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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?
Unfortunately a lot of retailers do this, this is one of many very good reasons not to use a retailer. If there are no "1/10 - This --- fucking sucks, it broke after a week and was barely usable before that" reviews then you know they're screening (or just sell great products but that isn't very likely).
/Mikael
Greylisting is to SMTP as NAT is to IPv4
rely on reviews or testimonials that are posted on the sellers website. Reviews on third-party websites are generally more reliable as there's usually less of a conflict of interest but even those aren't always real so buyer beware.
Than a newspaper editor not running political stories about things he or she doesn't like. Not ethical, but also not illegal. That's the reason why I normally look for unpaid third party review sites for hardware or software, or at least someone in the industry that can recommend something they have used personally.
After a little research, it became clear that the product in question was indeed terrible.
That's your first and most important mistake here. Never ever trust a single source, especially if they're the ones getting your moneys. I always check several sites and try to have feedback from actual users before making any tech purchase. That shit's usually expensive enough, if it also blows up in my face two days after I buy I'll be pretty pissed...
Who was the retailer? We need to know, so we can avoid them.
There are 11 types of people in the world: those who can count in binary, and those who can't.
At least with Amazon.com, one of the best-known websites with user reviews, I can attest that they welcome negative reviews. I've been reviewing there for the last nine years, more to focus my own thoughts on what I read, listen to or use than to guide others in purchases. Still, sometimes I've been scathing about a product and encouraged all and sundry not to buy it, and my review continues to be visible as the years go by. Rare situations where a review was not posted usually occurred because I tripped some keyword meant to discourage profanity, and a simple rewrite of the sentence in question was all it took to get the review up.
I recall hearing about a law that requires a public company to keep all this information and make it available --- darn, I can't think of what the law is, however sites like amazon.com may be subject to it. This doesn't apply to "forums". For example, discussions.apple.com has a bad habit of deleting any posting that is critical of them in any way. It's a different can of worms in that case (worms in apples? lol).
Anyone out there familiar with the legal ramifications?
I have long suspected newegg of this practice. Some of the reviews are very similar, all very positive, look like they're written by the sales staff. In the non-computer world, Yelp has lots of fake reviews, too.
"Because I recently got a Drobo, and I've had nothing but problems, but New egg has largely positive reviews."
A useful method is to give a bad product an outstanding rating which won't get looked at then slag it in the comments section.
"This post is an artistic work of fiction and falsehood. Only a fool would take anything posted here as fact."
I realize that the website in question is supposed to take user reviews. However, it seems a little strange for anybody to fully trust (or expect) a vendor website to provide unbiased opinions.
Almost all sale persons that I have met will hype whatever they are trying to sell. Most of them will rarely willingly let us in on the negative side of their products/solutions. Considering that the website is probably in the position to want to sell their merchandise, they would favor good "user reviews".
I'd imagine most people will search for information/reviews from various sources. I doubt most stores will start listing "how this product sucks" if they are trying to move inventory.
last i checked they also has some highly negative reviews.
some filter because they need to hide the truth about a product, others filter because of poor grammar or inappropriate things said in the review that could upset younger or older customers.
http://www.resellerratings.com/ - post your honest review there.
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!
...when you're trying to expose unethical behavior or deceptive practices, the phrase "a well-known online computer component shop" is hollow and flaccid.
--I'm so big, my sig has its own sig.
-- See?
others filter because of poor grammar or inappropriate things said in the review that could upset younger or older customers.
You mean you can't say "This product sucks like a 14 year old crack whore" to kids?
I have had my reviews not published on Overstock when they were negative. I tried multiple times to get the review online, and I quit buying anything from overstock without first finding external reviews. I have never had a review not accepted from Amazon, even when they were negative.
"Asleep at the switch? I wasn't asleep, I was drunk!" -- Homer
This is a very self-destructive practice for an on-line retailer that stocks a range of products. If a user is put off purchasing a product because of poor reviews, that's OK, so long as you have alternative products to sell. More often than not, that better product will come at a higher price, and more profit. Honest reviews are an opportunity to up sell. Dishonest reviews are an invitation for the customer to never buy from you again.
Amazon does reviews right. It's done them no harm!
