Amazon product pages aren't specific to an individual seller. Whoever has the lowest price wins the "buy" box. If Amazon allowed these type or reviews, another seller could come along later, undercut the shady merchant you were dealing with, and be stuck with customers thinking they would get the same.

I've never left a review for an item purchased via Amazon, but I will say that the reviews I have read have very much been an influence in what items I have purchased via Amazon.

Knowing what I know after having read this article, I don't see why I should continue to support a company with shady business practices. -1 customer for you Amazon, until you better explain this brouhaha.

Nice submission Bob.

Because that place was to review the PRODUCT. There is another place to review the third party seller.

It don't like it when I look at a review of a book and I find that there is a one star review because some third party seller mailed it late. It has nothing do do with the book, and is unfair to the author.

I guess the reviews are of most value when they are negative.

This type of response from Amazon makes it seem like they are just as sneaky as the offending seller. Lack of trust in their review process can only hurt them. You fail Amazon

Generally the review should be for the product, but in this case the manufacturer is also the seller. That is why they requested a 5-star review, and that is why bringing it up in a case like this is appropriate.

I rely heavily on Amazon reviews for my purchase decisions. I hate the idea that they might be stacked.

No fail for Amazon. Amazon is right. OP made a mistake.

@frank64:

interesting... are you suggesting amazon should start a star review policy of business owners?

Amazon customer service has gotten so bad... I ordered a "new" copy of the Lion King. Got what appeared to be a used bootleg... Contacted Amazon about it, they couldn't care less and the guy is still selling.

I buy a TON through Amazon... and their customer service is still very good for the basics (because you don't actually deal with them) but if you've a problem beyond returning something you're in trouble.

Used to be if I called I would get someone very helpful with good language skills, I call now I get someone in India (and I don't have a problem with that in principle) who can't seem to manage to go off script and actually help me at all.

Also... I often look at the highest scored positive reviews (of any substance) and then the worst reviews. For books, knowing who is against it and hates it often is enormously helpful in determining its value!

Sorry, the fact that the seller is also the manufacture does change things. I think Amazon went on the basic policy. Should be waived in this case.

There is a bias towards positive on Amazon reviews. The reviewer is much more likely to view whatever he decided to buy positive. Look at any crappy TV series, it is always rated real high. Not to mention the payola and the shenagins that go on.

What back in internet history, it was the honest reviews from actual customers that built the Amazon brand in to what it is today. There were many booksellers, but it was the review system that made Amazon stand out. It's a shame that they've decided to kill the golden goose with these unethical tactics.

most reviews on amazon seems so fake i never take them to heart

@frank64: In this case, however, the third-party seller was also the manufacturer of the product.

@frank64:

Well, if someone mentioned that the manufacturer was bribing people to give good reviews, you might take that into consideration about the quality of the product.

Yelp does the same thing.

@Gideon: I've actually had decent experiences with Amazon's offshore support, when I can find the number to contact them.

As far as the bootlegger goes, the MPAA might be interested...

@Marshfield:

Except stage reviews (see UserName), simply because the only people who read them are the actors, and we don't want to quote them if they're bad!

Anyway, back on topic...Amazon's policy on this is appalling. I could understand the book analogy (not fair to the author to downrate a book because of the seller), but these guys MAKE the product. It's like giving a book a bad review because the author promised to send you a signed copy if you gave it 5 stars.

Not cool.

I think the disconnect here is that Amazon thought the guy was reviewing the product honestly, when apparently he was not. That is why they suggested alternate wording that left out information that does not belong in a review of the product.

If this guy was willing to give an inaccurate review for free stuff, he is part of the problem. Everyone who gives inaccurate reviews on Amazon is part of the problem - including people who give inaccurate negative reviews in retaliation for perceived fake positive reviews.

There are other forums for dealing with what this company is doing. You can create a comment thread under the product listing and inform people there. You can give the seller a negative review. You can report the seller to Amazon.com (through the proper abuse report form so it goes to the right person).

Amazon did everything RIGHT here, and they're being criticized for it. They saw an obvious shill review, and they deleted it. That is what should happen.

@frank64: Belkin pays people to post fake reviews about their products, this "Snore Product" bribes customers to give false reviews of their product... This WOULD affect my decision to purchase their item!
Your comment makes NO sense at all (unless you were paid to post it.... ducking and running!...)
Amazon's reply WILL affect my decision to shop ANY of their 3rd party shop/suppliers/Site!

@frodolives35: Sneaky as in CORRUPT?

I have often hailed Amazon for what appeared to be "doing the right thing". Companies that follow that philosophy have earned a great deal of respect from me. This, along with other recent Amazon news makes me think they've lost a bit of their cool.

