
This is the best drone according to Amazon? – The HS100 - Separo
https://dronedj.com/2018/10/30/amazon-reviews-hs100/
======
amai
Just use [https://reviewmeta.com/](https://reviewmeta.com/) to validate Amazon
scores of products. When you do it on HS100 it immediately gives you a
warning: "Unnatural reviews possible" . Fakespot shows a Fakespot Grade F and
a corrected rating of 1.3: [https://www.fakespot.com/product/holy-stone-
hs100g-drone-wit...](https://www.fakespot.com/product/holy-stone-hs100g-drone-
with-1080p-fhd-camera-5g-fpv-live-video-and-gps-return-home-function-rc-
quadcopter-for-beginners-kids-adults-with-follow-me-altitude-hold-intelligent-
battery) It seems to me that Reviewmeta and FakeSpot do work. It is just
Amazon that is too lazy to do anything against fake reviews.

~~~
Aunche
Fakespot and reviewmeta seem to have a bunch of false positives. I recently
looked up a hair brush on fakespot and it had an F because the reviews were
too similar. Turns out there isn't too much variety in how you can describe a
hair brush. The reviewers I looked at had bought a variety of items and gave
varying scores, so I doubt they're fake. It's more accurate to read the
reviews and see if they sound genuine. A numerical score for something
qualitative isn't very useful anyways.

~~~
jrockway
The real problem is that the review aggregator sites don't have all the data
that could possibly be available to them. For example, I wrote a 2 star review
of an LED light bulb I bought on Amazon. Claimed to be 90+ CRI, was actually a
garish green color with a little bit of red and blue thrown in. I measured it
with a spectrophotometer and included the spectrum chart in my review. The
review was not posted for "violating their guidelines" or something. So any
review aggregator is missing that genuine review, as is anyone browsing
Amazon.com. For this reason, I don't trust _any_ reviews anymore. Amazon
filters out the negative ones!

~~~
JumpCrisscross
> _" violating their guidelines" _

Any guesses as to what guidelines were violated?

~~~
jrockway
My guess is that the spectrum chart triggered some spam protection, honestly.
I would call customer service but Amazon's customer service can't do anything
other than send you another copy of the item you're complaining about.

(That's my other Amazon story. One time, I bought some bicycle tires on
Amazon. They sent me the wrong model, mountain bike size instead of road bike
size. I wrote them a detailed email describing what they sent me and what they
should have sent. "We're so sorry!". The next day, two identically wrong tires
arrived. I complained and they refunded my money. I now had to find a way to
use four mountain bike tires, and I still had no road bike tires. 2 riding
days lost. An hour writing emails lost. And I still had no bike tires. I bet
99% of people would call that "great customer service". I think it's terrible.
(Amazon did eventually remove the listing in question, so that's nice.))

------
dalbasal
Ok so erm... we all know what to expect when an amazon article hits HN.

 _Amazon has devolved. Counterfeits. Fake reviews. Crap quality...._

IDK if this is true. That is, IDK if amazon's meaningfully worse than
traditional big department stores or the brick-and-mortar sector generally.

But, say it's true. Amazon has jumped the shark. This is HN. This isn't the
place for customer complaints. It's the place to hatch plans to kill amazon.

What's the bridgehead (à la pg) to a full-scale invasion of amazon territory?
Reviews? Some product subset? Discovery? How would _you_ build the company
that replaces amazon?

~~~
echelon
Can you beat Amazon at this point? If Amazon sees a threat, they can easily
use their pricing power to force it out of business. They don't mind losing
money as a means to pressure competition.

I think you'd need to play a different game altogether if you wanted to carve
a new niche. What that looks like, I'm not sure. Maybe a shopping site that
builds carts across various retailers and orders from the least expensive?

~~~
beatgammit
Everything can be beaten. Wal-Mart is now offering free 2-day shipping (min
purchase, but no membership fee), and I wouldn't be surprised to see stiff
competition as drone regulation loosens.

