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.'"

Comments

Some edits can be insidious.

[Anonymous Coward]

I once wrote something to the effect of: "I can't recommend this laptop backpack for anyone who travels a lot," and the site neatly editted out the "can't". Never filling out one of those things again.

Re:Some edits can be insidious.

[Brandybuck]

Hell, I've seen NEWSPAPERS do that. A friend of mine got interviewed on a city council race and the newspaper editor did that to him. I've never trusted a newspaper since. Always get independent confirmation before believing anything you read, see or hear in the news.

Heh...

[BlackCobra43]

The company now says it posts both positive and negative comments, as long as they are constructive.'"

Nothing's easier than saying "Sorry, I won't do it again" and pulling up your pants after getting caught. It doesn't change the fact you WERE caught and you DID do what you were caught doing.I also in no way guarantees that this behavior will not resurface at a later date.

Re:Heh...

[Ingolfke]

Nothing's easier than saying "Sorry, I won't do it again" and pulling up your pants after getting caught. It doesn't change the fact you WERE caught and you DID do what you were caught doing.I also in no way guarantees that this behavior will not resurface at a later date.

They had a problem... people would post useless reviews "it's good", "I hated it", "Buy me an Ipod", etc. and this was detrimental to the customers who were trying to figure out whether or not they wanted the product. So they tried a solution... to have the product team screen the reviews to make sure they were accurate based on what the product teams new about the products. A good idea, in that who is better to validate a review than the people who manage the product. Of course, the unforseen consequence was that the product team didn't want to look like they were buying crappy products and not doing their job (or they just though they had the best products) so they biased the screening process. The marketing team has in theory less bias (and less knowlege of the product perhaps), and in theory should do a better job with the screening process this time. The point is that the company is interested in providing the customers with valueable meaningful reviews and in order to do that they are willing to continuously improve their process.

As long as they keep working to make it better for the customers and then that is a good thing.

Dealt with Newegg censorship

[casualsax3]

I've had comments posted about a case I bought from Newegg that arrived in less than perfect shape never make it to the comment section. I went back and wrote a review of the case leaving out the state of the case upon arrival, and that one remains in the comment section today.

Re:Newegg rev 01

[antifood]

Whats wrong with Newegg? I have always found that they have competitive prices, and have always taken care of any problems I have had. Any insight is welcome.

Fry's

[DarkHand]

Fry's Electronics owns Outpost, and I know someone who works at Fry's... At the penalty of losing their job, they're not allowed to say ANYTHING negative about any product whatsoever. They can't specifically say one product is better than another either. I wonder if this policy will change now as well?

No surprise

[Overly Critical Guy]

Anyone remember eBay magically defying its own policies and reversing Microsoft's negative feedback?

Newegg Review Suspicion

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm a bit suspicious of many Newegg reviews. A large number of them say something similar or identical to the following: "NewEgg Rocks!" "and of course, Newegg shipping rocks!" "Newegg and Fedex make a great combination!" "Thanks NewEgg!" "Newegg as always, shipped quickly and promptly" "NewEgg and Fedex Rock" Sure, we have a bunch of happy customers here (including myself), but I get the feeling the Newegg reviewers are appending phrases to some reviews and at times these phrases can look very out of place. Sorry but, I just feel like raising suspicion to keep Newegg truthful. See for yourself what I mean and go read some reviews on Newegg.

Why should a company allow criticism?

[pair-a-noyd]

If I have a brick and mortar store and an unsatisfied customer enters my store and begins passing out fliers and berating my business with a megaphone, INSIDE MY STORE, do you think that's acceptable?

Should I even permit him to do the same thing in at the entrance door or even in the parking lot??
What about on the sidewalk across the street?
Where is the line drawn?

I think not. Go try that at Wal-Mart or just about any other physical store and see what happens to you.

Allowing people to criticize them on their ecommerce websites is really no different. I would do the same thing, delete the offending comments.

Now, OTOH, if someone wants to criticize them on their own website, no problem. That's more than acceptable. Go to google and type "walmart sucks" and you'll find more than enough sites to suit your needs.

Note: I deeply despise BIG business and BIG GLOBAL Corporations and the FAT PIGS at the top of the food chain that enslave the little people at the bottom. I hate them with a passion that you can't begin to fathom. If you want to criticize them, do so, by all means. But doing it on/in their property, that's never going to fly.

