Do you trust Amazon’s Choice recommendations?

If at all possible, I avoid Amazon like the plague. I think they’re making quite enough money already and so do not feel inclined to let them have any business from me.

I did not know that Amazon’s Choice existed but don’t use Amazon very often. I don’t want anyone else giving me their opinion of which products I should buy, whether on a website or a salesperson trying to sell products that give them most commission or they want to shift before the latest model arrives. Most reviewers are unlikely to have tested a variety of similar products so I suggest that they might not be qualified to give useful advice.

I do find online reviews very helpful for providing information that may be missing from the manufacturer’s information, especially if this highlights strengths or weaknesses. When buying a breadmaker for example, it would be useful if someone points out that it will resume working after a short power cut, if the mixing paddle tends to remain in the base of the loaf, if the alert to indicate that baking has been completed is not loud enough, and how many times the reviewer has used the product.

I find Amazon reviews very useful because of the amount of information that can be found, and focus on the ones with facts rather than opinions. I support efforts to prevent fake reviews and hope that most consumers will be wary about product recommendations.

No, this doesn’t influence me. It is the product I’m interested in and not what Amazon thinks of it.

The first time I noticed Amazon’s Choice against a product was when I was looking for a small kitchen appliance. Their ‘choice’ was for an unknown brand that could be acquired from China with any name you like printed on it.

So no, it certainly won’t influence me to buy a product.

I wouldn’t use Amazon if they were giving their stock away. Just pure greed. They don’t pay their proper taxes, are multi multi billionaires, but they still want more. Maybe boycotting them would be a good thing, then our high street shops can get back to normal ! Our government should step in, and do something about it, but I doubt they will do nothing.

I am a sole trader and I sell on multiple platorms and I am saddened by the impact these sorts of issues have on “innocent” sellers who are trying to make an honest living.

The trick is not to avoid the platforms, but to confront them and to seek out the honest traders and ensure you are not supporting these practices that result in the inevitable “race to the bottom”.

I don’t think people really understand how much AI runs most of the processes now and corrupts what you see.

For instance you may not see all options actually on sale depending on where you live and your AI “perceived” preferences , and you may see a key item that the supplier has paid extra advertising costs to promote when it is not the best value at all – but you wouldn’t even be aware it had happened.

As your review has highlighted, “choice” is not actually selected by any human decision at all and lacks all the quality and safety aspects that AI cannot determine from the platform itself.

This is the world we live in – smoke and mirrors – as we have also seen too blatantly with our politicians and press – maybe that is another area to investigate as they have the power to stop these things and not actually encourage them !

There is a load of cheap garbage on Amazon from sellers with names that look like a random pick of scrabble tiles and several sellers with identical items where only the name is changed on the item. Too many of the 5 star reviews follow a similar theme, such as for security cameras that begin with “I have a dog”. Most often before buying anything, I check other websites such as Toolstation and Argos to see if they sell the same brand name and also look at the 1 star reviews which tells a more acceptable story. I was offered a replacement sports watch last year or a refund if I would improve my review. Needless to say, the review was not changed.

I think Amazon for ALL their online products, SHOULD have a section CLEARLY displayed for each item, where customers can report bribes for fake review or ANY other relevant information about fake reviews! Because until Amazon gets to grips with this SERIOUS FAKE REVIEWS PROBLEM! Nothing is going to change! Amazon needs to start Policing its own website and gather evidence to sort the problem! They make vast amounts of money ( Some of which can be spent on Policing! ) TO PROTECT ITS CUSTOMERS, MANY OF WHICH ARE VERY LOYAL!

I’m starting to look elsewhere than Amazon for an increasingly large amount of my on-line shopping these days. Amazon is so top-heavy with cheap, unbranded, Chinese rubbish these days that it’s becoming impossible to do a meaningful search in a reasonable length of time (when you factor in all the time you have to spend to read all the low-starred reviews). Luckily I can afford to buy brand-named products most of the time (if I can find them with my search, and/or if I know the name of a decent brand or brands that make the product I’m after) but for most people they might as well print out all the pages of listings and stick a pin in them. When all the top listings don’t have a single brand that I’ve heard of amongst them, it sets an alarm bell ringing for me now. But I’m only wise to this sort of thing because I’ve been a Which subscriber since 1997… most of Joe Public simply won’t know the potential pitfalls.

No review on the Web should be trusted, with the exception, of course, of Which. This is a huge weakness of the Web, and it will remain so until some kind of source/person verification mechanism (as Twitter claims to have) has been created.

Bought some headphones (not cheap!) from Amazon Marketplace, and when I received them found a card (claiming to be from Amazon, but clearly not) offering a 10 Amazon Gift card if I left a 5* review. It was just 10 as well – I assume they are also selling to other countries and it’s easier to omit the currency (rather than having separate cards for £ or €). I was a bit disgusted, having just previously had a poor experience of buying headphones from Amazon and therefore reported the seller for this – on the one hand I feel like I’ve missed out £10, but on the other I am happy that I’ve not mislead any other customers. Now just waiting to see if Mpow have any action taken against them and are taken off Amazon…