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?"
It's fairly common (Score:3, Insightful)
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
Its no different (Score:2, Insightful)
Seriously (Score:3, Insightful)
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...
Oh yes.... (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:The real question is... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:It's fairly common (Score:2, Insightful)
> Unfortunately a lot of retailers do this, this is one of many very good
> reasons not to use a retailer.
No, it's just a reason to assume that everything on a retailer's site is there to sell product. You go there to get price and delivery information and to place an order. You go elsewhere to get disinterested opinions.
Re:It's fairly common (Score:4, Insightful)
The fact that they manipulate what customer feedback they are willing to show in order to increase sales is enough for me to take my business elsewhere, and there are plenty of trustworthy businesses that don't censor user reviews.
/Mikael
Re:Their site... (Score:1, Insightful)
The submitter must just be a fucking moron.
Who the hell trusts the reviews at a manufacturer's or vendor's web site? I mean, really. It should be clear as day to anyone with even a fetus-sized brain that such companies are going to paint the products they manufacture or sell as being of high quality.
I guess the submitter has never heard of independent reviews or only buying products on recommendations from people he trusts.
Come on... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:It's fairly common (Score:4, Insightful)
I usually look for negative reviews first when considering a product. I will google for "$product sucks". I try and see why people think it sucks. If I don't see any negative reviews, I know that no one is actually buying the product.
Re:The real question is... (Score:4, Insightful)
Cue worthless accusation (Score:2, Insightful)
Rule of thumb, always check more than one source (Score:3, Insightful)
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.
Re:Their site... (Score:5, Insightful)
I would consider it illegal advertising. The site misleads customers to believe they are reading actual user reviews (ALL reviews), which is simply not true. It's misleading and deceptive.
If I found a site like that, I'd report them to consumeraffairs.org, FTC.gov, and any other site I can think of which screens companies. Hopefully the FTC would act to fine that company, but I wouldn't hold my breath.
a well-known online computer component shop (Score:4, Insightful)
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.
Re:Overstock.com heavily screens reviews (Score:5, Insightful)
There is a conflict of interest but making this type of thing illegal would be a slippery slope.
A slipper slope to what? A market where consumers are properly protected from corporate abuse?
Re:The real question is... (Score:5, Insightful)
+1
Newegg even lets you display only the bad reviews. I've also seen reviews suggesting you purchase products elsewhere when shipping might be an issue. It doesn't seem like Newegg does much screening at all. Probably has any prices listed with dollar signs stripped and any URL's or competitors stripped automatically and then goes with that.
One thing to keep in mind when reading reviews at any site though is that the ratio of positive to negative reviews differs wildly. Websites that make the review process difficult are likely only going to get reviews from people very strongly opinionated and probably have a higher negative ratio. Websites that make the review process very easy will have more reviews.
That's a bit cynical (Score:3, Insightful)
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.
Re:The real question is... (Score:5, Insightful)
I don't get it; they resolved the issue, so that you had nothing negative to post in the end. Let's say that instead of posting the negative review, you had contacted them of the problem to see if they would resolve it. If they hadn't, you would have posted the review; if they had, you wouldn't have, since there was no problem. The latter is what happened.
Re:Their site... (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Their site... (Score:3, Insightful)
They cover that in the TOS that nobody ever reads.
Re:The real question is... (Score:3, Insightful)
Not only do I see a lot of negative reviews on Newegg, I see a lot of negative reviews that indicate ignorance by the reviewer - usually, the reviewer didn't properly research the product before purchasing or doesn't know what they are doing. I also see occasional four-star reviews that claim a product is awesome, but only deserves four stars because it doesn't have some feature found in more expensive products.
Re:Their site... (Score:3, Insightful)
It is their site, they are free to publish what they feel on it.
Not so sure about that. If they are misrepresenting the nature of their review site, and further misrepresenting what they're selling by censoring reviews, then that would seem to be a form of fraud. What you are suggesting is that fraud is legally OK if done on the property of the party that perpetrates it. IANAL, but this strikes me as an odd notion.
I'll play a little devil's advocate. Replies indicating that they don't know what that means will be summarily ignored.