As Amazon gets into more sectors, competition will increase. I don't think
that will kill Amazon, but a big breach or other bad press could be enough to
get people to move to alternatives, especially if those alternatives have
become more competitive.

I don't think startups can compete until larger businesses threaten Amazon
(Costco, Wal-Mart, CVS, Target, etc).

------
chrischen
> Instead, they contract low-cost Chinese manufacturers to provide a custom
> logo on a drone that already exists. Then Holy Stone puts the drone up on
> Amazon at a significant markup.

Seems like Amazon is filled with "fake" brands like these. Is just so that if
some brand messes up, they can just put out the same product under a new
brand?

~~~
somecallitblues
A lot of electronics are just rebranded Chinese goods. I remember some years
back a DLink, Netgear, Netcomm etc. modem routers all came from the same
supplier in a different case. I used to work for one of them and we’d purchase
competitors product, open it up and it’s look the same inside. We could even
install our firmware onto their box.

~~~
freehunter
A lot of items _period_ are like this. I've seen my same fridge with an LG,
Electrolux, and Whirlpool logo on it. My grandpa worked at a factory (here in
the US) that made chocolate-covered cherries and mid-shift every day they'd
have a switch-over on the boxes to switch which brand they were producing. The
boxes were the _only_ thing they changed, the chocolate and the cherries were
still the same. Even car companies do that, the Chevrolet Aveo was made by
Daewoo and branded as a Chevrolet, Daewoo, Holden, Pontiac, Ravon, and Suzuki.

~~~
wincy
That’s interesting with the cars. I drive a used Camry and my cousin drives a
brand new Yaris, and while I’ve had precisely 0 problems with the Camry she
has constant problems with the “budget” Toyota model.

Googling it, it looks like Mazda makes at least some of the Yaris line, which
used to be the Scion brand before that.

[https://www.forbes.com/sites/samabuelsamid/2018/04/09/2018-t...](https://www.forbes.com/sites/samabuelsamid/2018/04/09/2018-toyota-
yaris-se-its-surprisingly-ok/)

~~~
masonic
Yaris and Scion are different badgings that coexisted at the same time.

------
DrNuke
Shameless plug: as an advisor for DronesBench
[http://www.dronesbench.it/en](http://www.dronesbench.it/en), which tests the
electro-mechanical compliance of consumer drones, I suggested them to work on
test drives of these cheap, dangerous drones to make the general public aware
of the low quality level in the market. Their answer was that the general
public does not care anyway, it is a war you cannot win because low prices
trump all.

~~~
RankingMember
Since a drone can potentially violate restricted airspace, I could see some
regulatory body eventually requiring approval/certification before a drone
aircraft can be sold. I can imagine private pilots aren't too keen on running
into some out of control flying piece of garbage at a few thousand feet.

~~~
jobigoud
> requiring approval/certification before a drone aircraft can be sold

Drones are like computers, you can buy all the individual parts and build it
yourself. They only have a few parts: flight controller, PDB, ESCs, motors,
propellers, radio receiver, camera, video transmitter, and a frame to hold
everything together.

These vendors of cheap drones are just putting them together themselves and
add a fancy canopy on top.

~~~
DrNuke
That’s it. That’s also why DronesBench comes with a novel, single efficiency
benchmark for the electro-mechanical compliance of the drone as a system
[http://www.dronesbench.it/en/fomdrone/](http://www.dronesbench.it/en/fomdrone/)
. Just measure it at factory and write it on the plate or stick it somewhere
on the frame, then measure again periodically during its operational life:
significant decreases express hidden defects, thus becoming a preventive tool
for flight safety.

------
phyller
A lot of comments about existing tools to spot fake reviews, and wondering why
Amazon doesn't use them because the fake reviews that are dominating Amazon
are clearly hurting consumers.

The long play for Amazon might just be that consumers gravitate towards the
products that are actually sold by Amazon, because they can be sure that it
should at least work. Eventually Amazon doesn't just control the marketplace,
but is the only major vendor as well, and actually controls everything from
the factory to the consumer.

