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E-commerce Sites Edit Customer Reviews
Carl Bialik from the WSJ writes "Online retailers have a wide range of approaches to customer product reviews, with some struggling to balance candor with the desire to sell product. The Wall Street Journal Online has an overview of sites' policies. Newegg 'says it has a team of eight people who monitor reviews and reject submissions if they are too vague, mention competitors or criticize a brand without specific product insight, among other reasons. From July 1 to Aug. 2, the site received 18,188 reviews and rejected 15% of them, according to a Newegg spokesman.' Meanwhile, Overstock recently changed its policy: 'The Web retailer had been relying on its merchandising group -- the employees responsible for deciding which products to sell on the site -- to monitor reviews submitted by customers, but found that the group tended to approve only positive reviews. In January, the Salt Lake City-based company changed the monitoring responsibilities to its marketing team. The company now says it posts both positive and negative comments, as long as they are constructive.'"
This really shouldn't come as a suprise at all. The fact is, companies are out to sell product. I'm not saying they should delete all of the negative reviews, but don't be surprised if a lot of them do get deleted.
When you watch any type of commercial, you're not going to hear a negative review mentioned, correct? Why should the web be any different?
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Seems to me that this is just filtering. While that's still not good, it's a lot more understandable and acceptable than editing what people say. Yet another misleading Slashdot headline, I guess.
"Astroturfing" certainly isn't something new, and neither is the practice of manipulating articles. Advertising slime certainly *would* stoop to that level to promote a product.
Heck, even movie reviews are total garbage. Sony just got busted for publishing "reviews" penned by someone that didn't even exist.
I don't trust *any* online review, be it on newegg, epinions.com, or amazon. Best reviews are still the ones you get from friends.
Every review is a rave, and even the worst products have an average of three out of five stars (or golden eggs or whatever, it doesn't matter).
That said, Newegg is a great place, but just know what you're buying before you go there; don't pay too much attention to the reviews.
I've upped my standards, so up yours.
There is nothing in that article to suggest the reviews are being edited. Rather, the article states that reviews are simply being approved or rejected which, regardless of perspective, is an entirely different thing.
Editing someone elses words would be far worse than simply applying some editorial control as to what is posted on their own site. Slashdot does the same sort of thing in the form of moderation. Moderators can affect what is seen by readers but they can't change individual posts.
Thanks,
David
# Hack the planet, it's important.
This is an abiding flaw of a non-transparent system in which an anonymous editor employed by the company chooses from anonymous reviews. They have tried to remedy this a bit with Real Name, but the fundamental problem remains: one or two dedicated shills or critics can easily manipulate the system.
As another example, some of you may remember the fake Amazon reviews of Bil Keane's Family Circus books during the heyday of spinnwebe's Dysfunctional Family Circus.
Evil sig is livE.
False advertising is illegal. There are laws regarding what types of claims you can make, and how much you have to back them up. You can say "our product is great" but you cannot say "the President loves our product" (unless of course he publicly said that, or you've arranged a contract with him, etc.). Similarly, you couldn't say "we have conducted an independant scientific survey, and determined that 99% of people love our product" if that isn't true. Of course there are cases where companies commision "independant" reviews, or distort stats to their favor. But laws exist to constrain advertising, and prevent out-and-out lying.
... that would be misleading. Similarly, you cannot label them as "user reviews" if they have been edited.
When it comes to online user reviews, the situation gets a bit sticky. The reviews are hosted on the company's site... but something that claims to be "user reviews" implicitly indicates that these are the comments from all the users who cared to enter a comment. To modify or distort the comments is to change the implicit nature of the commenting system. So the company needs to clearly state "these reviews have been filtered and edited by our staff" or else they have to let the comments stand, consistent with a reasonable person's expectation of what is meant by "user reviews." To do otherwise is to purposefully mislead the customer. You cannot say "this medication is approved by doctors" if by "doctors" you mean some English professors who have Ph.D.s
(Note: a certain amount of filtering to remove blatantly inflamatory or irrelevant reviews is of course okay, since this doesn't contradict a normal expectation of what a "user review" is.)
New Egg is great. I've ordered from them multiple times. Only once have I had a defective part (I purchased a refurbished motherboard) and they replaced it promptly, shipping me a replacement before they received the defective part back from me.
You should *NEVER* trust a review on a commerce site. That goes without saying. Always go to an independant source that doesn't have a bias. That's like going to a car dealership and asking the dealer their honest opinion on the car in the window. Stupid.
-everphilski-
Obviously they need a scoring system!
Would that be -- oh, shall we say -- "insightful"?
I have a hard time finding fair, accurate reviews regardless of whether the reviews are written by staff or by consumers. There is a very real conflict of interest for sites that depend on manufactures for advertising dollars and testing samples. On the by-consumer side, you have to filter out shills and zealots (pick your favorite site and check out the consumer reviews of Quicken and Microsoft Money... it's like a holy war).
That said, I've been very happy with consumer reports. They only review items that they purchase themselves (i.e. no 'freebies' or higher-quality items specifically earmarked for product reviews). Furthermore, they accept no advertising and get all their revenue from subscriptions. These two factors take away much of the conflict of interest and/or bias issues that can plague other review sites.
Downsides? Cost (not necessarily expensive imho, but still a tough sell to people who expect everything online to be free). It's also doesnt work with early adopters because they wont review items before they available for purchase. Finally, though they've been getting a bit more 'hip' lately when it comes to technology I doubt your going to find an exhaustive video card shoot-out anytime soon.
What I'd really like to see is a site (or magazine) that can does a decent video game review. They seem to be either clearly biased, drip with ego and/or condescention, but usually they are just TOO LONG. Why is it Ebert can give a fair review of "Mullholland Drive" on a quarter-page of the chicago sun-times, but nobody can seem to encapsulate "Mario Tennis" in under 5 printed pages??
Lately I've been loving the way C-Net reviews items. They seem to be in contrast with retailers in the way they accept everything.
Whenever I want to review something I first go to the negative comments. Through those I can find out what the downsides of a certain product are. If none of those qualities will impair my ability to use/enjoy it then I consider it a good purchase.
Positive reviews only tell me that a large percantage of folks don't have problems with stuff they buy.
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