I have written many reviews of varying content and rating for a couple products on Overstock.com and whenever the review has a possibility of impacting sales negatively it is never posted. Not ethical but it's their prerogative as they are the ones publishing it. There is a conflict of interest but making this type of thing illegal would be a slippery slope. Just take it as a matter of course and get on with it.
Don't keep us in suspense - what brand/model NAS ?
I want to delete my account but Slashdot doesn't allow it.
Post the site and product, or shut the hell up. Seriously, Isn't what you are doing, deliberately obscuring the site, and hiding useful information, the same as what they are doing. By presenting it the way you have, you've essentially attacked the reputation of all well-known online computer component shops. Could be newegg, NCIX, ZZF, amazon, tigerdirect, buy.com, bestbuy You've provided no specifics, and as such no valid evidence, even in your anecdote. I'm all for tarring and feathering companies *if they deserve it*. Your post makes no particular case for your review being rejected because it was bad, and not for using profanity, or something similar. Post the site, product and your review. Otherwise, if you aren't willing to name the site or product for the benefit of all, I hope that one of the others sues you for slandering their reputation.
I've come across sites that seem to post only good reviews (which always makes me suspicious), and sites that choose to sort owner comments by number of "stars" given so that the good comments bubble to the top. It's always best to check product reviews from multiple sources before buying.
Aria in the UK have modified a few of my comments. I've written something along the lines of "Nice product, but ..." and the negative part never makes it to the site, making it look like I was nothing but happy with it. I don't buy from them much anymore.
I've had this happen at buy.com - i bought this:
http://www.buy.com/prod/ifrogz-iphone-3g-3gs-luxe-soft-touch-case-red-black/q/loc/101/208441113.html
and it was a piece of junk, finish ruined after a couple days in my pocket. It broke in pieces after 2 months.
I posted reviews to buy.com (where i bought it) and they magically never appeared.
I won't shop there anymore. Amazon rules.
a well-known online computer component shop
Yea, it is absolutely absurd to have made this post and not identify the seller in question. The poster questions if a seller can get away with this, and them demonstrates that they can by failing to even say who they are or what the bad product is. The whole post is extremely pointless. If the original review was this void of information then maybe there is an alternate reason it was never accepted for listing.
At least we can see that the Slashdot editors can not be accused of editing, or making informed choices about which stories to post.
I'm an American. I love this country and the freedoms that we used to have.
In general I find NewEgg to have a good range of reviews, positive and negative. There are quite a few products rated at 2 or 3 stars out of 5. And most with more than a handful of reviews have one or two "I got a dead part" reviews. Now, I do believe there to be some brand management shills posting positive reviews for their own products, but over time it should even out.
Home Depot "approves" reviews and failed to post a negative review I gave for an air conditioner recently.
"I assumed blithely that there were no elves out there in the darkness"
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.
Many websites have begun to select and censor comments in order to support their agendas.
I once tried to post a comment to an obviously biased fox news column and behold it never made it there, despite intelligent presentation and links to the relevant data.
Welcome to the brave new world of information manipulation and astro-turfing.
VLC FOR MAC IS DYING! IF YOU DEVELOP, PLEASE SAVE IT!!
Steve, take care of your health first. At least don't post on Sundays, for fuck sake!
And post your negative reviews on other retailer-neutral sites.
There are even sites called 'resellerratings.com' and 'bizrate.com' that permit you to rate retailers.
I suggest you post your review of the product and separately post your review of the retailer, discussing how they apparently censor product reviews.
Also, please don't hide them post their name in this article. Along with the review they rejected, so the readers can have an example of what said retailer might censor.
Hiding their name is almost suggesting that what they do is OK. After suppressing all your reviews about your poor experience, you still want to protect them?
Stop going out of your way to protect the retailer and start shaming them for what they do and what they've done.
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."
Is that a good or a bad review?
Some sites have a default where the most favourable ratings (5/5 etc) are the ones shown by default - a link at the bottom allows viewing all reviews. I can think of one that has no apparent incentive to dupe the viewer, and personally if I was manager of the others I would certainly be more concerned about repeat business, and how costly returns are.
