
Alibaba Lawsuit Throws the Spotlight on Fake Reviews - allenleein
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-12-19/alibaba-lawsuit-throws-spotlight-on-brushers-gaming-rankings
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tyingq
This is somewhat funny to me, because while the article is about Taobao,
Alibaba's other sites are rampant with not just fraudulent reviews, but
fraudulent sellers in general.

I buy quite a bit of stuff from their AliExpress.com site. These are
inexpensive things, so I know what I'm getting into, however...

At least one of out every 10 orders ends up having a serious problem. Items
that never ship, items that don't work (and clearly weren't designed to work,
ever), and so on. Their process to deal with these sort of things is heavily
weighted in favor of the sellers. For example, the sellers get cheap shipping
due to the UPU[1]. So, they will demand you return an item to get a refund.
Well, as a buyer, I have no such access to cheap shipping...so the return
shipping costs more than I paid for the item itself.

I also see little to no effort on Alibaba's part to curb things like

\- Deliberately inaccurate item titles and descriptions

\- "Stuffing"...one vendor creates hundreds of nearly identical listings to
game the search functions.

\- Shipping delays...not in-transit, but sellers sitting on orders for weeks
before shipping out

\- Fake, defective, or otherwise substandard merchandise

Basically, it's silly to me that they are chasing other companies when they
could just start by cleaning up their own house.

[1][http://fortune.com/2015/03/11/united-nations-subsidy-
chinese...](http://fortune.com/2015/03/11/united-nations-subsidy-chinese-
shipping/)

~~~
lorenzhs
Hm, I've ordered loads of inexpensive stuff on AliExpress as well, probably
around 30 orders. The only problem I've ever had was that I received the wrong
item once (DHT11 instead of DHT22), and the seller promptly refunded it. I
mostly buy electronics components. It does require a bit of careful reading to
know what exactly you're buying, though.

~~~
tyingq
It does depend on the item. More consumer oriented things tend to have more
fraud, because they know there's a more gullible, and larger audience.

Things like guitar effect pedals. I ordered one where the plastic molded
casing design was such that it would never click the switch underneath, and
never could have :)

Most of the orders I do are basically trying to find new sources for things we
sell, so I have a larger sample size...more than a thousand orders over the
years.

~~~
lorenzhs
Ah yes, that does make sense. I guess it wouldn't be very lucrative to sell
non-working electronics components. But consumer things that are just way
worse quality than expected (or just not caring about manufacturing defects)
could probably turn a nice profit :(

~~~
tyingq
There is bait-and-switch in the electronics arena. Ordered an FTDI usb-to-
serial adapter, got a counterfeit Prolific adapter. Wrong chipset, and not
even a genuine wrong chipset.

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Laforet
Going off a tangent on this, (paid) fake reviews on the Chinese AppStore is so
bad that the official ranking is saturated with random cash grab apps and
games, and even publishers with a legitmate following has to pay for brushing
if they want any exposure at all. Not a very healthy state of things to say at
least.

~~~
Flimm
Apple's one?

~~~
pawadu
Yes:

[http://www.cultofmac.com/311171/crazy-iphone-rig-shows-
chine...](http://www.cultofmac.com/311171/crazy-iphone-rig-shows-chinese-
workers-manipulate-app-store-rankings/)

The problem with China is that if pressure is big enough someone will create
an alternative app store for jailbroken devices and then iphone in China will
go downhill the same path Chinese Android did...

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coldcode
Brushing is an interesting hack, tt seems that no matter what you do online,
someone will figure out how to game it, and profit by not actually doing
anything.

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brilliantcode
anyone actually buy anything from alibaba as north american? I'm curious about
the experience.

I'm half heartedly buying shitty items on Amazon I don't even need. So far,
items shipped and made in China have not failed in furthering their
reputations of poor quality goods. It made me think twice about ordering from
Amazon on a whim. There's a good chance it won't come in time if it's shipped
from China.

~~~
drcode
I've bought a couple of electronic items on alibaba and had a good experience-
Clearly, you have to pray that the product works correctly, since
returns/refunds are pretty impractical.