Re:Newegg rev 01

[acrolein]

So true. Painfully true. I submitted two reviews for two Newegg items that were basically shite. They both got rejected based on the merit that I suggested no one purchase them.

Re:Amazon.com is notorious for this

[Karma_fucker_sucker]

Any bestselling item will never have an average review of less than 4.0/5.0 stars.

I wondered about that too. Sometimes, I wonder if those folks even read the book or used the item more then once. What I like to do is to look for the 1 or 2 star reviews and read what they have to say. If they're along the lines of "This sucks!", then I ignore them, but if the review goes on to itemize the things they had a problem with, then I find the review to be helpful. It's the same the other way when folks post "This is the best book ever! You don't need anything else!" - ignore it.

And many times, for example power tools, people use the item differently and as a result get varying performance. You'll get a guy who used the item once and reviewed as being 5 stars. Then you'll get a pro who used it for 100 hours and knocks it because of parts wearing out too fast. Those are the reviews I look for.

Re:Misleading headline...

[ChrisKnight]

Perhaps the editor added their own personal knowledge. Would you like an example of NewEgg editing a user's review submission? This review contains a complaint by a user that their previous review had been edited.

-Chris

Re:Amazon.com is notorious for this

[Have Blue]

I think the problem is more that there are far more "this product is PERFECT" and "this product is HORRIBLE" reviews than any middle ratings. You won't be motivated to go back to Amazon and comment on the product unless either you had such a bad experience that you do want to take the time to warn people away from it, or it makes you so orgasmically happy that you can't stop talking about it. If you were reasonably satisfied, you just keep using the product without a second though to the buying process. If the product is slightly flawed but not enough to make it entirely useless, you either put up with it or throw it out and get something else- either way, you again never really bother to go back to its listing on Amazon.

It's hardware not a happy meal.

[databyss]

Maybe they're trying to cut down on redundancy and save a little bandwidth. Who knows.

When I buy from newegg (or hardware purchse), I usually have already researched my buy, but I always scan the reviews for the negative ones. Especially to find those little gotchas like you mentioned.

I'd hate to blindly buy something that won't work, only to go check the reviews and see 10 people saying that it wouldn't work with the same hardware that I have.

Re:Newegg rev 01

[BearInTheWoods]

This hits close to my experience, since I purchased 2 external RS-232 modems from NewEgg recently and submitted reviews for both (after some test time with both). The cheaper one (an 'Amigo' [generic Conexant-chipset-based] modem) worked great. The more-expensive one (a Diamond SupraMax) was horrible -- wouldn't work with 'kppp', had no on/off switch, wouldn't remember (after an ATZ) S register settings that had been written to non-volatile RAM (AT&W), etc. Keep in mind that the Amigo modem had none of these flaws.

I submitted a positive review for the Amigo (see the one by 'External Modem User, 7/24/2005 2:52:49 PM') which got accepted and a negative (but constructive) review of the Diamond, which was rejected.

Here's my original Diamond SupraMax review (which I may tweak and re-submit to NewEgg sometime):

I bought this Diamond SupraMax (Model 'SM56E', NewEgg part #N82E16825116109) modem along with the 'Amigo' modem (Model 'AME-CA95', NewEgg part #N82E16825137104) to replace a Creative Labs external RS-232 'ModemBlaster' that recently died.

The Diamond SupraMax modem is a huge disappointment, mostly due to its poor design. The Diamond modem is also more expensive than the 'Amigo AME-CA95' (Conexant-chipset-based) modem even though the Diamond modem is of lesser quality.

For starters, unlike the Amigo modem, the Diamond SupraMax has no 'On/Off' switch. You must physically disconnect the 9V plug in the back if you want to power it off! Yuk!

The Amigo modem has a nice On/Off pushbutton on the back right side.

Furthermore, the LED indicators for the Diamond modem are the worst I've ever encountered! First off, there are only two LEDs -- one for 'PWR' (Power On) and one for 'OH' (Off-Hook). Despite what the photo on the front of the Quick Start Guide shows, there is no "DATA" LED, let alone a specific 'RxD' (receive data) and 'TxD' (transmit data) as one would expect on any decent external modem. Secondly, the meager 2 LEDs which _are_ present are very difficult to read, since they're not typical LEDs with permanent, silk-screened text near the LED but are of a design where the LED light shines through to show red-colored text ('PWR' and 'OH') and the text is almost unreadable at any angle except the exact "proper" angle. The 'OH' text is almost unreadable at _any_ angle, actually.