~~~
comboy
It's also that fake reviewers probably don't try to game 3rd party sites
rating systems. It seems plausible that if you implemented the same algo that
some spotting-fake-reviews site uses on Amazon, sellers would quickly find a
way around it.

~~~
phyller
Yea that's a really good point. The best way for Amazon to deal with the
problem is to curate the reviewers, not the reviews, in my opinion.

------
ryanmarsh
Anyone old enough to recall Walmart’s rise to power will find amazon’s trend
towards cheap crap familiar. Walmart sold dirt cheap Chinese stuff of dubious
quality but customer service would replace it at the drop of a hat (similar to
how these companies keep bad reviews down). As shown by Walmart’s success most
people don’t care they just want cheap crap.

It took a while for Target to rebrand itself as the less crappy source of
overpriced but better quality cheap crap store for the middle and upper-middle
class. Perhaps someone will come along and do this to Amazon online. Whereas
Amazon clearly doesn’t care that it’s selling cheap crap, someone could come
along and apply a little more curation to the offering.

------
flavor8
To give Holy Stone credit, they have good customer service. I bought one of
their crappier models when I was first exploring the quadcopter marketplace a
few years ago. They did the usual thing of proactively emailing and asking for
a review after a few days, but then actually replied to my email rant about
quality control with suggestions to debug the issue. Finally, once I'd crashed
it one too many times and destroyed it, they sent me a new drone free of
charge. I suspect they're probably doing similar to anybody who leaves a bad
rating in order to groom their listings.

(Don't get me wrong - their customer service doesn't make up for their poor
products. Never buy a drone with injection molded frames, since they're not
serviceable. Carbon fiber with replaceable frame parts all the way.)

~~~
paulgb
I've had something similar happen (with another product). I think it's the
flip side of fake reviews that people don't consider: you might be able to
fake your way to five stars with a new product, but keeping it actually
requires a decent product and being responsible to unsatisfied customers
(usually with one of those "contact us directly if you have any concerns"
cards in the box)

~~~
smt88
Their reviews inevitably tank, so they start selling the same product under a
new brand.

------
mikehollinger
Is this a new thing, “Review engine ‘optimization?’”

So what’s the real fix here?

If I report the company then it’ll shut down and reopen under a different
name.

If I leave a review it’ll drown it out with fake reviews.

If I shame the company - no one will see it. mom trusts ama son because ten
years ago I told her to look at the reviews there.

~~~
credit_guy
The real fix is for Amazon to have a department of curation. Beyond a certain
scale, you can't only be a passive intermediary. There are all sorts of
negative actors. Just like HN has some curation (great work, Dang) Amazon
needs some too, but obviously on a completely different scale.

~~~
JustSomeNobody
Why should Bezos care? He's worth $160 Billion so something must be working
for him. Why would he feel the need to change? Amazon is making money, he's
happy, investors are happy, so ... who cares about a few unhappy customers?

~~~
moltar
Bezos cares because he’s customer obsessed.

~~~
petra
meh. just look at "Amazon dark patterns" :
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17651488](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17651488)

------
bhuga
There's one upside to the Amazon shopping experience devolving into a
primordial sludge of counterfeits and random whitelabel garbage. These vendors
have no discoverability beyond Amazon reviews, so their desperation to prevent
your 1-star review is drastic. If you leave a 1-star review, they'll often get
in touch with you and offer you another item for free, as often as it takes,
however long it takes.

The products are garbage, but most of the prices are already pretty good. When
you realize the prices are for two at the cost of a review, they're even
better.

I still get emails trying to give me free stuff to change a one-star review I
left a year ago for a one-ear bluetooth earbud.

On the other hand, I don't see how you can buy quality on Amazon anymore. I've
started shopping on niche sites for things that I want to work, and I'd never
buy expensive electronics. The risk of a counterfeit is just too high.

