Can you clarify this statement? It's not clear to me that this business model necessarily violates patents. It seems like they're just taking already well-established products and tweaking them. Then they're applying marketing techniques to get to the top of Amazon and Ebay searches...
This is actually true--improvement on a design is not patent infringement, and you can file your own patent for an improvement of someone else's design.
That having been said, patent trolls don't really use patent infringement, but the threat of an infringement suit. They send threatening letters and wait for their target to realize that the court battle costs more than paying the fee.
Great article with a stellar business model. This guy's scheme is literally "give the people what they want!" Need more of this kind of thinking in software. Unfortunately, lock-in techniques will likely prevent it from working in many places it's needed most.
Note that the most helpful review is someone who did not buy one. Same with the second. And the third.
> Sample provided for review.
> Got this at no cost for unbiased review.
> *I received a sample product from Ivation.
Reviews are much more scattered if you filter by "Verified purchase only". It's interesting that this drops the number of reviews from 165 to 104 for a product which is designed for and presumably sold only on Amazon.
I'm not necessarily suggesting these reviews are shady, but given the other aspects of Amazon that this company tracks, it would seem reasonable to suggest they've figured out a way to track influential reviewers likely to give them a positive review.
From what I can remember, Amazon has always been full of mostly useless reviews. Disclosing that products were provided for free does little to change that. About the only thing that does is let the parties involved "white wash" their hands of ethical issues.
Occasionally, there will be a shining star. Recently I ordered an AIO printer and a reviewer had a fairly comprehensive reviews on multiple models, almost at a short article length.
Music seems to be one category where I sometimes find value in the reviews. It seems like people are more forthcoming about their music tastes, even though subjective, than what they think about utilitarian products.
Since you asked, I'd say you're probably being downvoted because the fact that the creator is Jewish is irrelevant to the comment you replied to. OP was having a balanced discussion about the ethics of providing review products whereas your comment declares the creator a scammer without any explanation or supporting evidence.
IMO I don't think religion, even if its "super-duper" is really on topic in a discussion about the quality and ethics of Amazon reviews. I hope this doesn't come off as critical, I'm just trying to explain where your donvoters may be coming from.
Thank you. Maybe the problem is I replied in this specific thread after reading the other threads were the religion is discussed. And also where the scamminess of Amazon reviews is discussed.
Does it bother anyone else that the three customer reviews on the product page all give five stars, and all three reviewers received the product for free in exchange for an 'unbiased' review? (And that fact is only visible if you click each 'see more' link at the end of the truncated review). I just have a hard time believing this practice doesn't create bias, even if unintentional.
I'm finding I have to work harder to parse meaning out of Amazon reviews than I did a few years ago. I don't see how this benefits Amazon, but I also don't see them doing much to fix it.
Some companies will provide the product "for free" but then -- and here's the kicker -- require the product to be returned or they'll charge you for it. I can realistically see an unbiased review coming from that process, but not one where the reviewer gets to keep the product for free.
It is typical in the "Private Label Business" to generate the first reviews using this technique. And Amazon only allows this in their TOS if the product was provided for free.
I would be interested to build a tool which tries to analyze the reviews e.g. using Natural Language Processing (NLP) or Machine Learning techniques to get the "real" picture for a given product. NLP could help to identify the most criticized aspects for a given product so a potential buyer does not have to go through any single review.
I am not an expert in NLP/ML though. Any ideas how this could be done?
Yeah, all the ones that start with "I received the complimentary product" in some form.
That's a bogus review, it's paid. You might argue free product is not payment but the IRS would then like to have a word with you (ask the people who got "free" cars from Oprah).
This is fairly anecdotal, but I've read some people's experiences with free products for reviews. They received products while they were giving good reviews. The products stopped once a bad review was posted.
Amazon also gives free products for review (Amazon Vine) but these are made very clear with a banner above the review, and will remain part of the program so long as they continue to receive a high number of 'helpful' votes on their reviews.
"Do you have any data to back up the claim that most of the recent reviews are bogus?"
Yes, after buying numerous products with great ratings and discovering that the people who rated the product negatively were often right about their complains.
From what I have seen people don't put to much effort to praise products, however they take the time to complain when they feel unsatisfied or burnt by a product.
I'm not trying to convince you or anyone but this methods has worked rather well for me.
Anker (http://www.anker.com/) does something very similar to this company -- except, I think, it has a smaller selection of products. Judging from reviews on Amazon, Anker is also doing very well for itself.
Possibly, depending on what rate this is happening. I'd wager that this gets them brownie points with the public, similar to a "connect with fans" approach. Chalk it up to a form of marketing and budget it that way.
"Private Label" manufacture of goods is a fairly large cottage industry. Unfortunately many of the mostly fly by night home based Alibaba arbitrage schemes fail pretty hard. I've certainly purchased these off amazon ebay etc and have found they rarely stand up to the hype. For instance, I recently purchased a WooPower dual 2.4 amp charger off Amazon. Total POS doesnt come anywhere near 2.4 amps per output. I have a suspicion the 300+ reviews are fake.
Not to throw shade on these guys but you get what you pay for.