If you want a truthful, unbiased assessment of a company or any of its products and services, that company would be the very worst entity to ask. This applies, of course, to any media or forum directly under the control of that company. If people are naive and have not yet learned this from regular advertisements and TV commercials, it's safe to say that they are not going to learn this at all. The only purpose of having a legislature recognize this as illegal fraud would be to protect those people, who refuse to learn a few basic lessons, from themselves. This is true because it is otherwise within their power to realize these things unassisted. If that is so, then government intervention would only coddle and protect the sort of real-world ignorance that really does need a hard lesson or two. In other words, wouldn't it be better to discourage this sort of naive thinking (by letting it run its course if necessary) than to keep providing fertile ground for this sort of fraud and sending the government after everything that grows in this fertile ground?
Re:Their site... (Score:2, Insightful)
Whenever I review a product, I always look at the bad reviews first. I want to see if there is a commonality amongst them. If there aren't any bad reviews, I'm skeptical.
Re:Cue worthless accusation (Score:1, Insightful)
One of the more serious types of slander/libel (called defamation) is negligently or maliciously saying that someone broke a law or might be sued.
A company or group of companies can't sue someone for "slandering" or defaming an entire industry.
To fall afoul of libel or slander law, you actually have to say or write something about a specific person, group of people, or legal entity.
The statement has to be: a statement of plausible fact, not true. And there must be an element of malice or culpable negligence, in order for defamation to have occured.
Valid defenses are "fair comment and criticism", and truth is always a defense.
Since the author indicates he is speaking from personal experience, truth is very likely. And it appears clear that the intent is fair comment and criticism. Given a bad experience with one site's management of reviews, it's quite fair to raise questions about online retailers' review monitoring/censorship practices in general.
You, on the other hand, have posted a comment: I hope that one of the others sues you for slandering their reputation.
We can observe what can only be described malice here, because you are saying that you hope one of the companies sues the author. Hoping that bad things happen to someone is a form of malice.
You also stated: 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
In other words, you may actually be committing or very close to committing the very offense you appear to suggest the author has committed.
You have also named specific companies, who might now have an interest in taking up a case against you, because they were not originally mentioned by the author, and by listing their names you imply they're somehow involved in this.
Re:Their site... (Score:5, Insightful)
Why is this illegal?
Don't know if it's illegal or not but it should be. They are misrepresenting the site as presenting all reviews, not just ones that they approve. That's fraud with material financial consequences.
Given that Mechanist.tm wasn't aware of this they probably are misrepresenting the reviews.
If they made clear that the site is not representative of all customer reviews then there should be no legal problem though it's still shady and I for one would be shopping elsewhere.
---
The majority of modern marketing is nothing more than an arms race to get mind share. Everybody loses except the parasitic marketing "industry".
Re:Their site... (Score:1, Insightful)
FTFY
One of the most troubling aspects to all the astroturf on social networking sites is that it is no longer possible to expect that the opinions being expressed in any discussion are genuine. A reasonably simple way to perform an astroturf check is to search for the exact phrase used by the poster.
The more frequently the phrase appears in similar context, the more likely it is from a canned script supplied by a marketing department.
Check out "Windows 7 is everything Vista should have been," [google.com.au] for a prime example.
Re:Their site... (Score:5, Insightful)
Because unless they state they are only publishing positive reviews, it is misleading to show that all feedback from "users" is positive. It is deceptive to filter out the negatives as it misleadingly portrays the product as good based of what is supposedly unbiased user feedback as opposed to vendor advertising.
For advertising, yes, of course you only show positive reviews, it stands to reason to choose what supports the product (movie etc).
Re:Their site... (Score:5, Insightful)
Thinking that something "should be illegal" is not particularly close to it being illegal. It sounds to you that you are just saying that it is unethical. I agree with that, but the point was that a prior poster said he "considered this to be illegal", and the parent asked why it was illegal.
Saying it is unethical does not answer that question. You have to actually find a law that says it is illegal.
Likewise, asaul says that it is illegal because it is misleading. Again, he doesn't cite any law against being misleading.
Even blatantly lying is not, in general, illegal. There are cases where it is, but those are specific cases; there is no general law against lying. (Mom's law doesn't count here. :-))
There are laws against false advertising, which are probably the closest things to applicable ones here. But the standards applied to that in practice tend to be awfully lenient. (Heck, as far as I can tell, darn near all advertising attempts to give false impressions in at least some way. Apparently the lawyers don't use the same standards that I do, since I don't see darn near all advertising slapped down.)
Re:Their site... (Score:3, Insightful)
No.
When Hyundai, or Ford, or Toyota run a car ad, they will often cite reviews from Motor Trend, Car and Driver, Edmund, and other publications. News flash: They cherry pick the best reviews. When Motor Trend says "the fit and finish of the interior surfaces is sub-par for it's class", they don't use that in the ad. This is not illgal, and I've not come across anyone who's suggested that it should be.
