Do Retailers Often Screen User Reviews? 454
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?"
Never (Score:4, Informative)
Comment removed (Score:5, Informative)
http://www.resellerratings.com (Score:4, Informative)
http://www.resellerratings.com/ [resellerratings.com] - post your honest review there.
Re:The real question is... (Score:2, Informative)
I doubt that the site in question is "something brand new out of a chicken". I see negative reviews on that site all the time. In fact I almost always read the negative reviews first. If there is something truly bad about a product I am considering buying I want to know immediately.
Re:Their site... (Score:5, Informative)
Moral of the story: Don't trust reviews on shop sites unless they also post the negative ones.
Amazon post all reviews, with the exception of those that use profanity or have links to torrent sites etc. There was a story on /. about it years ago. Apparently it's a major pain the arse for them but it makes the site on of the best places to buy stuff too.
Overstock.com does not publish negative reviews (Score:5, Informative)
Overstock.com heavily screens reviews (Score:2, Informative)
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.
Re:A comment on Amazon (Score:4, Informative)
buy.com (Score:5, Informative)
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 [buy.com]
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.
Re:The real question is... (Score:2, Informative)
Yes. (Score:5, Informative)
Home Depot "approves" reviews and failed to post a negative review I gave for an air conditioner recently.
quality filter (Score:3, Informative)
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.
Re:Hmm (Score:2, Informative)
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 [slashdot.org]
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.
Re:The real question is... (Score:5, Informative)
Which shop?
overclockers
Re:Their site... (Score:4, Informative)
Apparently it's a major pain the arse for them but it makes the site on of the best places to buy stuff too.
Even if I'm not buying there I check to see if the item I want has any reviews. I also do a quick google with "[product_name_model] problem" and see if there are a lot of negative forum posts. I don't think screening posts is illegal, but it's sure not right. I would also contact the BBB about it.
Never buy 5 Star (Score:5, Informative)
Newegg posts negative reviews (Score:3, Informative)
They appear to allow the manufacturer to rebut negative reviews after the fact, but there are plenty of negative (even highly negative) reviews there
Report it to consumerist.com (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Come on... (Score:1, Informative)
The poster revealed above [slashdot.org] that it's "overclockers". That might mean something to someone, I still don't know which store s/he's talking about.
Crutchfield Edited My Review (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Their site... (Score:2, Informative)
Would the financial consequences requirement shield reviews at fossfor.us from legal scrutiny? They only permit ratings of "Great" and "Just OK", but when their reviews are syndicated (on the front page of /., for example) it's not clear that "Bad" isn't an option available to reviewers, so /every/ rating must be positive by design.
Re:Which one? (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Their site... (Score:3, Informative)
"Glenn Beck is an idiot." - Discover Magazine.
"Leading the lunatic fringe." - Time Magazine.
"A lying sack of dog mess." - Whoopi Goldberg.
"A half-informed radio blowhard." - Vanity Fair.
"Only in his wildest dreams could an actual suicide bomber hope to do as much damage to this country." - Keith Olbermann.
"[A] frightfully strange man." - Tina Brown.
"A vampire ... a 'death lover.'" - Roseann Barr.
He likes that they don't like him. Olbermann is especially douchey.
Re:Their site... (Score:3, Informative)
Fox didn't get a ruling that it's news can be lies. They got a ruling stating that their stations can control the content of the news being reported and refuse to allow something to be reported regardless of the truthfulness of it. One of their attorneys (or was it a company representative) suggested that they could even control it if it is a lie in order to limit liability. The ruling never said a word about reporting lies, just controlling the content of the reporting and it was over a local affiliate news program in Florida so it's not clear if the principle would work outside of Florida.
Also, you do not need a ruling. User responses are considered consumer endorsements which makes misrepresentations of the products illegal under federal law if the endorsements are reasonably considered as part of the purchasing consideration process. A site that displays the comments under the item in consideration would have to follow the false advertising rules and either place a disclaimer that's obvious to the consumer that they edited the negative responses or that results/performance isn't typical for all users.
On another note, most state laws have consumer protections against false or misleading advertisements in the same light. For instance, in my state, representing [ohio.gov] that the subject of a consumer transaction has sponsorship, approval, performance characteristics, accessories, uses, or benefits that it does not have; or whether the supplier knew [ohio.gov] at the time the consumer transaction was entered into of the inability of the consumer to receive a substantial benefit from the subject of the consumer transaction; could apply. This is because by removing negative reviews, the supplier knows of limitations and dissatisfaction with the product and presents it with an otherwise misleading approvals from select consumers. In the case of the op, if a negative reviews were present, he probably would have purchased a different product. His intent of posting a negetive review was specifically to inform future consumers of his experiences with the problem so they wouldn't be taken like he did. Federal [ftc.gov] and state laws regulate the extent to which a product can be represented.
sorry, nas fail (Score:3, Informative)
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.
Make it public (Score:3, Informative)
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.
Re:And who made the product? (Score:2, Informative)