> Before us are rows of cubicles, almost entirely inhabited by bearded, yarmulke-wearing men in crisp white shirts. These are Pikarski's buyers. (About half of C&A Marketing's 150-person staff is Orthodox, though the buyers division is more homogenous. "The buyer that does all the storage products, he's the only guy I let work out of home," Pikarski says. "He's Italian.")
Jews stick together. One of reasons for their resilience and business success. Unsurprising he brought a lot of his own in on the business. They do that in upper-ranks in my area, too.
Now, you probably won't see the media report on racist hiring practices in Jewish companies as quickly as they do anti-Semitism. ;)
I don't think it's a racist hiring practice, it's religious nepotism. Mormons and scientologists often stick together in the same way (and really probably any small group of people very closely connected; immigrants often initially do the same thing in a new country as well).
I was referring to the fact that they mostly hire people that are (a) Jews and (b) Jewish. Jew is a race that I'm aware of. So, it's usually racist and religious discrimination.
What? No. Ashkenazim might be genetically similar, but even there, not a race. And there are also Sephardim. Also Jews from Africa? Definitely not a race.
Particularly, this statement: "Genetic studies on Jews show that most Jews worldwide bear a common genetic heritage which originates in the Middle East, and that they bear their strongest resemblance to the peoples of the Fertile Crescent.[58][59][60] The genetic composition of different Jewish groups shows that Jews share a common genetic pool dating back 4,000 years, as a marker of their common ancestral origin."
That Jew/Hebrew isn't a race is a very new claim to me. What do you have to support it?
If it was a race as we contemplate race in its current definition, it would be on the government form I posted.
It isn't. It's not a race like that (nor, really, in any other way).
Yes, some Jews have a common genetic pattern.
Many don't.
Either you're talking about the religion, which is clearly not a race (as you said). Or you're talking about a group that generally shares the same religion, that descended from a few groups that lived co-located thousands of years ago. Of course, many are descended from those groups. What makes that a race?
And I didn't mention Christianity to ask if anyone doubted it existed. I mentioned Christianity to show how silly it is to consider Jews a race. If Christianity isn't a race (even though many Christians descend from a common ancestor), then Jews aren't a race.
- Technically, if you are a Christian, you probably believe you descended from Adam & Eve, sort of the ultimate common ancestor.
Finally, a comment with some specific counterpoints. I appreciate it. So, you're saying that many works just wrongly conflate concepts of a group and race to the point that there's a misconception about the existence of a Jewish race? Also, given the form, that there are only 5 races in existence?
That's pretty much what I'm saying. I think the 5 races on the form conform to my understanding of race, so I think that part is right as well.
I guess fundamentally I can't wrap my head around the idea of identifying a religious group and calling that a race. As I mention, we don't do it with any other religious group, so why Jews?
If Jewish people are disproportionately some races rather than others (and they are), wouldn't that also qualify as racial discrimination under the "disparate impact" reasoning?
I'm not sure it is though. If you have a tight nit community, and you tend to hire those you know best... In that case the filter isn't religion, it's social familiarity.
At first, no it didn't bother me that it was culturally homogeneous -- I thought "Hey this guy is running his own business, that's great." Lots of small businesses that grow organically are confined to a single culture. After all, it was founded by two Orthodox Jews, former competitors, undoubtedly part of a business-friendly community with more contacts who were open to good employment.
But now I think you bring up a fair point, and as they grow, they're probably facing pressure to diversify. Their numbers will start looking suspicious, and it will get harder to find employees within the same community, if nothing else. And how they handle it will affect their company culture and reputation for sure.
Inclusiveness can be hard work; in an ideal world, it would develop organically, with time to learn as they go. I'm sure it will go better if they work at it proactively rather than resist it. But they live in a multi-cultural city, so I'm sure they have some life experience.
I love the hint in the article about that process. It's colorful and shows that it's not just about cultures, but also about individuals:
> "The buyer that does all the storage products, he's the only guy I let work out of home," Pikarski says. "He's Italian."
Its interesting to think about why this enterprise succeeds and yet Quirky, for example stumbled: this one starts with a known selling product and iterates on it based on market demand, rather than just coming up with cool ideas, perhaps. (I'm actually a fan of Quirky so this isn't really intended as a dis, but one of these two has "nine-figure" (really?) sales, and one doesn't)
Quirky likely had far more scruples and far less connections than these guys, plus I bet Quirky had far less balls when it came to negotiating with a vendor.
These buyers are likely expert and negotiating the price down, or even playing vendors against each other, to get the costs as low as possible.
Their savvy in being able to react quickly with a response product is likely largely driven by their business accumen in this regard...
Quirky was too altruistic in the way they likely handled the manufacturing.
Remember, success in business can often be a reward for some pretty shitty behaviors.
Quirky is a platform for advertising individual product developer ideas. C&A is a marketing+product company that builds products based on consumer research and iteration.
IOQ, Quirky is a vanity platform like Print-on-Demand book companies, not a business enabler.
Ghostery is not the best idea if you're looking for privacy, because it comes from the ad industry. Consider independents like uBlock, Privacy Badger, etc.
