSING SEVERAL SMDS AS WELL!*
Don't really feel like returning it as it's far too late.
Never ordering a board from Amazon again.
PS Louis if you're reading this I'd love to hear more stories about your family
This item i bought had 800 reviews. All were 5 star. I bought the item. Realized only after that the reviews were for other products.... i know truly no item gets all 5 stars but i know people get paid for some. I got the item and it was horrible. I sent it back. I reported them and was left on read. AND MY REAL REVIEW was not accepted because I made a reference to the fake reviews. The fake reviews were deleted after they were almost sold out.
They got you on a technicality.
The reviews are supposed to be about the product, not the service.
More and more, I find myself enjoying in-person shopping more. Not having to deal with Amazon constantly losing my packages and delivering them to the wrong house, not having to deal with all of the scams, and not having to deal with the obscene shipping costs is genuinely refreshing. Online shopping only made in-person shopping better and more enjoyable.
Greed kills.
Well, looks like Amazon gets worse over time like everything else in the last 10 years. Is it just me, or the bigger a company gets, the more trash it becomes?
Louis! I read an article earlier saying the consumer product safety commission determined Amazon can be held responsible for defective goods sold by third-party merchants on its online marketplace. Amazon "bears legal responsibility for their recall." Is this a win? A small step forward? Will anything good come out of this?
Where was the article?
@@09ThunderOne I got it from yahoo, but I looked it up to verify and the first result was the official cpsc dot gov website
@@09ThunderOneFirst saw it on yahoo then verified it on the official gov cpsc site
Louis already did a video about this.@@09ThunderOne
The Australian gov is a mixed bag with cyber stuff. They have a pretty poor cyber security record and we have an appalling metadata retention regime. But they do have a general ethos (federal and states) that citizens are entitled to access to data.
Capitalism meets the dead internet theory. I hate it here.
Unadulterated, unpunished capitalism/corporatism on a dying internet is one of the darkest timelines
@DW11111no, capitalism is exactly the problem who always create economic giants that will always finish to take controls of government in a corpocracy.
@DW11111for real it's so frustrating.
"My government officials take billions in bribes to spend tax dollars supporting these failing garbage apps and businesses, pass laws protecting the big guys, allowing every major business to offshore production, and ruin competition at the cost of natural capitalism, and it makes me so MAD, OMG CAPITALISM SO BAD DURRR"
That's the natural progression my dude.
That's how it works.
Most of these scams are being run out of China.
Amazon needs to be held liable if they don't remove scams!
X cents received from bad product sale is better than Y lives saved from not selling bad product
That's the system for you
Amazon lists prices on sale but it's actually original price.
Also, they sell products for way more than retail value, but offer them on sale to limited customers with a discount (but still actual retail price) to leave a review to get people to pay the scam price. I paid $60 for a "$300" vacuum. After receiving it, there's no way it's worth $300. It compares to other $60 vacuums in terms of quality and performance.
“English is one of the most difficult languages to learn.”
I really don’t think that it is.
There are objectively many more languages with all sorts of nuances that are unfathomable and very difficult to grasp for foreigners.
Like mine first language - czech.
English is objectively pretty straightforward.
Slavs love their Slavic words and Latin cases. Source: grade schooler me learning Polish as a second language.
English is hard because there are so many (often conflicting) rules but at least we don't have pointless item gender, strict word ordering, much declension etc.
The most important word I knew in czech when I was visiting with my high school was pivo ( with the v pronounced somewhere between v and w )
Haha yeah “pivo” is very important indeed.
So did you like our “pivo”? :))
@@Nisshoku420 It has been around 30 years ago, but yes,much better than most dutch ones ^_^
3 days ago I ordered an Electrical Device from Amazon, Made In China. Took 4 hours to Arrive. Vancouver, Canada :D
There is a Warning on the front which States: "DANGER: EVACUATE ALL LIVNING THINGS BEFORE USE" [sic on Livning]
DAMN SON!!! That's a Serious Warning. And fair enough... it's for a frightening Ozone Generator. All the rooms of my house smell like...Nothing Now.
To be fair, ozone generators can be very dangerous to pets and people (especially if they are in poorer health). It can cause permanent lung damage if you inhale it for prolonged periods, too.
Besides policing reviews, or at least investigating clearly fraudulent reviews, they NEED to change to 10 Stars, or better yet, a scale of 100.
You read reviews on a product where the majority of the reviews reveal the product is a fail and it STILL has 4.4 Stars, WTF?