The Amigo modem, on the other hand, has dedicated, well-labeled (viewable at all angles) LEDs for 'RxD', 'TxD', 'OH', and 'READY'.

Annother annoyance -- the Diamond modem does not retain certain settings (e.g. 'ATS95=1', which causes the modem to report DCE [modem ISP] speed instead of DTE [PC modem] speed) through a simple 'ATZ' (modem 'soft' reset) even when they've been written with 'AT&W' ('store user profile' command). All other (good) modems I've encountered (including the aforementioned Amigo modem) will retain the 'S95=1' register setting through an 'ATZ' command as long as the 'AT&W' command was used once after setting the register. This isn't a "show-stopper" problem because you can always instruct the modem to 'ATS95=1' (or 'ATW2', which is similar and may work with some modems) as part of the initialization string in whatever application you use (Windows or Linux) to dial out, but it's annoying and indicative of the bad design of the Diamond modem.

The Diamond modem works well enough in W98se with the driver supplied on the CD-ROM.

Linux use (Slackware 10.1, currently) is a different story, unfortunately. I could not get 'kppp' (the KDE 'ppp' dialer application) to fully connect to my ISP using this modem. After lots of testing, tweaking, and cursing this modem (which is the poorest-designed of all the external RS-232 modems I've ever used), I finally got it to fully connect (and start the 'ppp' session) by invoking the 'pppd' process manually and using a 'chat' script. I still d

Re:Newegg rev 01

[SpecBear]

Here's a test I use on any site that posts customer reviews: I check out the reviews for products that I already own. I love NewEgg for the prices, selection, and service, but their customer reviews are crap.

I saw several reviews that described a hard drive I own as "quiet" among other things. It isn't, not by any stretch of the imagination that can be achieved without the use of mind-altering drugs. And anyone who owned on, or even read the drive's specs could tell this. After reading a number of NewEgg's review's I concluded that many people writing them were either on drugs or just filthly liars.

Re:Newegg rev 01

[pvxhound]

Because their user opinions aren't objective like their support. But I think they're excellent otherwise. I bought a modem that had a post claiming it was "controller based", and Linux compatible according to the mfg. It was a software modem and you needed to have the Linux source installed, which I didn't. I pointed this out three times nicely and constructively and was rejected 3 times. Heck, I even used IE for one. Last week a tv card on sale had 5 stars and 17 wonderful posts. All seventeen had strange spelling/grammar issues so I skipped it despite a wonderful price. The eighteenth said the previous 17 must of been the manufacturor because his mileage varied greatly. Well Yeah!

My own examples were more arbitrary than that

[ianscot]

Any bestselling item will never have an average review of less than 4.0/5.0 stars.

There is a much higher standard for poor reviews than good ones; and even excellent reviews of a product may disappear if they are unfavorable.

I doubt Amazon is really able to pull off that sort of thing consciously, but we'd have to know more about how their process works to say for sure. From my limited experience -- okay, mod me an embarrassed loser, but over several years I've posted a bunch of Amazon reviews -- things seem much less calculated than that.

I've never had a review disappear entirely, and really most of the "editorial" changes to my reviews have seemed like arbitrary, almost nonsensical elisions made by rigid formula. Two easy examples I can think of:

• I compared the (godawfully calculating and soulless chick flick) movie "Love Actually" to a well-produced episode of "The Love Boat." The Amazon editors removed the name of the series, but left in the names of the characters - Julie, Doc, Gopher, and Captain Steubing.
• For one history book I said something about how people wanted "bastardized" history. They removed the bad word and stuck in a "..." for it. That's happened a few times, in places where my use of the language was not at all offensive.

So, okay, I can see a simple filter catching the bad words, but when did "The Love Boat" become a bad word? Did they think it was a copyright problem? Or what?

Most of my negative reviews are left as-is, but you know, I tend not to post "This SUX."

The overall effect might be to push products, in sort of the same sense that the overall effect of our court system can be racist. I don't think individual decisions within either system are rational enough to amount to a conspiracy, though. You'd have to look at how the process works to figure out why that happens.