I’ve noticed this recently with a *ton* of tech products—I’ll look at a product with decent reviews, but when I read them they’re for a completely different thing. Are these the result of the seller changing the product? If so, why is it allowed for them to keep the old reviews? It makes it really hard to tell what’s actually being sold and if it’s a good product.
In: Technology
Those are definitely scams (unless it’s a variation of the product). Amazon doesn’t have a great method to track this. But yes, they swap new products using existing reviews.
I find that looking at the “Date First Available” located in the “Product Information” section also helps spot fraud. If a product was listed very recently you may want to approach with caution.
I’ve heard they use old listings for products they stopped selling for new products so they don’t start from scratch with no ratings or reviews. Its shady. I always sort by most recent first.
Its one of two things:
1. ASIN Merging: Sellers are allowed to merge multiple products in case they created multiple listings for the same products. Some sellers abuse this feature by creating a new product and then merging the old product into it to get all the reviews and ratings in case the older product is EOL – End of Life
2. UPC/EAN exemption: Amazon prevents sellers from selling incorrect products compared to what’s listed by mandating barcodes such as UPC or EAN. There are product categories which are quite generic and brands don’t get international barcoding done and in such cases sellers can seek exemptions in listing products with barcodes mandatory. This exemption opens a backdoor for them to retain old ASINs when new products are launched by just editing the entire description and title but retaining the reviews and ratings
Download FakeSpot, it evaluates reviews on Amazon and other sites, you’d be amazed at how much is BS.
Some sellers will sell totally different products using the color and size options. Like when you look for a usb thumb drive, and you can choose which size you want. Except that instead of size 1 and size 2 it will be t-shirt and air conditioner.
I imagine they do this to ride on either the good reviews of a different product, better search visibility, or just to scam people.
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