I used to read reviews on Amazon religiously even if I was buying somewhere else. That habit has kinda faded, though it's still one of the better sources of real world product knowledge.
You can say that again. I recently bought a kitchen knife with Amazon Prime that had ~100 reviews, an average of 5 stars. It cost £33, so wasn't particularly cheap. Just after I bought it the seller sent me one of those nagging emails asking for a review which I ignored. A week after they sent me another email, a copy of the first one. By the time I've already used the knife and found out it wasn't very sharp (my >5 year old knife of a different brand was still sharper), so I thought "be careful what you ask for, 'cause you may get it" and gave them an honest 3 star review. Not even 2 hours later I get an email from their rep apologizing for a "faulty item" and offering either send me another one or issue a refund and I can keep the knife in both cases. I realized what was the catch, but opted for a refund and removed my review when they asked me on the next email (obviously). So now this knife is still sold on Amazon, with 100 reviews and counting, only one 4 star review and the rest of them 5 stars.
The point of the fraud is to make money. He denied them that money.
Knives are meant to me sharpened. The cheapest knife can be sharpened to razor blade sharpness. Sometimes new knives come sharpened somewhat, but in my experience all mass-produced knives need sharpening when new, even $250 knives.
I genuinely can't comprehend the complaint. What next, buy a new car and complain it didn't come with the tank full?
Not that I doubt your assessment of the knife but..
As far as kitchen knives go this is cheap, although you can still get very good and sharp knives for this price like the Tojiro DP Gyuto or Victorinox Fibrox.
Usually people don't judge a knife by it's out of box sharpness but the sharpness after sharpening, ease of sharpening, edge retention, balance, and overall craftsmanship.
Maybe knife connoisseurs don't, but normal people certainly do. I don't know the names of any knives, those names you mentioned might as well be brands of washing machines. But if I buy a knife and it's not sharp, what's the point? Why can the factory not sharpen it before selling it to me?
And to be fair, at scale, given that most people are idiots and don't know astroturf reviews exist, it might never be for them.
But they are definitely in danger of losing the people who told everyone else about "that Amazon thing."
Amazon doesn't benefit financially from negative or average reviews, but they do benefit from the positive reviews, regardless of their legitimacy, as the parent poster demonstrated.
I’m mad that they now hide book reviews that aren’t from “verified purchasers” unless you spend several clicks hunting for them.
It’s really unfortunate that there’s no independent page for book reviews with a big enough community to be remotely comprehensive.