Likewise, with one Exception (Glenn Beck), I've never read a negative review on a book's dust jacket. Authors and publishers are generally more savvy than that, and they are certainly under no obligation to put someone's scatrhing review of their book / movie / car / NAS / whatever on the site.
This is not illegal marketing. There are only two differences from the examples I cited above.
1) My examples use publishers / manufacturers, not online retailers.
2) My examples use professional reviews, not user submissions on an online retailer's web site.
But think about these differences. Are they relevant (legally)? For that to be the case, there would need to be laws or regulations on the books that would apply to one or more of these differences. I'm not aware of any laws that single out user reviews and require that they be treated differently from professional reviews, nor any that single out online merchants, and regulate how they market differently from others.
I agree that it's shady, and that it would be better if the retailer(s) in question posted all reviews to instill confidence in customers' buying decisions on their sites. But unless you can point to a specific law, or regulation that disproves my previous paragraph, it's most certainly not illegal, just a bit sleazy.
Re:Their site... (Score:1, Insightful)
I'll play a little devil's advocate. Replies indicating that they don't know what that means will be summarily ignored.
It means that there is something you believe that you want to say, but you don't want to admit that you believe it, and you prefer that people do not argue against it.
Re:Their site... (Score:5, Insightful)
>>>Why is this illegal?
Because the law says that illegal advertising is a crime. So is advertising a price of, say $9.99, and then ringing it up as 19.99 at the register. (My former employer JCPenney got a huge fine for that.) So is making claims that are deceptive or misleading (see the lawsuits about 100MPG magnets for cars). I surmise that if this NAC company went before a judge, he would say the use of only positive reviews while leading the customer to think he/she is seeing ALL reviews, is deceptive and misleading.
Re:Their site... (Score:3, Insightful)
"The retailer is under no obligation to publish unfavorable reviews"
He should be. Bear in mind, you are talking about a retailer, who presumably has a number of products for sale. If he puts up reviews at all, he should welcome both positive and negative reviews. That puts him in the position of being impartial - something that is always good for business.
I like reading negative reviews - there have been times that I've read half a dozen positives, and a few negatives, and decided that the product's detractors were clueless boobs, then bought the product. Those clueless boobs actually gave credence to the positive reviews, IMHO.
Like so many others have already said - if you see ONLY positive reviews with 5 star ratings, you should be suspicious.
Re:Their site... (Score:5, Insightful)
On a small scale, the poster could sue the retailer. On a large scale, it may indeed be false advertising.
Re:Their site... (Score:4, Insightful)
Because you said it yourself, a commercial is a commercial and people know it's a commercial. When it comes to review people assume it's honest non-filtered opinion of consumers. If you pick what to publish or edit passages you're filtering.
Re:Their site... (Score:3, Insightful)
of course illegal advertising is a crime - just like illegal theft and illegal murder are crimes.
Re:Their site... (Score:5, Insightful)
Why is this illegal?
Don't know if it's illegal or not but it should be. They are misrepresenting the site as presenting all reviews, not just ones that they approve. That's fraud with material financial consequences.
Given that Mechanist.tm wasn't aware of this they probably are misrepresenting the reviews.
If they made clear that the site is not representative of all customer reviews then there should be no legal problem though it's still shady and I for one would be shopping elsewhere.
---
The majority of modern marketing is nothing more than an arms race to get mind share. Everybody loses except the parasitic marketing "industry".
Do you tell potential employers about every major mistake you've made in previous jobs or about the times you've slacked off or skipped out for one reason or another? If not, then you're not making it clear that your resume, cover letter, and job interviews aren't fully representative of your prior work. And as you said, it's fraud with material consequences. How about stuff that you're trying to sell like a car or a home?
No one gives all the details about something they're trying to sell regardless of whether it's a piece of electronics, a car, or a home. The phrase caveat emptor has been around for at least 2000 years and probably a lot longer than that. As such, I don't think anyone should trust the reviews on a retailer's site entirely.
Re:http://www.resellerratings.com (Score:3, Insightful)
http://www.resellerratings.com/ - post your honest review there.
They have a policy of removing bad reviews - if, get this, there are too many of them.
They say its to avoid a vendor being 'targetted.' Seems to me that if a vendor does something bad enough to get a mob riled up to complain en masse, they probably deserve what they get.
