Alienware Admit Trying to Fiddle Reviews

An anonymous reader writes "Alienware seem to have admitted threatening review sites with no future hardware unless positive reviews are written about their products. Hexus.net attempted to obtain a recent Alienware system and were rebuffed in an email claiming that their last review had scuppered the chances of them getting any hardware to review in the future. Follow-up emails confirmed this was part of Alienware's global marketing strategy. " I've read through the whole article and it would appear that the above is what the rep said. Now, granted, one would hope that's one person in that company, but still bad form.

Comments

This is why you need independent reviewers....

[King_TJ]

Consumer Reports magazine has the right idea... If you're going to review and test products, you need to obtain them the exact same way, and through the same channels, that end-users do. Even if a manufacturer can seemingly be trusted not to withhold new products from reviewers to retaliate for a bad review, it doesn't mean they're not "cherry picking" the products they're sending them!

Especially in cases where there are high numbers of D.O.A. or malfunctioning units, reviewers simply don't catch this problem if they're only receiving pre-tested, pre-selected samples for free evaluation.

Re:Surprising?

[Fred_A]

Which is why Consumer Reports has always bought their own hardware.

Not getting any free toys or invitations to events with free drinks and food kind of defeats the purpose of setting up a review site...

At least that's what I gathered from the ones I've seen... ;)