NPR:
As of Tuesday, Michael Erb was the No. 1 customer reviewer on Amazon. He has reviewed everything from doorbells to travel mugs to toothbrushes.
As Erb has risen up the ranks among Amazon reviewers, the stream of free stuff has grown because manufacturers have started sending stuff directly to him to review.
This feels really shady particularly because Amazon doesn’t identify “paid” reviewers.
Would you like to backup that claim that Amazon doesn’t identify paid reviewers? Because that’s a blatant lie. They do. In fact, if you take just a few minutes and click one of the links in the article to see the list of top reviewers, and check out their reviews it very specifically has this disclaimer: “Customer review from the Amazon Vine Program (What’s this?)”
Clicking on that link explains what it is. Amazon isn’t paying people to review things in a positive light. They’re giving people a product to review. How is that any different from Apple sending Jim an iPad Air to review?
You guys love to rip on bad journalism, but then you go out and spew this kind of crap.
Although at first sight it sounds shady, they do note Vine reviews are on average lower than non-Vine reviews. There may be a chance that Amazon tests reviewers and you need to show objectiveness to stay in the program.
Adamselby, members of Vine are identified, yes. But not every review they do comes from a free product.
So although you can identify who is in the program, you cant tell if the product they just reviewed is something they bought or something they were given for free to review. THAT can be shady.
If you look at Amazon’s help page related to Vine, it’s pretty straightforward. http://www.amazon.com/gp/vine/help?
To me, this means that any review tagged with “Vine” came from the program. After all, it says “customer review from Vine”, not “Customer review from Vine member” or “Review from Vine Customer”. And the program operates on free products to reviewers (again, just as any reviews that any company provides to reporters).
To me it looks like Amazon is being very upfront about it, and there’s nothing shady at all going on. This is just like people trying to get the media frenzy on Apple for something. A story about nothing.
Correction: They DO identify Vine reviews. Says it right between the title and the body of the review in question. The problem is, they put it in a green colored font that makes it very easy to gloss over the fact that it is a paid review.
Not to put words in Jim or Shawn’s mouth, but I believe that Apple review units are short term loans, usually a week. After that the reviewer has to return it to Apple.
From the NPR story it appears Vine is set up the same way in theory but that Amazon rarely if ever asks for the products back.
There are similarities for sure in that it’s reviewing stuff that’s been provided for free…
In Amazon’s legal-speak, I don’t think that would constitute a paid review as they’re not directly compensated for the review itself. Their disclaimer that they don’t influence the review seems a bit tenuous though because surely providing something for free that other people would have to lay out cash for has some influence.
I think NPR needs to follow up this Planet Money report with one from Freakonomics Radio to see if there is an effect.
Listen to the podcast. All Vine memeber reviews are marked with that label.
That’s how Apple works, but not all companies do that.
Except they did and found that Vine reviews averaged lower ratings than the average review for those products.
Most companies allow you to keep review products (if your company’s policies allow it – for example, the New York Times doesn’t allow you to keep anything. Even software has to be deleted. When I worked for David Pogue, it was a giant PITA to send back all the various products he was sent).
Apple allows “general” reviewers approx 2 weeks (sometimes up to a month). In the case of “hot products”, reviewers (like Jim) get their units about ten days before the sale date.
Vine reviewers are not required to return anything. We get to keep the items we review.
The problem I’m seeing recently is that many Vine Reviews are bogus. Look up the new Seagate Desktop SSHD 2TB drive on Amazon. Most of the early Vine-labeled review are copy-paste nonsense, touting features that aren’t unique to this item and/or proving an intrepid lack of expertise—or usage. I figured they were getting something out of it. Turns out I was right. Pretty good racket. Pretty stupid that Amazon doesn’t see it.
That is just as bad as if they averaged higher.
Nice work if you can get it.
Indeed it is. I have gotten some really interesting and good things over the years.
I take my vine reviews very seriously. I don’t select items unless I plan to really evaluate them.
Which of course in no way influences the tone of your review?
Tone? My reviews don’t have a tone. They have facts. I include a general synopsis of whether or not I enjoyed or found the thing useful and then pros and cons.
If you are insinuating that I do not review fairly because I am getting things for free then I would simply say don’t project your lack of ethics onto others 😉
Glad to hear it. I’ll assume that any negative reviews you write have no affect on the amount of merchandise you’re given. 😉
That’s good to hear. From the Vine reviews I’ve read, however, you appear to be the exception.
I don’t care what the podcast may or may not have said. Verify it for yourself. Look at a Vine member’s reviews, and you’ll notice that not all of them are flagged with the Vine banner. Amazon’s system clearly differentiates from reviews that were initiated from the Vine program and reviews that a Vine member might write on their own.