Unrelated to this issue, but I've got to jump in and be honest here.

Full disclosure: Amazon bribes me to review things all the time. I'm a "Vine Voice". They send me free stuff, I write reviews.

I've written glowing reviews. (If I had a firstborn, I'd trade him for more raspberry chipotle sauce.) And I've written downright vicious reviews. A friend who is an author read one of my reviews and refused to give me a draft of her latest book.

Other than sending free stuff (which is the impetus for the review,) Amazon has done nothing to influence my reviews in any way. I go back now and then and check them for comments, and they've never been changed. After a few strongly negative reviews I expected to be invited to leave the Vine program, but it hasn't happened. Based on my own experience, I'm quite satisfied with the way Amazon handles reviews.

As for this particular review, I'm not entirely sure what to think. Amazon says:

Can Amazon.com customer reviews be removed?

In certain cases, yes. A customer review should focus on specific features of an item and the customer's experience with it.

[www.amazon.com]

Strictly speaking, describing the company's astroturfing is outside of the "specific features of an item and the customer's experience with it."

As a potential buyer, I'd want to know about the astroturfing, but then I have no way of knowing if a five star review is genuine or not. Describing the astroturfing makes all five star reviews suspect, fairly or not.

At this hour I'm not sure what should be done, but something should be done to protect the integrity of the customer review process. Calling the manufacturer out in a review is an imperfect solution at best. There has to be a better way.

@frank64: TV series DVD sets would have high ratings because the people that buy them like the show. I have found that on electronics and kids toys, as long as there are more than a couple reviews you get a fairly good expectation of what to expect.

as previous posters have stated, Amazon has product reviews and seller feedback. They are separate. Your review of the product goes in the product review. Your review of the seller goes in seller feedback. The bribe has something to do with the seller, not the product. Give the seller bad feedback if you like, but a product review isn't the correct forum. It doesn't matter if it's the same company that shipped it and manufactured it. If it doesn't relate to the product, it's seller feedback. It's really pretty simple.

The solution would be to allow posting non-rating comments seperately from reviews, possibly with specified types (e.g. shipping, service, etc), so that you can note down their behavior seperately from the product.

Which wouldn't do any good if they didn't put it nearby, but I digress.

@Gideon: If it wasn't too long ago, you could file a chargeback. This is quite clearly a case of fraud, and in this case they are attempting to sell you something illegal. File a police report too, if you like.

OK, Amazon said "we do not post comments regarding time specific material, for example about the sellers, price, sourcing, experience with the website other than review of this item and experience with the product in our Customer Reviews."

That's a flat out lie. I can probably go to 10 random items and find at least 5 reviews that say "arrived quickly, packaged well" or some other eBay-esque type verbiage.

I'm sure there excuse is that nobody has flagged those reviews for ummm, review. Which of course is about as useful as me sticking my fingers in my ears and saying "la la la I can't hear you."

They've set up a system that can be abused mightily, and they just don't care.

3rd paragraph there => their.

Everyone spread this on digg, reddit, and other social media sites. We need to educate more people on how screwed up Amazon's rating system is so that they'll reform it.

Surprise, surprise! Another disappoint on the internet.
I always check customer's reviews on the amazon site when considering a purchase. Another internet company that cannot be trusted.

Just do what I do, before purchasing any anti-snore aid, I always ask myself, "What would Harriet Klausner buy?"

I'm still not buying their gay book fiasco explanation and this just adds fuel to the fire. B & M stores are starting to look better again.

@frank64:

This seems like a gray area, and I can understand both sides. On the one hand, it's unfair to products and manufacturers when people make a poor review based on their experiences with the seller--you see this occasionally with one-star book reviews because the Marketplace seller was slow in shipping, or never delivered. That shouldn't be allowed.

But if the manufacture itself is both the seller and the party whose behavior leads to dissatisfaction, that seems like it would be relevant to the review.

OK, that's @NE-Phil: Seconded. I know it's a recession and folks gotta make money but this is just plain wrong.

@snapdoodle: They already have a way to review sellers, which I've used in the past when faced with shady sellers and molasses-slow shippers.

@Xkeeper: They do allow, on toys and video games, for you to separately review things like "fun" and "quality" or whatever. (I can't recall the categories but there are three categories and three sets of stars.)

Given that this is a growing issue -- and already a problem in the amazon comments, where someone reviews the author's personality or politics, the shipper's speed, etc., instead of the actual book/product -- it would make sense for amazon to make multiple categories available in reviews in other area of the store, particularly when dealing with a third-party seller. Consumers should be able to rate the seller and the product at the same time, on the same screen, when reviewing a third-party seller.

