I just got an invitation to the exclusive, “invitation only” , Amazon Vine.
This is a program designed to generate reviews-- you get free stuff you request from things sold on Amazon, and then you review it. They are explicit that you DO NOT have to write a positive review. I am trying to find out if you have to pay for the stuff if you fail to post a review at all.
You have to claim the cost of the free stuff as income on your taxes, though-- ought to discourage people from asking for really high ticket items.
Seems like there must be a catch, but the only thing I see so far is that the stuff on the lists from which you can order doesn’t have a lot of reviews, which is why they want to generate reviews, of course-- but I’m wondering why it seems is stuff people don’t get excited about one way or the other.
Kinda wondering why I got invited, as well. Maybe they just invite everyone whose reviews aren’t riddled with grammar errors.
Yes, I’m a participant. To answer you specific questions - no you don’t have to pay for what you don’t review but the system is highly gamified. At the base level you’re capped at no more than three items a day, and none over $99. To get more stuff you have to review 80% or more of your items with detailed reviews which these days ALSO include pics and/or video.
I also agree that it’s probably sent to people who write detailed reviews since I do the same.
About the products though I’d say the majority are cheap stuff that’s trying to build enough reviews to put it on the map and is barely worth even the very cheap asking price, or legitimately decent stuff trying to build a following. It’s a roll the dice sort of thing.
Oh, and unsurprisingly, the amount of stuff available has dropped like a brick due to tariffs and trade wars. Lastly, I’m nearly certain the responses (not just vine though) are being used to train AI possibly for future “reviews” on products though not necessarily by Amazon directly.
I was in the first batch of Vine reviewers back in the day. This was about a decade ago. I got in probably from some laptop reviews with a few thousand helpful votes between them.
Vine was different back then. No taxes yet, items worth thousands of dollars (I got a few laptops and rowing machines and reclining couches and fancy watches and such). Downside was that it was a first come first serve newsletter at first, and within a few cycles, it was all automated away and the “good” stuff was gone within seconds of the newsletter being sent out. It would routinely crash the Amazon servers when all the Vine reviewers tried to claim all the high value items all at once. Eventually they switched to a personalized catalog for each reviewer to prevent the mad rush. There were fewer and fewer interesting things, and eventually I stopped bothering, especially once the tax situation changed. No point paying taxes on silly trinkets I never wanted in the first place.
The quality of the system really went downhill after a few years, with most of the Vine reviews becoming worthless spammy nonsense written just to clear the queues so the reviewer can move on to their next selection. Became kinda a gambling game to see what they’d get next. Not sure if that’s still the way the system works.
But if you don’t mind free stuff in exchange for your time and the tax burden, why not?
Back in the day, your selections were algorithmically curated, presumably based on your purchases and other reviews, Vine or otherwise. You’d have to finish X% of reviews outstanding in order to receive more items. Beyond that, it was always kinda a black box but I think there are reddits trying to tease out its inner secrets.
Been on Vine for two years. Your first six months you are on probation where you are limited by what you can select to review. If you pass probation and continue the number of items you can review per day goes up and no cap on the value of the item.
You do not pay for items reviewed. But the retail value of every item is considered as income for income tax purposes. Some items, many “perishables,” have no tax value. So I’ve reviewed lots of supplements and vitamins with no tax implications but often have a retail value.
The quality of Vine items varies, but since the tariffs have kicked in, the number of reviewable items has gone way done. There used to be as many as 70k to 80K items to review; now it hovers around 30k.
Most of the items are from China and junk. Too many Chinese items have crappy or no instructions. It goes in my reviews. All too often Vine goes overboard on things I won’t interview because I have no need for electric motor brushes, brake pads for obscure vehicles, or printer cartridges for printers I don’t have. But there are diamonds in the rough and they don’t appear or stay available for very long, sometimes hours but often minutes. I’ve picked up quality kitchen knives, tools, USB chargers (you can never have enough!), etc. When red light therapy started trending I picked up lots of red light therapy items with no tax implications. Amazon now adds a tax value. I get health and beauty products (for my wife) and she can be kind or ruthless in her comments that go in my reviews.
We have granddaughters into sports. We have lots of massagers, from big two-hand ones to tiny finger-size ones. Castor oil products are big. Flavored gummies are big.
Lots of stuff we will never use so after a bit, they end up in a garage sale.
Well, in store, the store curates (and are responsible for) the products they sell, and manage lawsuits and recalls. On Amazon, it’s a bunch of comingled gray market goods from fly by night third party vendors where it’s totally unregulated and unmonitored. They’re gonna end that practice soon, but for now, there’s no guarantee anything on Amazon is actually real: Amazon to end commingling program after years of complaints from sellers
It’s not like the old days where Amazon sold their own stuff. Now they’re just a delivery and logistics front for a variety of shady vendors dumping counterfeit products…
#1 Taxes #2 It becomes work, new items are often uploaded early morning and are on a limited supply. So the good stuff goes fast and early morning checking becomes the way to get the goods.. I’ve been often in a situation that it was sold out between requesting it and confirming the request.
But besides those it’s rather nice to be able to review all those things. I was able to get a $2000+ double OLED HDR 4K TV (maybe 8K IDK) from vine which is something I never would have bought on my own, however it’s something I can appreciate.
And my reviews do have grammatical and spelling errors so that’s not a barrier.
Also as some have commented when the tariffs hit the quality really suffered and stayed really poor throughout the summer. Although and it’s really too soon to say much about this but in the past week the quality has gone up. So it may also have been during the summer the quality is lower (like the movie releases are often poor during the summer).
Yup, a couple years now. It’s kinda fun, I get some interesting items and things to pass along to friends and family. I’ve discovered that you can tweak your personal algorithm by doing searches for specific items, then similar items will show up on your Vine feed. I’ve gotten good cotton sheets and duvet covers and pillows for everyone and I keep the cotton and linen clothing items (as is usual with Amazon, they seldom disclose correctly the fabric content of clothes) and pass along anything with too much polyester in it. Fam is much less picky about that than I am. I’ve gotten silly solar powered garden lights and I think four or five heated vests (not only nice for winter but they come with battery packs that work just as well to charge phones and tablets, score) and Bluetooth speakers/headphones and a ton of dog toys–those are spendy and my dog is very tough on toys so it keeps him happy without breaking my bank account.
I was at the Gold tier for a while (8 items per day, no limit on value) but had some health issues and couldn’t keep up with the reviews so I dropped back to Silver (3 items per day, $100 limit per item) as it’s much easier to keep up with. It’s kind of a fun hobby, I pass along a lot of stuff (you’re allowed to sell or give away items after six months) and the family thinks the whole thing is kind of hilarious. Nobody ever turns the stuff down though.
Mostly it’s my way of fucking Bezos over since I cancelled Prime couple years ago and mostly only “buy” Vine items. If they want to give me free stuff in exchange for my slightly snarky opinions, fine by me!
I was in it for a while many years ago but lost my heart for it when there weren’t any interesting things to order and got kicked off when I wasn’t submitting the required number of reviews. It started to feel like work.
, Amazon Vine.