My assumption is that less favourable reviews tend to be the least accurate, a guess held up by viewing the negative comments which repeatedly complained about issues that were obviously completely unrelated, were laughably unrealistic expectations for the price, the product was not designed for or were addressed in the description. People use the reviews system as a forum to ask questions, giving a zero rating.
Good reviews meanwhile filled in any blanks in the description (often these would be major issues for some people), noted the build quality etc and gave a personal opinion on the product in the context of price. Personally I found these much more informative.
No doubt some sites use it just to make sales, but I think there's an element of filtering for quality too.
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.
There are some affirmative defenses against claims under defamation laws...
And as for copyright laws: fair use, which using some material for criticism is considered.
The money spent on PR is irrelevent, it doesn't negate the public's right to free speech and free expression.
Use likeorhate.com. They don't screen or remove bad reviews.
I think there are a lot of salespeople that would prefer that this sort of behavior was penalized because it undermines their profession as a whole. Will they give you a hard sell, try to give you the positives? Yes. But to out and out lie is something the best salespeople that I know would never do. They might be aggressive, but they are honest. Besides, the easiest customer to get is the one you already got. If you, as a salesman, lie to your customer, you will not get repeat business from them.
This is my sig.
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.
There's something else going on as well. A few years ago I was looking at buying a particular product (I don't remember what now) so I Googled the product name to see what reviews I could find. There were a lot of reviews out there, but when I started looking at the specific reviews I realized that many of the reviews were just copied between reviewing websites. It wasn't just the positive reviews--the websites actually seemed to intentionally copy the reviews posted on each other's sites, most likely to pump up the number of reviews on their own sites. I ended up only being able to find maybe 10 reviews of the product, but they were copied over and over between sites. After that experience I don't trust the reviews on random websites nearly so much.
I've submitted negative reviews to Future Shop which at times have gone unpublished, no apparent reason, while positive reviews abound. But the worst offender I've found is Home Depot. Yeah, not tech but a big online retailer. Anyway, they rate products positively based on reviews but the reviews are negative. Retailer-run review systems are more or less useless to me.
If the poster of this story is wrong, and posts the company's name, he could be in up to his ass in legal fees and in this economy, the last I'd want to do is spend a dime on legal fees for mistakenly or rightfully accusing a business with unethical behavior.
The poster doesn't have any real concrete evidence - just a couple of test posts and who knows exactly as to why his posts didn't make it. He's doing the right thing in asking others if it has happened to them instead of going off half cocked with accusations. That is the fair and ethical thing to do - even if he's is 100% correct and this online retailer is doing what he thinks.
It's NOT me! It's the meds! I'm on 1000mg of Fukitol.
Unless it's a house branded product.
You need to name the retailer. Some retailers are great, and some suck. I have reviewed many, explaining the details of my dealings with them.
You also need to name the NAS and what is wrong with it. The way the internet works, everyone gets to benefit from the experiences of others. Saying some nameless NAS sucks doesn't help anyone else. Saying XYZ NAS sucks because of a, b, and c means something.
On my personal web site, I have details of my dealings with many computer hardware and software vendors. Some are really good, and some are really sucko. I had some serious problems with Netgear, and someone else read about it and asked Netgear why their support was so bad, and not getting a decent answer, ended up getting $10k of gear from a different vendor.
If you want to see all my computer related reviews and comments, check out http://www.weasel.com/comp.html
LDLC, a large French retailer that you've probably never heard about, does the exact same thing. I wrote a "so-so" review for their "house brand" USB Hub (it crashed once in a while) and the review never made it to the website... Simply put, I don't trust "user reviews" anymore and I buy brand-name hardware.
Nobox: Only simple products.
A shipping product shouldn't suck right out of the box with a problem that needs a firmware or driver update to fix. Sure, its easy for those who know how to fix these things to fix them, but for one who doesn't, the product is bad.
If the person spends hours and hours and never tries to contact the seller or manufacturer for assistance then proclaims the item junk, I shake my head. The vendor should get an opportunity to make it right before they are condemned, especially since it may very well be pilot error on the part of the buyer.
A lot of people here would like to know which shop to avoid and which NAS not to buy. Maybe you don't want to disclose the name of the shop because they could retaliate with legal actions but please post here at least the negative review of the NAS.
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!
I've posted more than a few negative reviews on newegg over the years and I've never had one filtered or modified.
