Anyone participate in Amazon Vine?

[robinb]

I was just invited to join the Vine Program on Amazon when I went into my account to review a tee-shirt I bought for my last cruise. I think that Amazon sends you things for free and you are supposed to review them honestly. That might be fun . Has anyone participated in the Vine Program? FWIW, I only have 9 reviews on Amazon and my 10th triggered the invitation.

 

[TheOneWithTheTriplets]

I was just invited to join the Vine Program on Amazon when I went into my account to review a tee-shirt I bought for my last cruise. I think that Amazon sends you things for free and you are supposed to review them honestly. That might be fun . Has anyone participated in the Vine Program? FWIW, I only have 9 reviews on Amazon and my 10th triggered the invitation.

I'm in the program. You should go ahead and join, but do your research.

The biggest thing that tricks people up is that the value of the items is reported as income and you have to claim it on your taxes. So, if you aren't paying attention, you suddenly find yourself with a huge 1099 that can significantly add to your taxes owed. The system will show you the Estimated Tax Value of an item before you request it. You should look at that number and decide if you'd be willing to pay 20% of it for that product, because, depending on your tax bracket, that can be the cost.

Also, because it's unreviewed items, you can end up getting things and then realizing they are junk. Or, if you didn't look at a size carefully, you end up with a mini version of something you thought was full sized.

When used well, it's an excellent program. Our family has gotten a ton of value out of if, especially with kids who are constantly growing and needing new clothes in the next size up. But, it's not just a magical free stuff portal: you have to use it correctly or you can get burned

 

[tony67]

Interesting - I've written many reviews and not been invited - so not sure what triggers it.

Would be interested in doing it - but I have to say I 100% ignore Vine reviews - its much easier to give something 5 stars when you did not pay for it and I've been burned enough times from things that have only been reviewed by vine folks that I've learned my lesson.

The TAX thing is an interesting wrinkle that would no doubt make me think twice.

 

[TheOneWithTheTriplets]

Interesting - I've written many reviews and not been invited - so not sure what triggers it.

My invite was totally random. I wasn't a huge reviewer, but I was so annoyed at a specific item that I went on to review it and was invited. My husband then started doing some research and found whole forums of people trying to get themselves added and attempting to guess at the magical formula.

For sure, part of it is how close you are to distribution warehouses. They keep the windows small so that they aren't burning a lot of shipping dollars sending their free things. My guess is having kids helps, too, because that's a wide array of products that you would potentially be purchasing. Not that Amazon knows I have kids, exactly, but they knew that I bought kids' shoes, clothes, toothpaste, etc so they could figure it out.

Once you receive the product, there's no incentive to lie about your experience or inflate a rating. I regularly give low reviews of poorly made things. But, you do have to keep up review percentages, so the bigger issue, in my mind, is people reviewing too soon because they need to get that item out of their queue. You are likely getting the honest first impression of something, but they may not have used it a ton before reviewing it.

 

[cabanafrau]

If I'm checking out the reviews I ignore any that don't bear the verified purchase badge, so there's no way I'd personally accept an invite to participate in this.

 

[cabanafrau]

, so the bigger issue, in my mind, is people reviewing too soon because they need to get that item out of their queue. You are likely getting the honest first impression of something, but they may not have used it a ton before reviewing it.

This is one of my biggest pet peeves about the Amazon barrage of requests to review things period. Knowing that there is a special group designed to produce reviews makes me even more skeptical.

 

[Marrila]

This is one of my biggest pet peeves about the Amazon barrage of requests to review things period. Knowing that there is a special group designed to produce reviews makes me even more skeptical.

I scroll past the Vine reviews and look for actual purchases.