They are also vulnerable to astro-turfing. I've witnessed it myself. Tiger Direct, known for being one of the absolute worst places to deal with if anything goes wrong with your order, had a well deserved rating down around 1 or so. It was pretty consistent for a couple of years and then practically over night (well, more like a span of 3-6 months) their rating soared. The reason it changed? A massive influx of positive reviews at a volume at least an order of magnitude higher than for the previous years.
Since resellerratings keeps a sort of history of reviews, you can still see this gaming of the ratings by sorting tiger-direct's reviews by date and looking at the oldest. Unfortunately, the database of reviews doesn't go back all the way to the start, so you'll see about 6 months of sparse true reviews and then the onslaught of astroturfing kicks in.
Re:The real question is... (Score:2, Insightful)
I think that's a load of BS. If the complaint is lousy customer service, then that's not handled by a product review and is more appropriately handled through the retailer's customer service department, the BBB, your credit card company, etc. If they get the customer service complaint resolved, the info should still be available so that shoppers know that there's a possibility they'll be hassled.
If the complaint is that the product is a flaming PoS then there's nothing that the retailer can do, other than take it back. See above. If the product is a flaming PoS and it's on the manufacturer's site then, even if resolved, the complaint should still be visible. Appended to not that it's been resolved, and how so, but still visible.
Don't want negative reviews on record? Then work on your customer service and make sure you're not sending people a flaming PoS. It's really that simple.
Under "David's System of Justice" that crap is fraud. You lie about your product to get me to spend money? Fraud. Doesn't do what you say it will do? Fraud. Breaks from normal, expected usage after two days? Fraud. As a manufacturer, your responsibility is to tell me the truth about your product to earn my business. If your product is a flaming PoS, then you need to spend more money on the engineering side of the house to fix those problems and less on the advertising side trying to defraud me.
Re:Their site... (Score:5, Insightful)
Do you tell potential employers about every major mistake you've made in previous jobs or about the times you've slacked off or skipped out for one reason or another? If not, then you're not making it clear that your resume, cover letter, and job interviews aren't fully representative of your prior work.
Do you think that the interviewers think it is? Do you think that if you read a persons resume that it would be a fair assessment of their past work history and experience?
Or would you accept that everybody that submits a resume is obviously biased and reporting on themselves is not a full and complete history. Since they have to include references and contact info for their previous jobs it seems that they are by default not trusted to be a complete and balanced source by themselves. So your example stands as it's own opposition. People do not tell about themselves when trying to impress someone to get a job and everybody knows it and expects no less than embellishment. Hence they ask for outside verification as well.
How about stuff that you're trying to sell like a car or a home?
If you are trying to sell a car or a home there are third parties that are expected to inspect these objects to ensure your statements are true, it's not expected that you are an expert in all the areas that are important in these cases. You are also judged on your trustworthiness in these cases. It's not the same as if the person was to filter the results of a termite inspection and only report the good parts, or if they altered the carfax report on the car. That's why there are these third party services, because people are not expected to be unbiased in their account of their own worth or the products they are trying to sell.
Companies are a different matter.
There are quite a few laws in place that people trust are being obeyed. It is illegal to advertise falsely that your product cures a disease or treats an illness.
It is illegal to advertise a product of some value and then once the customer is ready to purchase it, switch to selling them an inferior product. (as a practice)
There are many other laws about advertising because the business world needs trust to operate. And while it doesn't create the level playing field it means to, it does put into the minds of the populous that they can trust to some extent the claims of retailers. There is a big difference that may not be in the front of their minds though. That there is a big difference between an acknowledged advertisement on TV and a retailers own Website.
To advertise on TV or even place banners through Google adds, the retailer must meet certain criteria. Small print, disclaimers, relevant details that go with their claims of a certain product. That's why we all see things like, "results not typical" "your results may vary" and "see retailer for details". These things don't help sales but they are required when advertising a claim. If they claim something without so much as an asterisk and it is not true, they could be in trouble. But here's the problem. If they have a Website that promotes their product and only has the most glowing reviews but does not claim that the reviews are representative or inclusive or even unpaid. It's not a claim that's false. They don't have to say that the reviews are anything, they could be just marketing people typing the company agenda. And we assume they are real reviews since they allow us to submit them as well. There are no laws in this area. they can delete your review and unless they use your name and change the words, it's within the law. It's a problem with what we expect in one area not applying to another. Like copyright and patents, most people don't know where one stops and the other begins. And I think that's the fault of the ones who are in change of the laws. We should learn them, but we should also not be expected to have law degrees to do so. Like anything that effects us all so much, there should be a brief attached that e