ctyankee

Glad this thread is still going strong.

That said ... if someone at the beginning of this thread (10/17/2012) had merely bought $100 of Amazon stock, that investment would have grown to be worth $753.

Said another way, the growth of that investment would have easily paid for Amazon Prime membership for all of those years.

Cheers,

ctyankee

Troy Stiffler

It's no different than banning you from posting your thoughts on a new movie in the movie forum.

Troy Stiffler

I just checked my profile. I had written 200 or 300 reviews over the past ten years. Nothing too fantastic. But I think they all had merit. Some, I hope would make people laugh. Most of them were five stars, with a few one or two stars in there, with legitimate problems regarding the product. I might have had a few hundred up-votes.

Amazon deleted all of them. What a waste.

You could argue that it's meaningless. But it's no different than IB deleting all of your posts on this forum. In that sense, I guess none of our opinions matter.

My best guess is that a third party seller didn't like that I left their private label, misleading, made-in-China garbage a one star or two star feedback, and they persistently requested that Amazon have my review removed. I've left so few bad reviews that I could narrow it down to probably five purchases. And just about everything at my new apartment was ordered on Amazon. I've ordered probably 200-300 products since March.

Seriously, go fuck yourself Amazon.

Troy Stiffler

Oh check this out. http://dtopp.com

That's fun. A "service" that deletes bad reviews on behalf of sellers, by persistently bugging Amazon customer service until they cave in. There's probably a hundred others like it. I'm likely a casualty of some douchebag company like this.

davidh777

That sucks to have all those reviews deleted.

Troy Stiffler

I'll add: This isn't like IB deleting all of my posts on here. It's like Universal sending IB a message, requesting that all of my posts from the past nineteen years (ugh, kill me) be deleted because I didn't like Tom Cruise's The Mummy. I'll say it again: fuck you, Amazon.

I've read seller POV complaints, about having 20+ or 1000+ reviews on their product. And then all of those reviews disappear. They don't like it, because those reviews disappear and then sales diminish. I think this is all linked. There are people like me, who are leaving real, honest reviews. And leaving one bad review (likely on a non-Amazon item), can lead to your entire review history being deleted. So now I understand what happens when so many reviews vanish. It should also be noted that Amazon does remove legitimately fake reviews (seller pays dipshit company to have a network of scammers gift/buy/return/etc. and post fake reviews).

My personal experience invalidates every review ever posted on Amazon. That means there's no truth to any review.

fumanstan

My point previously was that it certainly depends on the content of your review or post, and frequency of infractions, which is certainly under moderation here. Especially if it was targeted at the seller, which is against Amazon rules (also, as someone that uses Amazon reviews I hate when a review doesn't focus on the product itself.)

That said, lame for them to delete all your reviews. That I don't agree with and certainly bothers me in trusting user reviews for products on the site.

ctyankee

Fair points.

I particularly think that Amazon should reach out to a user and request that they modify a post (that might be over the top) rather than simply saying "you're banned" and eliminating (potentially) a whole bunch of legitimate reviews that user may have posted.

I also reject the notion that some entity selling a product should have more rights than the ultimate customer.

fumanstan

I don't think Amazon cares enough go that detailed in to moderation and denying a single review is pretty simple on their part and fair, which I can understand since they would have to pay real humans to do all that work to pay closer attention to review content.

But I agree, I don't really understand the jump to blocking and deleting all reviews from a user though. And that sellers ability to have any influence on reviews should be very limited.

Troy Stiffler

"Legitimate" reviews are questionable too. These are customer reviews, not journalism. At that link I posted, those douchebags take pride in creating a case against your negative review, by cross-referencing your social media accounts, and looking for any dirt against you online. It's pretty fucking creepy. All in defense of someone putting out a lousy product that attracts a negative review.

By deleting my reviews and banning me from posting any reviews in the future, Amazon delegitimized tens-or-hundreds of millions of existing reviews. Between sellers paying for positive reviews, paying to remove negative reviews, and having accounts "wiped clean" (like mine), there's no truth to any review on there.

Amazon reviews no longer mean anything to me. And Amazon should just get rid of the entire review portion of their website if they're going to allow this kind of activity.

I mentioned I rarely leave a negative review for any product. Looking back at my order history, I suspect it was from ONE set of curtains I purchased, which looked much different in the pictures than they did in real life. So my review was probably 5 or 7 sentences, and said something like, "these don't look the way they do in the pictures. The actual color is much more faded and not the "gem" color you see in the pics. I will be returning these." I didn't reference the seller or service. I don't think I broke any rules. If I had to guess, I'd say it was that review is what got me kicked off. The private label brand probably paid a third party company to harass Amazon Customer Service until they caved and removed the review, which then blocked my account from ever writing a review again.

