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?"
Their site... (Score:5, Interesting)
The real question is... (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Hmm (Score:4, Interesting)
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.
Re:Their site... (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
Re:The real question is... (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Seriously (Score:4, Interesting)
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.)
Probably shouldn't blame the seller (Score:2, Interesting)
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.
Sidewiki (Score:2, Interesting)
Shooting themselves in the foot (Score:4, Interesting)
According to an article that I read [economist.com], 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.
legal system (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Their site... (Score:5, Interesting)
Not true here -- Amazon does remove negative reviews if the author requests it.
Once, I posted a negative review of a book to Amazon.com, pointing out specific places where the book made errors. Within 24 hours, the review had disappeared, and simultaneously a "blog" post appeared on the product page where the author denounced and "rebutted" my review (which was no longer even visible.)
I absolutely rely on Amazon, I just wish ... (Score:3, Interesting)
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!
Re:Their site... (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Their site... (Score:1, Interesting)
This whole "its their site, they can do what they want" thing doesnt exactly fly.
Unless they specifically state on the site somewhere the review screening process or at the least state some reviews are filtered they are misleading the customer.
However I doubt the US government would do anything about it.
So where DO you look for reviews? (Score:4, Interesting)
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.
2 words (Score:4, Interesting)
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 [bsalert.com]
And a comprehensive feedback [ebay.com] 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.
Re:The real question is... (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
I like the idea of leaving the negative reviews up and attaching the manufacturer's response. My reasoning is simple: shit happens. At some point there will be problems of some kind. That's a given, and a corporation's attempt to cover up this fact of life to give an illusion of perfect products that don't have even a very small percentage of defects looks pretty damned suspicious to me.
What's important to me is when a company is willing to stand by their products and take care of its own mistakes. Do they give the customer a certain benefit of doubt, or do they treat complaining customers as though they don't believe a word they say? Do they make you otherwise jump through hoops? Do they admit fault and take responsibility and take reasonable measures to fix any problems they cause? Is it an uphill battle to get them to do the right thing? These are more important to me than how well they can censor their forums. A negative review that shows me a company bending over backwards to make things right isn't negative to me at all.
Re:So where DO you look for reviews? (Score:3, Interesting)
Which one? (Score:3, Interesting)
.com? .co.uk? .com.au?
The other side of negative reviews (Score:2, Interesting)
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.
Re:So where DO you look for reviews? (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Their site... (Score:4, Interesting)
Glenn Beck has a negative review on his dust jacket? Why and from who?
Anyway when we see reviews from Toyota, et cetera, we know those are biased commercials that have been censored by the company. We also know the reviewers are probably biased as well (getting kickbacks from the company). But when you see "What other people thought" on amazon.com then you expect non-biased opinions from people like yourself. It is that expectation that the company is abusing - it's a misleading and deceptive presentation.
Re:Their site... (Score:5, Interesting)
Okay, I don't have a copy of black's law on my shelf:
But let's summarize it as:
1) It's intentional deception--a reasonable person would expect that a site with reviews would incorporate positive, as well as negative reviews. The removal of negative reviews suggests the absence of them.
2) It was deception made for gain--they sold a product that they otherwise may not have sold
You've got the definitive elements of fraud there, even though the statutes/definition vary.
Re:Their site... (Score:4, Interesting)
Nope, my review didn't contain any of the above. It did point out the author's admission that he had no personal experience in the topic that he was writing about, which probably labeled the review as a personal attack and got it removed. However, this admission was part of the book being reviewed, and therefore was fair game for comment.
Re:Their site... (Score:4, Interesting)
Other than that, the company can arbitrarily decide to post only reviews that have the word 'chipmunk' in them. For instance. They have to make an assertion (express or strongly implied) *in an advertisement* that is patently false for it to be false advertising. Lies by omission don't count.
Personally I think that such 'reviews' should be prominently titled 'testimonials' or some such. It *is* disgusting. But you should never trust a review on a site where the subject under review controls the content.
Re:Their site... (Score:4, Interesting)
In the UK this sort of thing falls under the "traders tort" law.
Traders can say things like "cheapest price in the UK!" and it is accepted that this need not be verifiably true. A reasonable person would understand that the claim is basically bollocks and is not supposed to be taken seriously.
In the same way it is expected that a reasonable person would not expect a trader to publish negative reviews of their products in their marketing material, be it on the packaging or on their web site. If that makes the OP "unreasonable" then I'd tend to agree with it.
Re:Their site... (Score:3, Interesting)
I do.
Next time you sell your old car, try it. Write down everything you know about it that is wrong or bothersome. Give it to the buyer while he's inspecting the car. You'd be surprised how good it feels to deal honorably.
Of course I know that nobody else will give me the same treatment, but I don't care. This is how I choose to move through our world.
Re:Their site... (Score:3, Interesting)
There are many advertising practices that are either illegal or will get you into immense hot water with the enforcement agency (FDA, FCC, FTC, others). I don't know every law or rule in this field, and I don't wish to. It strikes me that blatantly creating false impressions in the mind of casual consumers violates the spirit of other laws in this field which do exist. It would be nice to find out which law, or if there is no law, to figure why this gap exists in consumer misrepresentation where others don't.
In the case where the reviews are heavily filtered, I'd happy enough the web site referred to the reviews as "selected reviews". One additional word to indicate that the reviews are not necessarily representative of the views filed. This would not be required when reviews are removed for violating terms of service (prices, personal attacks). If the terms of service indicate that unfavourable reviews can/will be removed, why does the site offer the ability to rate a product one star? I'd be happy if the FTC supplied some clarity around this.
Before we had consumer protection laws, we had a thriving industry in snake oil. Their ghosts achieved Valhalla on the internet. Capitalism is worthless unless it consists of informed exchanges. I don't regard caveat emptorism as a desirable economic system.
Re:And who made the product? (Score:2, Interesting)