This would benefit the vast majority of 3rd-party sellers, who abide by the rules and ship fast and provide good service, but don't get a lot of seller-reviews because most people don't use that process. If people could review product and seller at the same time, they'd be much more likely to review the seller. And it would highlight the handful of scammy/bad sellers like this one.

@frank64: Disagree. IMO, the review is a place to discuss your purchase of the product via the Amazon system. It should encompass the entire process. I can purchase a solid gold duck through Amazon that is the finest solid gold duck in the world, but if it takes me 18 weeks to receive the product via a third-party seller then I am an unhappy user of the Amazon site because by carrying third-party sellers as authorized vendors, Amazon is making a value statement about the vendor.

My review would extol the virtues of the duck and slam the vendor. From OP's post of Amazon's response, they reserve the right to edit the post and summarize my praise, but remove the slam. That changes the context of my review and changes the answer to the one question a new user wants answered - "Would you purchase this item again?" From my original review, the answer would be No. From the Amazon redacted review, the answer would be Yes. That is a dishonest business practice.

@Danj3ris: That's why I only read the negative reviews on Amazon. If the negative review is merely a rant that brings up no valid points, I can ignore it. But if the negative review brings up objective and verifiable points, I'll compare those objective complaints to other review sites to see if they're legit. I'll then decide whether the complaints would pertain to me and make my purchase accordingly.

I've also been bribed by a company on Amazon. I left them bad feedback b/c the item did not ship as describe, they offered to pay me back my shipping costs if I removed the feedback. The feedback stayed.

I feel like we're missing something here. Their email to him says "We are so very happy to hear that our product has worked for you", which would seem to imply he indicated to them somehow in the first place that he liked the product, thus prompting this offer. Unless that's just a standard part of their crappy form email.

Secondly, it's not like they were offering him money to post a good review. They were merely offering him another of the item he already purportedly liked. If he didn't like it and wasn't going to write a good review of it, this offers no further incentive to write a good review. To me, they're just trying to ensure that people who already like their product get the word out. I don't see anybody complaining about a "pay for play" scheme when Consumerist posts a success story about some company who made right on a customer's bad experience by giving them something for free.

However, the aspect of Amazon's review censoring is pretty dumb.

@snapdoodle:

They do have that. When you buy from a third party they ask you to review that transaction. You are then not reviewing the product.

They are two separate review areas. That way if I get a book late or in bad condition, I can complain there and it won't hurt the product.

This case gets blurry because the third party is the manufacturer.

Amazon reviews can be shady.

I bought a toy for my son that had an obviously faulty design and it broke 5 minutes after he started playing with it (it was expensive- over $50, to boot!). Come to find out that there were TWO listings on Amazon for this exact same toy, one had nothing but glowing reviews, while the other listing had a bunch of bad reviews that noted that the toy broke immediately.

Of course, I ordered from the page that had the glowing reviews because I never saw the other one until after the toy had broken. If I'd seen the bad reviews there is now way I would have paid over $50 for it.

I tried to post a bad review on the page that had all of the good reviews, and it was NEVER posted.

SHADY. The bottom line is that you can't always trust Amazon reviews.

There is another place to review the third party seller.

@frank64: Well then, shouldn't that have been Amazon's response? The way they put it makes it sound like there's no place to warn people about the crap the businesses try to pull.

Still, I think the place to warn people about fake reviews is where said fake reviews are getting posted.

I dunno... It really bothers me when, for example, I run into 1-star reviews of items because Amazon messed up on shipping. Those really muddy the waters; I'd rather just have a straight review of the product.

This is a different matter, though. I think I'd want to know when a company was bribing people for 5-star reviews...

So rather than complain out of ignorance (like 90% of the people here) I actually went and searched for the product on Amazon.

[www.amazon.com]

Checked the reviews. Honestly, who knows if they can be trusted? So I did the next logical thing. I checked the seller rating.

In the last 30 days 92% positive, 5% neutral, 1% negative.

The surprising part? No negatives from the person who sent this in to Consumerist.

The option to rate the seller is there for a reason. To rate the seller. This seller sucks. So rate them there. Use the product rating space to rate their product.

The product was freely admitted in the review to deserve 4 stars. Yet he gave it 3. Why? Because of the seller. Which isn't want the product review is rating.

For the denser people in the crowd:
In the product review section - review the product
In the seller review section - review the seller

@willdude: I might agree with you if they hadn't asked him to give a 5 star review as opposed to a "good" review. The OP was only going give a four star review. I think unless he'd already given the product a perfect review elsewhere the company should avoid asking for a perfect star rating.

...Still going to shop at Amazon.