Amazon: User Ratings, Fake Reviews, and ... Censorship?

I'm a longtime, enthusiastic user of Amazon. I'm disabled, and their site gets products to me which would otherwise be difficult or impossible to obtain. For that, I am very grateful.

I'm also an enthusiastic reader of eBooks. I've got a subscription to BookBub, and I download at least one eBook per week, either for free or for a very small cost, generally a dollar or two. I also borrow eBooks from my state's electronic library and download them from Amazon. And of course, sometimes I buy eBooks at full price. So that's another aspect of Amazon which I love.

And for years I've relied on the star ratings and user reviews of products before making a purchase. I liked this feature a lot. I even felt that I'd rather read the reviews of people who actually use the products as opposed to those written by some pompous, know-it-all professional reviewer. Yeah! Power to the people!

However. Recently I listened to a podcast from Planet Money called The Fake Review Hunter. And this opened my eyes to something. Not all of those glowing reviews I was reading on Amazon were real. In fact, a lot of them were fake.

I have to admit that even before listening to this podcast, I'd begun wondering about the reliability of the reviews and ratings I'd been seeing on Amazon. Some of the products I bought based on the reviews turned out to be less ... ah, satisfying than I expected.

And some of the books with four-plus stars turned out to be horrible.

Now I had an explanation for this discrepancy. Fake reviews.

The other day I started reading a book which had 32 reviews on Amazon, with an average rating of 4.3 out of five. Had to be good, right?

Nope. Here's an excerpt from the critical review I wrote of the book:

I wanted to like this book. But the story line lacks credibility and clarity: how did these two women from Chicago both end up in the same small town in Texas - and have it be a complete surprise? And if it was due to relatives and friends settling there, why didn't at least one of those people inform the two protagonists that one of them lived there as well?

I plowed past that part, but the book didn't get any better. The scenes and descriptions of emotions are endlessly repetitive, completely lacking in originality. And illogical. If the two of them were so in love with each other, why do they keep dancing around the possibility of splitting up, even after they've made wonderful, passionate love? For days?
...
Anyway. As you can tell, I did not like this book. I was very disappointed.

But my original review also included speculation that some of those highly positive reviews might be fake. A lot of the reviews sounded suspiciously similar, and a significant number were posted on the same day - the day the book had been published.

I looked the book up on ReviewMeta, the website discussed in the Planet Money podcast about fake reviews, and sure enough, the book failed the site's test. Only three of the 32 reviews were considered reliable.

Interesting, right? Something I should mention in my own review? Of course!

I included my guess that some of the reviews were fake, mentioned the findings of ReviewMeta, and posted the review. And waited. And waited. Hours passed.

I'd posted the review from within my Kindle app, so it should have appeared on both the Amazon and Goodreads pages for the book. It showed up on Goodreads, but Amazon? No dice.

I thought about this for a while. I couldn't remember ever seeing any review on Amazon mentioning "fake reviews" or "ReviewMeta."

Could it be that Amazon is censoring reviews, suppressing any that suggest that other reviews might not be authentic? No! Amazon is an up-front, totally trustworthy company; it deals straight with its customers. Amazon wants us to know the truth! Doesn't it? Of course! Right? Right?

I edited my review on Goodreads, eliminating all mention of my doubts about the authenticity of some of the reviews of the book, and deleting the discussion of ReviewMeta's findings. Then I copied and pasted that edited review into the review space for the book on Amazon.

Moments later, the revised review appeared on Amazon.

----------------

You can get the ReviewMeta browser add-on here.

Wow! It's fixed!

April 24, 2007 - Best Buy called to say my iPod was fixed and I could pick it up.

April 25, 2007 - Picked up the iPod at Best Buy. They had replaced the system board and the battery. It booted up ok, although there were no songs on the hard drive. I took it home and synced it and charged the battery.

April 26, 2007 - So far it has been working fine.

Best Buy confirms fried system board

April 5, 2007 - Geek Squad supervisor called me to say that Best Buy would pay to send the iPod to Best Buy's iPod service department, to determine if the docking station damaged it. This would be free of charge for me, and they would also waive the shipping charge.

April 9, 2007 - I took the iPod in to Best Buy so they could send it to their service department to determine if the Dynex dock caused the damage. While I was there, a Geek Squad technician tested the iPod and encountered several different errors: low battery, folder with exclamation mark, and one other which I don't recall.

April 18, 2007 - Best Buy called to say that their service department agrees that the iPod's system board is fried. They will ask Dynex to pay to repair it. Repairs will take 2 to 3 weeks.

Timeline to frustration

January 5, 2005: purchased iPod 4G 20GB

March 16, 2007: purchased Dynex Universal iPod 5-in-1 Docking Station with Remote

March 17, 2007: plugged iPod into Dynex docking station and Dynex USB wall wart. iPod battery quickly discharged; iPod now gets very hot when charged. All attempts to rectify problem fail. iPod will no longer play music or sync. Displays Apple logo, then low battery icon.

March 26, 2007: installed new Kokopelli battery (Kokopelli Music, USPS tracking # 9101805213907506306046). iPod gets hot when charged. iPod plays for about 30 minutes.

March 27, 2007: iPod battery discharged. iPod gets hot when charged. iPod will no longer play music or sync. Displays Apple logo, then low battery icon.