~~~
jobigoud
> If you leave a 1-star review, they'll often get in touch with you and offer
> you another item for free

But is it at the price of removing your 1-star review? They are buying your
honesty?

~~~
zip1234
Sounds like the ultimate 1-star review for these types of situations should
note that they will give you a free one if you 1 star the product. People will
start doing that just for free ones.

------
sethhochberg
Man, when I read the headline I seriously thought this was going to be a
report on drones that Amazon had been evaluating for commercial delivery
purposes, not just an aggregate customer review article... sometimes this
habit of referring to Amazon users as "Amazon" or reddit users as "reddit" has
problems.

------
Smrchy
It would be really nice to have a browser extension that shows the amount of
other reviews every reviewer has in the last n months. Someone with 20+ review
can not really be trusted and can be filtered out.

Or even better: If Amazon would spend some of their AI departments time and
delete those fake reviews on a daily basis. So tired of them.

~~~
sequence7
The article actually mentions Fakespot [1] which has a chrome extension as
well as ReviewMeta [2] which as far as I can tell doesn't. Neither do exactly
what you're asking but they seem quite useful from a quick investigation and
highlight some of the issues highlighted in the article when you look at the
linked product.

[1] [https://www.fakespot.com/](https://www.fakespot.com/)

[2] [https://reviewmeta.com/](https://reviewmeta.com/)

------
Terretta
The tiny Holy Stone drones come with one tiny 6 min battery.

A package insert offers three more batteries free, and by the way, don’t
forget you can give happy reviews.

The implications probably play out well for them.

// The HS170G for $30 is a hoot to zip around indoors to practice your “Mode
2” controller chops, certainly worth 5 stars for entertainment per dollar:

[https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0762GZR25/](https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0762GZR25/)

------
wolfgke
Just a consideration: Isn't it at least somewhat plausible that some products
attract people who are satisfied more easily and thus write good reviews? In
this scenario, lots of these reviews might be honest, but nevertheless not
helpful to you, since the good review only implies that you will be satisfied
if you are of a similar demographic.

------
drewg123
This reminds me why I use
[https://www.fakespot.com/](https://www.fakespot.com/) analysis of Amazon
reviews for products that I'm unfamiliar with. I see they mentioned fakespot
in the article, which is nice.

------
Theodores
From the article:

"I also think Holy Stone must be doing something to appease unhappy customers
in exchange for not providing a negative review. It’s just too good to be
true. Just 6% of reviews of the HS100 have 1, 2, or 3-star rating."

So there are nefarious ways to achieve this. But you do not need to do sneaky
things to get excellent reviews from pissed off customers. It is easy to
assume that the more underhand ways have gotten the good reviews and I am sure
you can go to a fake reviews bot to prove the thesis. But it is actually
easier and more cost efficient to get those excellent reviews for an average
product from pissed off customers by good old customer service.

Most companies have their customer service team at the bottom of the food
chain, outsourced and on the minimum wage. From my experience of Google
products I suspect that this goes on in a lot of companies that genuinely make
wonder products. We all know the story, you struggle to find out how to
complain, you struggle filling in an online form and, if you are lucky, you
get an automated response. They then make resolution of your complaint as hard
as possible, divorce proceedings could be easier.

Most companies don't go the 'full Google' on lousy customer service, however
it still takes a while. You get there in the end. They actually have a good
product so the complaints are a relatively rare thing for them. Consequently
they don't have to major on customer service, the customer service guys are
one or two grunts in the company and the whole thing is seen as a cost rather
than a revenue centre.

If a company does have a real problem with the product and there are a lot of
warranty claims then they have to shape up and get good at customer service.
Otherwise they are doomed to go out of business. So they throw people at the
problem and more people and are still not winning. The next step is to
automate the hell out of it. So you have extremely polite letters sent to
customers to get the information needed to process a warranty claim. Customers
receive these and the process rolls real quick. They provide required
information and the highly automated customer service process just requires
some human operator to approve the claim. The warehouse (FBA) then sends the
customer out replacement product on the same day. Again, sensible
communication goes out and the customer again thinks that for once in their
freaking life they have been listened to. Maybe, up until then they have had
'Google grade' customer service and felt left out in the cold. At this point
they don't really care so much about the product - most products are
commodities anyhow - they just get wowed by the instant response.

