Agreed I’ve also noticed ravpower seems to be having huge sales on their site to try to make up for the lost amazon sales.
Anker's Competitors were just KICKED OFF Amazon
I’m a bit confused that some people believe that getting “free product” isn’t the same as being paid for a review.
Words matter and so does psychology. If I give you a crappy product (that kind-of works) then you’ll be less likely to give it a really bad review than if you paid for it. You have no “skin in the game” and even if you think you aren’t unbiased, you are.
When I read reviews, I start with the 1 star reviews, disregard all of the idiotic ones “I needed a 6 foot cord, but I bought a 3 foot one and it wasn’t long enough” and figure out how many of those have recurring issues. Then I go to the 4 star reviews and read those and see how many of those say things similar to the 5 star reviews.
The Amazon review process is flawed and I think that it is a shame than any established company is providing product for any sort of review. The proper way for a manufacturer to get feedback on a new product is to send out product and say “give US a review” and then let Amazon reviews fall where they may…
It is also a shame that - because of their illegal moves - that some decent products got kicked off Amazon.
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This would make a more convincing argument if I had ever been dissatisfied with any of my anker or Soundcore products. The speakers at least seem to well outperform their price point and I’ve stopped having to replace charging cables every couple months so that’s nice. I like a corporate fraud conspiracy as much as the next guy. But why bother faking good reviews when you put so much effort into actually delivering a good product already.
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I don’t believe anyone here is claiming Anker is crossing a line - and they don’t need to as you stated.
You make 2 investments for good products and 3 investments for bad products. You must research, buy, learn to own, if good then you’re stop here if bad then it’s time trying workaround/fix and then return. So a bad vendor cannot sustain sales.
However I barely ever use Amazon reviews, the ones for Anker have users who made a personal stupid choice blame Anker.
The system is broken. But Amazon broke it, their review system used to be decent. Then Amazon Vine reviews - hard to get into, and very expensive for companies to be involved in - provoked jealousy and a search for cheaper alternatives from companies, and options to be involved for consumers. That led to a lot more low quality reviews that were allowed, and even after the rule changes to make it against the ToS, amazon still doesn’t do the basic work that reviewmeta can automate to block and remove junk reviews.
So you can blame the vendors, but Amazon made a messed up system. Some good vendors pushed the boundaries of it - but the bans came because Amazon was embarrassed by a article that went viral. Amazon still isn’t systematically and automatically checking for this stuff and vetting their sellers or reviewers to prevent it. The junk is still there.
Absolutely correct. I just bought a “sponsored” laptop battery on Amazon and in the box was a $20 coupon for a review. I am deciding if I just forward it to Amazon or write a scathing review. the problem is that the battery seems perfectly good and probably came out of the same factory as the Dell battery.
The problem is that much of the decent competition (Aukey, Ravpower) got dumped. I actually have a powerbank from Ravpower that has a feature I haven’t seen anywhere else - the ability to charge it from USB micro, USB-C AND Lightning. You hardly ever (never?) see anything that you can charge with a lightning cord.
Amazon really needs to fix the reviews.
I hope that Anker doesn’t cross a line, because they are one of the few companies that produce reliable products with real quality control.
I think Amazon decided it was cheaper and easier to just accept generous financial liability for returns than try to police the internet.
I just use reviews as a quick brows for armature footage of the product unembellished like on YouTube and sometimes read those. Other than that just count the sales number. If everyone’s buying it safe bet Amazon has vetted it for advertising integrity because they suddenly have stake in the game if masses of purchases start filing return claims.
They pass that liability on to their third party sellers. I believe in general the vendors aren’t fully paid until after the return window is closed. So they get a percent of the sale for almost no risk.
Policing the internet is quite a different thing from asking Amazon to watch their own reviews and reviewers. The goal is to identify and stop patterns that are visible even to third parties without private information - Amazon has so much more useful data and plenty of compute resources to analyze it.
They have a lot of reputational advantage to gain by acting. The fact they don’t likely means the profits from ignoring the frauds are worth more than anything they could gain by being a more trusted platform for their customers.
Yes I too have an Aukey PB-Y14 (20000 mAh) charger that can be charged using Micro USB, Lightning and USB C. Very unique 
Charge rates are different though
- 15W USB-C (5V/3A)
- 10W micro-USB (5V/2A)
- 7.5W Lightning (5V/1.5A)