Amazon review tips

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BlueSpin

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Oct 27, 2023
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Steve read a comment on a recent episode about a ValiDrive user who's one star review was zapped for claiming that the drive was "fake". Amazon responded roughly with: "Not fake, review deleted".

Is there a consensus on how to best review a drive that has failed the test?
 
At a minimum I suspect it would depend on whether or not Amazon uses human reviewers or not. If it's just a computer, it's probably keyword matches and numeric values. (For example, it might have a rule that says any 1 star review gets a notification to the seller and they can veto the review, or something like that.) If there is a human in the loop, other than the seller, then they might be motivated by some metric that says they have to try to maintain the sellers reputation or something. (No company, including Amazon I would presume, wants to become known for selling garbage.)

I doubt anything you can write is going to placate the seller, so that's probably moot. If there are Amazon reviewers, then I think you need to be very judicious with how angry/vitriolic you are, and choose your words very carefully. I suspect that just saying some tool says it's not good won't pass, so you're going to have to actually force it to lose some data. That way your review can say, factually, that you lost data using this device, and that you then tested it with this tool, and it's not what it was claimed. It might work to write your review yourself, and then ask an AI to help you reword it so that it's fair given the circumstances.
 
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Surely Amazon have a way to report scams? If not, has anyone considered reporting them to legal authorities?
 
They rely on the goods being supplied by third parties, and act like they are merely a carrier, like the post office, and have no obligation other than ensuring it gets from sender to recipient.