I also question the legitimacy of any "Top Reviewer". As I don't understand how anyone, other than a professional reviewer, could be leaving thousands of lengthy reviews. I know they started investigating and banning reviewers who are suspected of taking compensation (money or free product) from the seller. That was a discussion a year-or-so ago when they made changes (and I think the story made the news).

For what it's worth, I checked Google, and this seems to be a relatively common problem. I'm not the only buyer who's been incorrectly banned from leaving reviews.

Troy Stiffler

I could see Amazon scapegoating internet tax when their marketplace begins to slow in the very near future. I predict that's going to be an excuse for investors, as growth slows. But I think they're really crossing the line on a few things...

1. Packaging. It's getting to absurd levels. When am I going to receive an Amazon box that hasn't been broken open?

2. FBA Seller Banishment. They're clearing over half of their FBA inventory and sellers. Ebay did the same thing right before their trouble started in 2012. Their growth never recovered.

3. General customer distrust. Amazon's policy has been to eat the cost of losses and make the customer happy. But there's so much buyer fraud, seller fraud, and other issues (such as their reviews problem). I don't know how much the customer can take before they start distancing themselves from purchasing on Amazon. You can only wear down the good will of your customers for so long, before its over. I think that Amazon is very close to the end. Not that nobody will buy on Amazon. But will enough people keep buying to keep up their growth and make their investors happy? Once you stop returning that magical 10%, a lot of investors move on.

It should be noted that Amazon MWS (web services) account for over half their revenue. At this point, their marketplace is less than half the revenue.

ctyankee

So ... you think Amazon is "very close to the end?" Tell you what you should do. You should use your insight into the market and put your money where your mouth is and join the 1 percent that are currently shorting Amazon stock.

Good luck with that. Hopefully, like in Trading Places, you'll be ordering both the lobster and cracked crab from a waiter at the beach real soon.

Sonic

Eventually that will happen sooner than later. I agree. I can see that happening.

zyzzle

So, we agree at last?? I guess you've faced Amazon's music. Deleting all of your reviews without notice was a shitty thing to do. But, being shitty is par for the course for Amazon these days, all in the name of profit and crunching numbers.

Is Amazon being "close to the end?" As much as I would love for that to be a fact, I can't see how it's possible with so many sheeple sucked into Amazon's funnel, and the suction is still gaining... The demise of Bezos and his minions would take some sort divine miracle, in that people would need to become "unplugged" from Amazon's world, by the millions, synchronously en masse for it to ever happen.

But, the jist of it is that, yes, Mr. Bezos can go fuck himself. Right, x1000.

fumanstan

The dramatic hyperbole here amuses me greatly.

Troy Stiffler

Yes, I believe that Amazon's end is near. It's not that they'll disappear. But, as their growth slows, less money stays in their stocks and investors move onto something else. Eventually they'll be back down to on par with Wal-Mart. It could be 50 years until they're K-Mart. Plus, less than half their revenue comes from their marketplace. It's sort of like how PayPal propped up a failing Ebay for an extra five-or-so years before they split.

FYI, I've been in ecommerce since I was 16 years old. I predict there's going to be a renaissance of very lean brick and mortar stores. They'll be lean, so they can keep their prices competitive with online warehouse shopping. Who knows ... maybe Amazon themselves will invest in the trend. But I'm almost positive that's where this is going.

Troy Stiffler

I'm getting close to the 1%. But the stock market isn't my thing. I prefer to earn my money.

fujishig

Do they even make much money from the storefront? I thought a lot of their worth is basically AWS, which I don't see going away anytime soon.

Noonan

I'm guessing others here only see Amazon as an online retailer, without considering everything else they do.

It's like saying GE is going to go out of business because their appliances aren't what they used to be.

ctyankee

Ebay is up 39 percent since they split into separate companies.

If that's failing, please share your view on other failures as I may have to look into purchasing their stock.

davidh777

Amazon has already rolled out some very limited physical bookstores.

fumanstan

Yeah, Amazon Web Services is the leading cloud provider in the world. I don't think people realize how many websites and services that they frequent rely on AWS.

I've been to one of the Amazon physical stores. They're great too, I hope they expand those.

ctyankee

Indeed. Plus they are testing Amazon Go with the general public, a cashless small grocer/convenience store in the Seattle area. Plus Amazon purchased Whole Foods. We'll get a better sense of how Whole Foods is performing when Amazon reports earnings on Thursday.

Noonan

If the Whole Foods around me are any indication, they're doing very well. A new giant store just opened in a mall; took the floor space of JC Penny. Giant two story Whole Foods.

Troy Stiffler

But not me, of course.

And yes, Whole Foods is a great premium grocery store. I shop there daily. I was a little worried Amazon was going to take away the "premium" part. But it seems to be holding up well.