I have. In fact, I posted in detail about it back in Aug 2005: http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=158055&cid=13241557
I'd submitted a fair, honest, but harsh review comparing 2 different modems I'd purchased -- 1 great, 1 lousy. NewEgg rejected my review of the lousy modem and took my review of the great one. I couldn't see any point where my rejected submission violated any of NewEgg's guidelines (included in that post).
I even went so far as to "soften" the language of the harsh review and re-submit it, but it was also rejected.
I like NewEgg but make no mistake about it -- they are (or at least were) filtering bad reviews to some extent.
I once bought an HP laptop from Futureshop and posted a great review. About a week later the laptop had given me so many problems that it was unusable. I returned it and posted another review redacting everything I had said. Both reviews remained on the site. I was impressed.
I suspect that this is more widespread than we'd all like to believe. I tried several times to post a negative (2 out of 5 star, short, clear and to the point) review of a Sony w580i phone I bought through Wirefly.com, and the review never seemed to go through. Plenty of decent reviews, though, for a phone I've already had to replace once, and whose replacement is falling apart after about six months' light use.
Short term solution: Research, research, research.
Long term solution: Identify, name and shame.
Sites that post customer reviews typically have something in their policies which indicates that they reserve the right to screen the reviews before they go up. As someone else already indicated, as long as they are not editing your review to make it sound more positive and posting the edited version, they're probably not violating any laws. It is certainly borderline from an ethical standpoint though, regardless of what their official policies are.
I've generally found that the quality of customer reviews at online retailers leaves a lot to be desired anyway. Most of the people posting them seem to be clueless, and sometimes it is even obvious that they're never even bought the product in question! I generally ignore customer reviews entirely. Occasionally I may use them to make a final decision between two otherwise very similar products; but if you are relying on them to give you unbiased feedback about a product, IMO you are asking for trouble.
I posted a bad review of some $25 men's travel briefs at a clothing web site, saying that the construction and quality were excellent but the design was bad. The site didn't publish that review - instead I got an e-mail from customer service offering me a free new version of the product, and an offer to exchange any old ones that I had. They had indeed fixed the design problem and they posted my new rave review.
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.
Why didn't the submitter say what site it was, I would like to know. The best way to stop this practice would be to let everyone know the site was doing it.
Yeah, you mean it's not as if they're (the retailer) making money on that product.
"The likes of Facebook and WhatsApp are free to those whose privacy is of zero value."
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.
The one that did it for me was a review, many years ago, in a well known publication that reviews a product that flat out didn't work. They admitted that they couldn't get it to do anything - yet still scored it "average" as they explained that according to the supplier it should have worked, and if/when it did, it was really good.
With all these review sites, look at where the money comes from. If there appears to be a conflict of interest between the advertisers who pay the site and the readers who want honest and accurate information, just assume that money talks.
politicians are like babies' nappies: they should both be changed regularly and for the same reasons
I never buy a product that doesn't have at least one review panning it. Any decent product that sells a lot of units is going to have a minimum of two or three buyer who, for whatever reason, thought it was crap. Even if their complaint is that it shipped slow, that's something. That generally shows that the retailer isn't round-filing bad reviews. No product is a panacea for everyone, so if you read the 1, 2, and 3 star reviews and find that their complaints wouldn't apply to you, you can probably safely buy it.
If a job's not worth doing, it's not worth doing right.
"Ethically speaking, it's wrong..."
Ethically speaking, it's wrong of you to try to tell someone what to do with their property. It's the retailer's web site, they own it, they get to say what is and is not going to be put up on it. You can not like that fact, and that's about the extent of your "rights" in the matter. You might consider it bias due to your bad experience. If 1000 people had good experiences and you had the one bad one, why should they put up a bad review along with 4 good ones? That makes it look like 20% are dissatisfied. One person's bias is another's emphasis.
You have freedom of speech where you have the freedom to speak. You don't have that freedom where ever you choose to want yourself heard. When it's your property, public property, or property where the owners gives you permission to speak from, have your say.
If by chance you think personal wants take priority over ownership rights, then give me your car, because I want it.
