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Do Retailers Often Screen User Reviews?
Mechanist.tm writes "I recently purchased a NAS from a well-known online computer component shop. I have purchased several items from the website and have never had much trouble before. That was until I realized what I had bought was a terrible NAS. All the reviews on the site from users seemed very good. After a little research, it became clear that the product in question was indeed terrible. After finding the product pretty much useless for its intended purpose, I proceeded to write a review for it on the website to inform other would-be buyers. After about a week, I noticed that the review never made it up there, so I wrote another one just in case. After several attempts to leave a negative review for the product, I realized that the website was screening reviews and only posting the ones that made the products look good. All the reviews on the website are positive; I've only found one at less than 3 out of 5 stars. Is this legal? Ethically speaking, it's wrong, and it's intentionally misleading to the customer. Is there a good place to report behavior like this? How common is this among online retailers who provide user reviews?"
It is their site, they are free to publish what they feel on it. Now what -is- illegal and misleading is if you were to write a negative review and they make it be a positive review. Similar to Engadget and Monster Cable.
Taxation is legalized theft, no more, no less.
Which shop?
I've posted more than a few negative reviews on newegg over the years and I've never had one filtered or modified. A couple of times the manufacturer replied to my review directly and offered to remedy my problem.
Gone!
I'm going through it with eCost right now. I guess I'll file a BBB claim, because they're not getting back to me as promised. They sold an amp with text that made it look like it did component to HDMI upconversion when it doesn't. Now they don't want to take it as a return. (I know lots of people have problems with eCost, but I've been buying from them for some time with no problems. Have even done a return before.)
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
The company I work for uses a third party (bazaarvoice) for our reviews so we cannot do such shenanigans. Since we don't just sell one brand we actually want the customer to know which product is the best so that they continue to buy from us. I'm sure this is how all resellers operate so what I suspect actually happened is that the review did make it to the site but the manufacturer probably had someone log in as a bunch of separate users and mark the review as objectionable so that it was taken down.
As others have already mentioned; you can't trust reviews. My personal policy with this is ignore the 1 star - "was broken when I got it" and the 10 star - "changed my life" reviews since they don't actually have any useful information. Also, a lot of sites track user submissions so you can guess that if a person writes an unusually long review about how great their new $30 vacuum is but they've never written another review that it's probably bogus.
The easy answer to this is http://www.google.com/support/toolbar/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=157109 Google Sidewiki. *IF* users start using sidewiki for reviewing products on vendor sites, the vendor has no ability to moderate the reviews. Doesn't mean they won't start astroturfing the sidewiki but it would make it more expensive :)
"Do not meddle in the affairs of dragons, for you are crunchy and taste good with ketchup."
According to an article that I read, a mix of negative and positive reviews makes the product more attractive than only positive reviews. It seems that this retailer is probably preventing sales by not letting negative reviews through.
Cory Doctorow talking about cloud computing makes as much sense as George W Bush talking about electrical engineering.
Part of the problem may be the legal system in the US. I once ran a review site where users were allowed to post comments. In one case, I was getting a ton of negative comments posted about one particular other website. I assumed (and still do) that these comments were legitimate due to the sheer volume of different users posting them and I never edited for content. Then, I got a lawsuit for defamation. Yea, I was protected legally and won, but it costs a ton of money to defend yourself against frivolous lawsuits. The best thing for most of these retailers is probably to just not allow user submitted reviews at all which is what I do now.
It's a shame Amazon doesn't run Consumer Reports-esque mini-sites for popular product lines. Now you've inspired me to contribute more reviews to the UK site!
So, on a slightly related note, where DO people go for hardware reviews? In my experience sites that are not obviously corporate/bought are pretty rare on the ground. And the independent sites tend to focus on only bleeding edge gaming hardware.
So where should I be looking for honest reviews of consumer grade routers or printers or LCDs? Everyday hardware stuff. These days I mostly go by the comments and reviews on NCIX and newegg, but a more focused approach would be nice.
eBay feedback
They'll nix feedback just like other sites nix reviews, if they determine that in their judgement, they think the item was bought for the sole purpose of entering negative feedback, for example.
And an expansive, ever increasing list of reasons.
sellers will no longer be able to leave negative/neutral feedback for buyers
And a comprehensive feedback removal policy.
Examples:
But at least they are honest enough and tell you (somewhat) what they will remove.
Most people casually browsing the site however (just as most people browsing retailers sites) have no idea that sites provide policies that allow negative ratings to be stricken from the record, and their effects on "stars" and rating score to be removed, at the whim of someone whose interests are in more sales.
.com? .co.uk? .com.au?
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Recently, while shopping for a digital camera to give as a gift, I hunted through a number of online vendors, including Best Buy (mostly because I have credit with them) and NewEgg, both of whom publish negative reviews. What I discovered was that the majority of the reviews were negative on practically everything I looked at. The end result was that I bought another of the same model that I already had and knew was good. This was considerably more expensive than I had planned, but since it was a gift for someone important to me, I sucked it up and did it.
On other occasions, looking for computer equipment, I've noticed the same phenomenon. But in this area, I'm knowledgeable enough to notice that many of the negative reviews are written by people who just don't understand the technology well enough to even operate the devices. And of course, people who have bad experiences with a product are generally more motivated to complain about it than people who have good experiences with a product are motivated to praise it.
While it's certainly unethical for a vendor to censor reviews -- without at least prominently announcing that they are censoring them -- I have to question the value of reviews by the general public in the first place.
Proud member of the Weirdo-American community.
I bought the same and also posted a negative review on Overclockers that never appeared. I eventually wrote the Icybox off as a hard-learned lesson and just leave a PC on all the time instead.