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Shopping at Amazon. User reviews at Amazon, Trip Advisor, Yelp, Camel Camel Camel and App Store.


DavidS

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I shop for many things at Amazon, and reading this Forum suggests many others do as well. I want to describe two very helpful tools for shopping at Amazon.

 

The first tool is CamelCamelCamel, which I first mentioned in a post that included a comment about how some prices for some Amazon items can fluctuate wildly. CamelCamelCamel allows you to due two things. First, you can paste an Amazon product URL (such as https://www.amazon.com/Camco-44472-Wheel-Chock-Rope/dp/B001V8PRBM, or the product code, here B001V8PRBM) into its search window, and the web site will show you the price over time. A slider on the right allows you to adjust the time window.

 

Screen Shot 2018-02-12 at 10.33.22 AM

 

Using CamelCamelCamel becomes much easier if you install a price tracking tool as described here. I have not used their Extensions. Instead I have put their Bookmarket into the Favorites Bookmark bar on my browser, and that works well. Now, if I am looking at an Amazon item I simply click on the CamelCamelCamel icon and it opens the price analysis graph in a new browser tab.

 

The second thing you can do in CamelCamelCamel, if you set up an account, is to set up an alert, where the system will notify you when the price drops to a desired level. I have saved some money using these price alerts.

 

The new web site I found is FakeSpot (https://www.fakespot.com) that helps you determine whether reviews are accurate or not. As you probably know, many people put up fake reviews to boost a product ranking, often using companies that will put up X number of 5-star reviews at a price of X dollars per review. These companies use reviewer accounts that give only 5-star reviews, using the same language, and these reviews all appear within days of each other. See Wirecutter discussion. The FakeSpot algorithm analyzes all of the reviews, what other products these reviewers review, and what words they use. The linguistic analysis is particularly useful because fake reviewers use tend to use the same language styles for all of their reviewer accounts and for all of the products they review.

 

Screen Shot 2018-02-12 at 9.41.01 AM

 

In addition to Amazon, the software works on user reviews for Trip Advisor, Yelp and the App Store. I tried some TripAdvisor reviews for places that I thought were good and deserving of their high quality reviews, and FakeSpot gave the reviews an A grade. I bought an iPhone App several years ago and discovered that the app was worthless. I wrote a detailed but scathing review, but when the company updates the app every month old reviews get lost. I ran the current App Store reviews through FakeSpot just now, and it says all of the current reviews are fake! I tried some recent Amazon purchases and found that the reviews for one recent electronic item were mostly fake. For other items the reviews appear genuine.

 

One example. Two years ago I bought a Camco 44472 Wheel Chock, which had great reviews. FakeSpot gave the reviews a C grade, and that 25% of the reviews are of low quality.

 

Screen Shot 2018-02-12 at 11.24.58 AM

 

There is a ReAnalyze Button, and I clicked it. It took a few minutes, but the revised report gives the reviews an A grade. It says that Amazon as deleted a large number of low quality reviews. Interesting.

 

Screen Shot 2018-02-12 at 11.25.13 AM

 

If you scroll down the FakeSpot page they have Browser extensions for Chrome, Firefox and Safari. I have been using the Safari Extension, which works great, but takes up a lot of real estate on my screen. My solution is to turn it on and off as needed by Safari > Preferences > Extensions. They also have an iOS app which works quite nicely. The reviews on the App Store are highly critical, mostly because there are no instructions. I found a web site that gave good info on how to use, and one of the 5-Star App Store reviews nicely explains how to use: On iPhone Amazon app go to a product, click on Share > More > Analyze with FakeSpot. Finally, the App Store reviews for FakeSpot’s iOS app gets only a B grade!

  • Thanks 8

David Stillman, Salt Lake City, Utah

2016 Oliver Elite II  Hull 164    |    2017 Audi Q7 tow vehicle. 

Travel and Photography Blog: http://davidstravels.net

 

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David, thanks for the info. I have used Camelx3 for several years and it has been very useful. Sometimes I see by the chart that there are periodic price drops and I use the “email me” feature to let me know ASAP when the price reaches my target number. This is very cool!

 

I was unaware of Fakespot. That also will be very helpful. I have encountered those fake reviews and I noticed that they all had similar posting date and they often all had the same fractured English, indicating that “Robert” is really an “Engrish” speaker. LOL.

 

Has anyone found a site that helps you to distinguish COUNTERFEIT products? This is also a huge problem and you can easily be sucked in by a too-good-to-be-true price. For example, there are counterfeit Leupold optics that look like the real thing, including packaging, but they are dross, so when they break and you ship them in for warranty repair, all you get back is your busted fake scope, lost shipping costs,  and lots of bad news.

 

John Davies

 

Spokane WA

SOLD 07/23 "Mouse":  2017 Legacy Elite II Two Beds, Hull Number 218, See my HOW TO threads: https://olivertraveltrailers.com/topic/john-e-davies-how-to-threads-and-tech-articles-links/

Tow Vehicle: 2013 Land Cruiser 200, 32” LT tires, airbags, Safari snorkel, Maggiolina Grand Tour 360 Carbon RTT.

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