"I may be synthetic, but I'm not stupid." -- Bishop 341-B
They appear to allow the manufacturer to rebut negative reviews after the fact, but there are plenty of negative (even highly negative) reviews there
I've found the consumerist does a great job of making things like this heard.
IANAL and as such can't speak to the legalities, however if I find that there is a company using this approach to misrepresent the products that I spend my dollars on, they will NEVER get another cent from me again.
.com? .co.uk? .com.au?
This sig left unintentionally blank.
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.
who was it and what was the NAS (so we dont make the same mistake)
"The hands that help are better far than lips that pray." - Robert Ingersoll (1833-1899)
It may not help much, but each vote counts. If I find a store that I KNOW does this. I simply won't buy their goods. They are clearly a dishonest retailer.
It took several weeks for Crutchfield to publish the review of the item that I bought from them a few months back. I was holding off on reviewing my experience, but they went as far as sending me an e-mail inviting me to post a review, so I did. I bought a new speaker from them which cost several hundred dollars. When it arrived, It was very dusty and it was obvious that it had been taken apart. They sent me a replacement in two days and sent a few apologies, both in e-mail and in snail mail. Regardless, I described my experience and in my review I said "Come on, Crutchfield! You can do better than that! You charge MSRP!!!" Somehow, that phrase was left out of my review. Now, I know that they own the website. This, PERHAPS gives them editorial control. Perhaps. However...if you invite my to review my experience, why not have the guts to post it in its entirety? Maybe you will learn something and maybe your customers will as well. I have not purchased anything from them since.
but keeping the perp anonymous neither guides the reader to stay away from them nor teaches the vendor a salutary lesson. The antidote to scamming retailers cooking the reviews is using your own free speech to nail them in public. In posting reviews, a retailer takes on the role of neutral umpire. When they violate that implied responsibility, they become scammers. It may be hard to sic the cops on them, but they deserve no mercy from the public. So, for starters, who was the retailer and what was the product?
You guys asked for it, here it is and stuck with a score of 1. Push it up please - it ain't the chicken place ;-)
Build it, Drive it, Improve it! Hybridz.org
Exactly. How often to theaters post negative reviews of the product they are selling?
Do what I do when shopping around... only read the negative reviews... there are ALWAYS some. I did this while shopping for a good KVM switch and learnt such a lot.
Most negative reviews were from people who did not understand some aspects of KVM switches, such as why they may only support certain resolutions (they need to emulate aspects of the display) active keyboard and mouse emulation (since when the switch is not active on one computer, that computer must still think the keyboard/mouse/screen is plugged in).
So what I did was learn from the negative reviews and choose the product with the least amount of negative reviews that related to me.
I ended up getting "IOGEAR GCS932U MiniView Micro DVI-D 2 Port KVM with Audio and Cables" and it worked perfectly for my setup, which is a good thing since my setup was what gave a lot of other KVMs problems.
My setup:
Logitech Mouse
Mac Aluminium Keyboard
DELL 24" Ultrasharp 1920x1200 display
Shared between a PC and a Macbook Pro (Both with DVI)
And I'm very happy with my product, thanks to reading countless horror stories with other products.
http://ask.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1391935&cid=29635949
He posted the site anyway - Overclockers. Not the Egg. Not really much information at all but more than we had.
Build it, Drive it, Improve it! Hybridz.org
" Is there a good place to report behavior like this?"
Yes. theconsumerist.org They're an excellent review site.
-1 disagree is not a modifier for a reason. -1 troll, flaimbait, redundant, overrated are NOT acceptable substitutes.
I've had that happen to me for book reviews. I wrote a hard-biting review of a given tech book. It lasted about a week and then mysteriously disappeared. I tried to resubmit it, but the same thing happened. So, as I test I re-wrote it to be more "gentle". The milder one has lasted seven years.
Table-ized A.I.
ratemyprofessor.com Ok, this one isn't a retail site, but money is still involved and certainly so are many other factors (time, class grade, etc.) This website, with 8 million 'opinions' posted, will apparently remove negative comments made against college professors purely and simply due to a request made by said professor (and ostensibly others as well). I took a class from this prof based on many good reviews, ended up disappointed, posted my legitimate and honest (to me) review. Noticed maybe a week later it was gone - wrote a second similar review, which too was later removed. Then noticed OTHER not-so-nice reviews posted around the same time had been removed from same prof. Overall, ratemyprofessor.com proved a great help with other profs, but one cannot trust it entirely.
