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

Surprising?

[dpaluszek]

I think not. They have always had over-priced, flashy cases with mediocre hardware. And do you think most companies give out free hardware to get "C" grade reviews? No, of course not. This is just part of the marketing game.

Re:Surprising?

[ePhil_One]

And do you think most companies give out free hardware to get "C" grade reviews?

Which is why Consumer Reports has always bought their own hardware. Review sites get customized, tweaked hardware, versions not sold in stores, and are effectively on the the dole by accepting both advertisements and "review" hardware from advertisers. The only thing thats surprising here is the the Marketing Drone actually let the review know the reality, not done for precisely this reason. Obviously this reviewer is new to the scene, in that he's at all surprised by this.

One of the car rags touched on this years ago, they described it as "damning with faint praise", when you get a bad product in you still give a positive review, but throw in lots of qualifiers. "Quality is what you expect at this price point", "Ample ashtrays are provided", etc.

They have always had over-priced, flashy cases with mediocre hardware.

And what is your gripe? Are you the reviewer? Overpriced, perhaps, but you are flat out lying with the statement "mediocre hardware". Premium hardware at premium prices is far more accurate, the one thing I don't recall them ever doing is skimping on the $5,000 desktops.

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... ;)

Gasp!

[gspeare]

I've read through the whole article

Who are you and what have you done with the real editors?!?!?!??

Ahem..

[AdamKG]

Alienware is AWESOME! Great! Superb! This article is FUD.

/checks mail

They're still Awesome!! HELLOooO!!! Your hardware rules!

/checks mail again

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.

You posted this to Slashdot?

[popo]

Fine. No hardware for you either.

Standard Marketing Practice, Nothing New Here

[Old VMS Junkie]

I wrote for a couple of computer industry trade rags back in the early 90s and the editorial policy was that we never gave bad reviews. If a product sucked, the review was never published. We gave feedback back to the manufacturer but nothing got printed.

The reasoning was simple. If the manufacturer really wanted a review printed, they would fix their product (and some of them REALLY wanted good reviews and actually did make improvements). And if the magazine wanted to continue to get advertising dollars, they didn't print bad reviews. It was the unspoken quid pro quo.

Shocked.... file under not news category

[klubar]

Is anyone surprised by this?

Apple has been doing this for years.... sites or publications that don't give glowing reviews are not invited to press conferences, don't get the cool swag, are excluded from preview announcements, don't get access to excutives. It's one way that Apple manipulates (influences) the press... that's why sites that always give great reviews (see Wall St. Journal) always have easy access to the newest equipment and executives.

Review sites are rampant with fradulent reviews on both sides. Manufacturers are giving hardware in exchange for favorable reviews and meanwhile many of the review sites are just shills for hardware vendors. It's always been somewhat true that the advertising side of publications had some influence over the editorial side, it's just gotten much worse (and easier to cheat

HardOCP too

[homer_ca]

HardOCP buys their review systems through retail channels and tests their tech support while posing as a regular customer. They're one of the few hardware sites that reviews the "consumer experience" instead of just the hardware.

Try Falcon

[PopeRatzo]

A wealthy friend of my wife's came to me saying she wanted to buy the best PC, and money wasn't an object. She doesn't know enough to put together her own system, but her work does require a powerful system since she does financial work including the use of fractal something or other in futures investing. Stuff I don't understand, but she runs Mathematica and Maple and the fancy graphical displays of those programs. She also plays around in Second Life and blah blah blah. Someone else had told her about Alienware, but she sensibly decided those machines were too gaudy.

So I told her to check out Falcon. I mean, I'd much rather put my system together myself, but this Falcon system she got was gorgeous. The case was just stunning (which was important to my friend) and inside the case you could really tell that someone had spent a lot of time organizing things properly, trimming cables, etc.

And the system is just wicked-fast. SLI, the whole nine yards. Drivers were all updated and there weren't even any of those shareware teaser programs like Dell and Gateway put on their machines. It was simply a beautiful PC for someone who could afford it.

I don't know about dropping over $7k on a PC that I'm going to have to upgrade in 18 months anyway, even if it does include two 21" LCD monitors. But she's as happy as if she'd just blown Brad Pitt. God I hope she doesn't read this.