I took the dead iPod to Best Buy in West Lebanon, NH. Explained problem to Geek Squad supervisor. He attempted to call Dynex, but after being on hold for over 20 minutes, he asked me to call them myself. He said he'd be in on Thursday and would call them again. He said he was hoping to get Dynex to pay for repair or replacement of my iPod.

March 29, 2007: I called Dynex (I was sick on the 28th) and spoke to Logan and explained the problem. He put me on hold for a long time (the entire call lasted 16 minutes) before coming back on to say that a supervisor would call me back.

During this call I discovered that Dynex is essentially a subsidiary of Best Buy, so the way I see it, Best Buy is responsible for their product and the damage it caused.

I spoke to the Geek Squad supervisor and he said he'd follow up on it and call me back on Sunday (April 1).

April 2, 2007: Since I hadn't heard anything from either Best Buy or Dynex, I stopped by the Best Buy store and asked to talk to the Best Buy supervisor. I was told he wasn't there, but the Geek I talked to called the supervisor and said he'd call me back the next day.

April 3, 2007: I got a call from Sophie at Dynex. She left two messages. In the first one, she said I should send the docking station to Dynex, along with a certificate of repairs or a receipt of purchase and a certificate of damaged caused by the docking station. In the second call she clarified that a certificate from Apple saying the Dynex dock broke my iPod would be required.

I looked up iPod repairs on Apple.com and found that the diagnostic fee was $100. Since I can buy a working used 4G iPod on eBay for $120, this didn't seem like a very viable option.

I called Best Buy and asked to speak to the Geek Squad supervisor, but was told he was gone and would not be back till Thursday. I asked to speak to his supervisor. I got a return call from Ryan, who left a message saying that the GS supervisor would call me Thursday.

At this point my iPod has been dead for 18 days. A few days ago I started using my Treo 650 to listen to podcasts, and the other day I borrowed an iPod to use while I attempt to get Best Buy to resolve the problem their product caused.

I Love(d) my iPod

Dear reader:

I decided to create this blog because I want to go public with my frustration at the way Best Buy is handling a defective product. A defective product which did something dreadful:

It KILLED my iPOD!!! Augh!!!

Ok, here's the history:

On January 5, 2005, I bought my first (and so far only) iPod, a 4th Gen 20 GB sweetie. Over the following months, I became more and more addicted to this beautiful piece of design. Not only did it look really nice and play music really well, it had the best user interface I could imagine for this kind of device. And iTunes was just as great. My family and I quickly ripped all our CD's and shared our songs, and soon I'd filled up the iPod with music.

Then I discovered Podcasts, and got even more addicted. Instead of having to listen to boring, infuriating, repetitive bull about politicians like George Bush and other terrorists, I could listen to stuff I wanted to listen to. Like Elke and KC talking about The L Word, or the wonderful Radio 5 Live program about Formula One racing called Checquered Flag, or any one of a host of public radio programs that never mention politics or the Middle East.

I was hooked. I listened to my iPod for hours every day. In my car, in the living room, even in bed before I went to sleep.

Through it all, my iPod worked perfectly.

Until, that is, a fateful day in March 2007, when I decided to buy my beloved iPod a little present.

For a long time I'd been wanting a nice cradle to make it easier to sync and charge it, since my use of podcasts and of nested playlists (dependant on play counts and most recent play dates for songs to keep my music fresh) required daily syncing.

So on March 16, 2007, I was standing innocently in my local Best Buy, looking at iPod accessories, and I decided to take the plunge. They had racks full of a really clever-looking docking system, which had little inserts you could snap in and out so the dock would fit any iPod from a 4G to a Nano to a 5G. That way, if and when I got a new iPod, I thought, I'll still be able to use the dock.

I took the dock home and I loved it. It was great, plugged into the USB 2 port in my laptop. I could play music or a podcast through my computer speakers and stop and start it or adjust the volume from my chair across the room.

Then I took it into my bedroom and plugged it into the USB power supply that came with the docking system.

Oh, if I had the ability to do it over!

I put the dock on my bedside table, and plugged the iPod into it. I plugged my powered speakers into the dock. Then I plugged the Dynex USB cable into the dock and the other end into the Dynex wall wart.

As soon as I plugged the wall wart into the wall, the speakers started making a sharp clicking sound, about once a second. I looked at the dock and the light on the front of it was flashing at the same rate, starting out bright in unison with the click, and decaying to nothing just before the next click/bright cycle.

Clearly something was wrong, so I unplugged everything and took the iPod back to my computer and plugged it back into the USB port there.

It quickly got really hot, and soon gave a low battery signal. I got out the Firewire wall wart and cable that came with the iPod, and tried charging it with that. No dice. Hot again. Hotter and hotter, and eventually the display started going dark from the heat.

I ordered a new battery from Kokopelli Music and installed it (it came with installation tools and instructions; it was really easy to replace the battery by following Kokopelli's instructions).

Ah! Back to normal. I could sync and play music. Except the iPod kept getting hot whenever it had power applied to it, either from the computer or its original Firewire wall wart. And by morning, the new battery was dead. Attempts to charge it just created more heat and more trouble.

I had to face an unpleasant fact: the Dynex docking system had killed my iPod's charging circuit.

More on this saga in the next installment.