At least in the USA, unfair and deceptive commercial practices are forbidden by the FTC Act, and deception by omission is still deception.
Quoting from the FTC: "Section 5 of the FTC Act prohibits unfair or deceptive acts or practices in or affecting commerce. The Commission will find deception if there is a representation, omission, or practice that is likely to mislead the consumer acting reasonably in the circumstances, to the consumer's detriment."
The practice of publishing only the positive reviews, without disclosing that fact, appears to be an ommision likely to mislead a consumer, and would therefore be an illegal practice. You didn't say whether the merchant is based in the US, so this may not apply, if they are ouside of US jurisdiction.
There is a law called, "The Lanham Act" that covers a whole range of advertising practices (trademarkes, etc.) However, Section 43(a) prohibits any use of false or misleading description or representation in commercial advertising or promotion that "misrepresents the nature, characteristics, qualities, or geographic origin of.. goods, services, or commercial activities." You can read it here: http://www.law.uconn.edu/homes/swilf/ip/statutes/lanham43.htm IANAL, but this seems like it would apply to your situation.
assume everyone with an interest is lying, and everything is perhaps a lie, until you've investigated better. then, be prepared to find another kind of lies, the ones people actually believe in.
Build your own energy sources from scratch. http://otherpower.com/
There was a time several years ago that newegg started to get screen happy with reviews. I think they got some backlash from that and then pretty much started letting everything through.
I'm in the market for a NAS, I'd really appreciate the warning.
Quidquid Latine dictum sit, altum videtur (anything said in Latin sounds important)
Someone needs to set up a site (and bookmarklets) that allows people to write notes about when their reviews are being censored. This would allow us to review the review site itself, and and therefore have an idea of how reliable its reviews are...
I don't know, I have often posted negative reviews on newegg along the lines of "product was not free" or "This manufacturer hasn't yet sent me a thousand dollars." I've never had a manufacturer remedy my problem, stingy bastards.
Report it here! This is slashdot. We want to know so we don't get screwed too!
And name the bad product as well.
That the shop appears to be dishonest in its representation is one thing, but we're also hearing of a product that was "terrible".
So the questions I would have is:
1) what was the product (make & type)?
2) what made it "terrible" for you?
3) is there anything the manufacturer can do to make it more acceptable (thus get at least some progress out of this saga)?
The moment the product & type is known one can do some searching for other reviews, and with an indication of what didn't work for you someone can judge if this matters to them or not (even if they don't buy from Overclockers).
Anyway, well done for kickstarting the Streisand effect :-)
Insert
I am not a lawyer, and this is not legal advice or interpretation of any law, but here's what I would do based on the laws of Ohio.
Because their product is offered in Ohio, Ohio courts have venue over their actions. Furthermore, Ohio Rules of Civil Procedure expand venue to small claims courts.
Ohio has a law against lying in advertisements. By not specifically indicating that they only publish positive reviews, the lack of negative reviews could be construed in this situation as lying. In many cases, violations of this act reward three times damages.
If the laws in your state are configured similarly, then just sue them in small claims court for three times actual damages.
It's up to you, of course, to make this determination (if it will work based on your state's laws) and write your complaint appropriately. Having said that, I was successful in collecting an amount greater than damages in a similar circumstance involving a promise made by an out of state auto warranty company by using this method.
This practice may be illegal because it could be seen as fraud. The reason you bought the item was because of possibly false reviews. Also, you should say who the retailer is because this practice is at least highly irresponsible.
All cheap NAS solutions suck. Sorry.
If you are not buying a netapp, you need to think about the suck-factor of your NAS solution versus hosting it on a Linux or even Windows server.
I have never seen a NAS solution - even high end ones - that I consider acceptable, besides the Netapp.
It is a tough call whether a given high-end NAS solution (betsides netapp) is better that a software RAID on a cheap server.
I have never seen a super-low-end NAS solution that was acceptable even for MP3s or backups. The hassle of failure and data loss will quickly exceed the cost savings, even if it's just for non-critical storage where data loss is no problem.