There is social engineering in this, the customer can also be led to believe
that they are the first person to notice that the 'plastic could be moulded
better' and they think that their feedback will be passed along to the 'design
team' to help make a better product. They feel involved.

Next the follow up email goes out, asking the customer if their experience
with customer service was good enough. By now they have 'bonded' with 'Debbie'
or whomever they thought those nice emails were from. They don't realise that
'Debbie' can't spell to save her life and cares more about watching Netflix
than their problems with the product. 'Debbie' just clicked a button with
automated systems and email templates doing the rest. But because they think
they know 'Debbie' they obligingly write a really nice thank you and give five
stars. A review is a review, on the site - Amazon or other - there are no
silos for reviews breaking them down into 'customer service' and 'product', it
all goes into the same pot.

'Debbie' might reject some warranty claims but for these people 'Debbie' can
click a different tick box that sends out a discount code for the customer to
buy a replacement. So whatever happens, thanks to automation put in place due
to the lousy nature of the product, the customer always gets something far
beyond what the 'good' companies would do.

These reviews all look formulaic praise for the company because there is a
high likelihood that people will write the same stuff, e.g. 'fab, utterly
delighted, will buy again'. What else are they going to write?

Then some fake review spotting bot comes along and goes 'ahem... these reviews
are all the same!' which implies something dastardly. Nothing dastardly has
gone on at all, this is assigning conspiracy when a more plausible explanation
is possible. No customers have been bribed, no begging for reviews has gone
on, the hustle is far more sophisticated than that.

Obviously there is a lot of product that has to be sent out for warranty
claims however, in this customer service model there is no huge team of people
weighed down with a massive queue of complaints and not knowing what to do,
only to ever let people down. Every complaint is dealt with in real time and
there is no backlog.

So then think anti-pattern here. If you can convert 99% of complaints into
raving reviews then you kind of need more complaints as that is the best way
to get awesome reviews. Happy normal customers don't usually care to write a
review, they have better things to do. Pissed off customers that get
delightful, not seen before, utterly speedy customer service will go that
extra mile and forgive human and product failings to write reviews. These
reviews provide the social proof other people need to buy the product. Clearly
the product is not better and can't be for this gaming of the system to work.

I am not saying this has gone on in this instance with this product - I don't
work for this drone company and have no idea how they work behind the scenes.
However I do know that the above technique works and that nobody is going to
scan the page to notice 'all these reviews are as a result of customer
service'. Even the Google bot won't notice.

Most proper companies don't put the grunts of customer service high up in the
food chain, some companies selling so-so commodity items have to. So off-brand
products can win reviews remarkably easily with nothing being faked in the
underhand ways people with no skin in the game can imagine. I have to say
American consumers are the easiest 'marks' for this type of shenanigans, YMMV
in Europe.

~~~
thom
Every time I've bought something with rave reviews only to find out it's
garbage, I've left a bad review and then been emailed offering my money back
if I deleted it because bad reviews hurt their business (I could of course
keep the product). I've never retracted a review, and have always reported the
behaviour to Amazon, but it's extremely common.

~~~
aerique
I know it's not very nice but would taking the money and not taking down the
review dissuade businesses from doing this?

Or, if that is illegal (which I can imagine), just putting up a new bad
review.

~~~
RankingMember
Ideally I'd like to see people start screenshotting the emailed "offer" and
adding it to their existing negative review.

------
yohann305
This year, media was focusing on taking down Facebook, i'm forecasting 2019
will be the year media will focus on Amazon. Let's see

------
buboard
some iPhones have bigger margins than these drones.