Basically, either go Netapp or set up a Linux server with software RAID. All other solutions are distant third/fourth/fifth.
In between those two choices, a Solaris server doing software RAID with ZFS is better than Linux's software RAID. NFS server quality is about equal (it is absolutely no longer true that Solaris's NFS server is far better than Linux's).
If you need redundancy, a pair of Linux machines with heartbeat and DRBD (therefore two copies of the data) will be far cheaper than any sever-based solution that involves redundant servers sharing storage with no single point of failure.
Sorry, this is just a fact of life. Expensive storage is expensive because you're paying for the manageability, reliability, availability. Cheap storage throws these all away to meet a price point, and ends up making you wish you had just done it on a server.
What are the problems with cheap storage, especially a NAS? Rather than listing every problem I've ever seen, how about I give you an example of the design apathy. A cheap NAS may have never been tested by the vendor in the case of a failing drive. Pulling a drive out while it's running is too clean of a failure to be considered anything more than a preliminary test (however some cheap storage can't even handle this!). I've even seen higher end storage where this was basically the case.
What I'd like to know is why the OP hasn't told us which retailer this is? It may not be illegal for them to shitcan negative reviews, but neither is it illegal for people to warn others that this is taking place. Companies have these dirty practices need to be punished, not by the law, but by consumers. People need to stop being sheep and inform themselves. Since it saves time to buy something over the internet, use some of that saved time to research the retailer. Make informed purchases, and patronize retailers who have earned your trust even if they charge a little more. If saving $5 on a product is more important to you than having a reliable and trustworthy retailer then you deserve to get hoodwinked.
"It's because they're stupid, that's why. That's why everybody does everything." -Homer Simpson
I do - on amazon. Some products are just that good (and I do look at the bad reviews as well). But that's only after I have read every review and determined if the reviews seem real to me. If each is in detail and in a lot of different "voices", I deem those reviews real. It's basically the same technique a teacher uses to assess a student's book report - has he read the book or just the blurb? The answer is in the level of detail.
However, number of reviews is generally a good proxy for reliability of rating (at least, on amazon). A 1 review 5 star rating says virtually nothing about a product. A 15 review 4.5 star item would usually be a better purchase (assuming there is no 5 star item with similar review numbers). It would be useful if they had another way to sort through items that combined rating with reliability of rating, e.g. likely minimum rating. It would be dead easy to mine their data and determine a function that takes the rating and number of reviews (perhaps also using number of words/review as a proxy for detail, but don't let on that to the general public, otherwise sellers will start gaming this) to determine what minimum rating (within say, an 80-90% confidence level) a product will have after it has 30+ reviews. Then it's a simple matter of mapping (avg. rating, number of reviews, ) -> minimum rating. I believe this would be more useful to the consumer than the existing options of sorting by pure rating, bestselling, etc.
If I have seen further it is by stealing the Intellectual Property of giants.
site?
This retailer is seriously screwing its customers by hiding problems in product it sells. I would absolutely avoid shopping with the retailer if I knew who it was.
Consumerist.com, owned by Consumer Reports, is doing a pretty good job exposing anti-consumer behavior by companies. I would tip them off about this.
In Soviet Russia, I ruled you
would be Snapserver(s).
IMO, that is, because IME Snap's have good storage but are horribly
underpowered in the CPU/MEM/NIC dept and suffer terribly from diminishing
returns too soon.
Have you read the moderator guidelines? Well, have you, PUNK? (and I want a Karma: Gnarly option)
A site that pads the reviews so they only show a positive response is much the same as the new media only presenting to the listener selective news. I believe it is still the responsibility of the consumer to do their exploration and investigation to prove what is true to them.
Ha! But apple's app store is so full of bogus positive reviews for junk apps it's crazy. If all those reviews were real, it would be proof that human beings are rock stupid. The negative reviews are the only one's worth reading, and then discarded as disgruntled users of the product. Need a review? Download a trial version and review it yourself or get a money-back satisfaction guaranteed with return shipping paid deal. Trust no one.
I think therefore I can't be ~TTNH
When I see sites that I want to comment on but they don't support comments or deletes them, I simply post to SideWiki. Google is in a great position to gain a reputation for not evil if they allow bad review of their own sites with SideWiki. Time will tell.
was actually believing that the reviews were posted by real customers...
Donald 'Duck' Dunn: We had a band powerful enough to turn goat piss into gasoline.
_Name_ them. If you fear retribution, do it as AC.
I started up Feefo three years ago to solve exactly this problem.
How can you be sure that reviews are not edited if they are on the same website? Even if a business allows some bad reviews through, how do you know they're not screening the rest?
And how many sites allow reviews of their service, as opposed to their products?
Feefo answers both questions. Really, it's a version of eBay feedback, but for any website. If you see our logo on any trader's site, you can know that the reviews haven't been screened. You can also see the trader reply to criticism, so you know how they treat dissatisfied customers.
It's taken us a few years to get some momentum, but watch this space!
Why protect their identity? Which well-known computer shop?
In my line of work I've noticed that most people who purchase a product or service have an idea of what they want/need. However, many people have greater expectations than what can be achieved. It is my job to inform the consumer to the best of my ability what a product or service will do. I can't count the number of times in my previous role (project manager for a construction company) where people wanted to spend pennies and get the Taj Mahal or take an existing 50+ year old structure and have it look brand new. It just is not going to happen. The difference between purchasing on-line and buying in person is that on-line you rely on reviews, but in my opinion there are more negative reviews from people who had too great an expectation rather than people who have a legitimate negative claim thus skewing the reviews negative because people with good experiences have little motivation to post they had a good experience.
I've personally witnessed negative reviews falling down the memory hole when a product was put on sale. I had been considering the product for some months and had been monitoring the reviews regularly. I got the word that the product was on sale, so I decided to pounce, knowing that I could live with the shortcomings expressed in the bad reviews. One more scan of the reviews revealed that everything below three stars had been removed. I aborted my transaction and emailed Sears customer service to express my disgust.
"I threw up my hands in disgust and wondered if it had been such a good idea to have eaten my hands in the first place."
Contrary to popular opinion, the 1st Amendment does not mean that you can say absolutely anything you like. There is all kinds of law out there that forbids false and misleading advertising, for one thing. While IANAL, it seems to me that it's at least possible that you could make a case that this kind of behavior constitutes false advertising.
I can state this from personal experience. They systematically deleted most negative reviews of "The Courage to Heal" and similar books (reviews that followed ALL of Amazon.com's reader review guidelines and were concise, on-topic, free of obscenities and misspellings, and made specific reference to the book's contents) while leaving up all positive reviews and only a few token negative reviews that were short and nonspecific. As a result, the "average user ratings" on Amazon.com should be considered biased and misleading and the selection of written reviews that survives should be considered biased and unrepresentative as well. The Amazon.com "user reviews" feature exists to help Amazon sell more books by selectively filtering and presenting user-generated reviews that serve that purpose, not to actually help its customers make an informed choice based on accurate information. See "Gaming the System: A Case Study Manipulation of Online Consumer Reviews" by Bruce Fulton at http://www.u.arizona.edu/~bfulton/ierposter/overview.html for a rigorous analysis of including statistical analysis of the bias their selective censorship of reviews introduces. Amazon.com is like a bookstore in Lake Wobegon where most of the books are above average! ;-)
...and therefore are bound by legislation concerning the legality, truthfulness and honesty of the content. the appropriate authority would be the advertising standards authority or ombudsman for the relevant geographic area
that should have been "retailers' own review sites"...
Do you think Slashdot posts all the stories that fall in the broad category of "News for nerds"?
Well, actually no - stories that don't 'fit', such as criticism of global warming research, will not make it to the home page - no matter how important.
For example, I submitted this story a few days ago.
From the Theregister:
The world's source for global temperature record admits it's lost or destroyed all the original data that would allow a third party to construct a global temperature record. The destruction (or loss) of the data comes at a convenient time for the Climatic Research Unit (CRU) in East Anglia - permitting it to snub FoIA requests to see the data.
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/08/13/cru_missing/
Credible People
Slashdot = Sarcasm
Future Shop has done this - they're the Canadian Best Buy, though we also have Best Buy now.
I bought two sets of headphones. One review that said they were great was posted. One that pointed out weaknesses and suggested that the other set - also sold there - were better never showed up.