@hchavers I agree. If all of the 1 stars say stuff about shipping or it arrived broken but they replaced it, I’ll look at the other reviews closer. But if they all say “This is junk, doesn’t do what it’s supposed to, not the item pictured, too small/too big” then I steer clear.
What I had gotten the most benefit from on Amazon reviews were the replies that followed, which they no longer do. Sometimes there were great back and forths, drawing out all the nuances of product performances or the cred of the posters. This also gave feedback to how much to rely on any particular review. Once the Bezos crew quit allowing those, I no longer paid as much attention to the reviews. They throw out the baby with the bath water, then go anal on whether anyone is gaming their system.
@heartny@narfcake Fedex threw the box with this set of tea cups from 65 feet away and on my Ring camera I heard the sound of glass cracking. By the time I got home someone had stolen the package and the camera never alerted!
@heartny At least as much fun as some of the dumb reviews, are the dumb answers in the Q&A sections. A sample retort to a question about a smoke detector:
Question: What is the distance between mounting screws?
Answer: I don’t know as my husband hung it. He just pounded a nail into the wall and hung it that way.
I like the way you now have to log in to filter only verified purchased reviews.
It’s almost like they’re upset that they even have to offer it to us when we’re logged in lol
@chienfou In the small Texas town known as Tom Bean, there is a pizzeria of sorts in a gas station. I’m sure that when they ordered the sign for the pizzeria, they intended for it to say Lone Star Pizza. What they got, however, was One Star Pizza. It’s been that way for quite a while.
I start with one star, more on to two star… and look for trends in what people don’t like to see if that matters to me or speaks to the quality or function of the item. I tend to skip the 5 star ones. If there are a number of hundred of reviews I’ll also judge on the overall rating.
@Kidsandliz If comparing two options that both seem reasonable (based their negative reviews), reading some of the 4- or 5-star reviews can sometimes find people’s favorite things about them.
But yes, definitely read through the complaints as the main thing.
@xobzoo I look at negative reviews as reasons not to buy. Reasons to buy that vs another one or to buy at all I think are more complex. At least for me.
Cynical answer: None of them. They are bots or people who get “incentives” from the seller for a glowing review. Or idiots who think a rant about FedEx is a product review.
Real answer: Only the ones with a really long, detailed review of the product, which means they (probably) actually used it.
@rockblossom What, you mean a 5-star review that’s ‘Haven’t used it but it got here quickly and it looks just like the pictures.’ isn’t trustworthy?!?
Amazon Vine reviews that are 1 and 2 stars – you know a product is crap when it was comped and still wasn’t usable.
(FWIW, the products selected are treated as taxable income so they are not 100% free; Vine members are 1099-ed at the end of the year. Manufacturers/distributors do not have any input on who could or could not choose an item.)
@narfcake Agree. When I talk about “incentives” I was not really considering the Vine reviewers. Since they are identified and usually even mention that they got free products, I just take that into consideration when reading a review.
I was talking about products that arrive from the seller with a little card in the box offering various rewards (a free additional product up to lotsa dollars) in exchange for proof of a 5-star review on Amazon. While Amazon officially discourages the practice, the sellers don’t seem to be kicked off the site or be punished for it.
For the record, I never accept the bribes and never buy again from any seller who makes such an offer. (It’s not that I can’t be bought, but just not that cheaply! ) I wish I could find the review now, but I did laugh at one reviewer who complained that they had written the requisite review but never got the rebate/bribe from the seller, so they lowered the star rating.
@narfcake@rockblossom Amazon has been actively kicking sellers off for doing that for quite a while now. In fact, that’s exactly why all of the TackLife stuff has showed up here. They got booted for review tampering via incentives. If they had played it straight, they’d still be on there. Their stuff wasn’t that bad. Most of it was actually decent. Okay, so their cordless tools were kind of crap, but so are a heck of a bunch of the ones that Amazon itself sells under their Denali name. Meanwhile, over at Wally World, they’ve introduced the Hart brand that’s a mostly-good (for the money), not as badly mixed as you would expect bag. And Harbor Freight has actually been selling some cordless stuff that isn’t “use for one project and throw away” quality. Yes, of course, they still have the crappy ones as well. But they wouldn’t be Harbor Freight if they got rid of those.
@werehatrack Interesting. The first couple of times I got “the card” in a product package, I sent a message to 'Zon with a photo of the card. Amazon response: and the seller was still around at least a month later. So I stopped bothering.
@rockblossom Their attitude has changed so much that last week, I got an email from them with explicit instructions on where and how to report exactly that kind of problem.
My most historically reliable indicator derived from the ratings is that when I see that there are more than a couple of hundred ratings registered, and more than 2% of them are one star, it’s best to keep looking for alternatives. Most recently, Amazon had somebody advertising one terabyte flash drives for about 30 bucks. There were less than 100 reviews, and their calculated star count was around three and a half, but when I looked at the individual categories, almost a third of them were one star. The drives were actually defective ones whose firmware was buggered to report a size vastly greater than what would have been there if they passed quality control. That scam has been around for quite a while. About 6 years ago, before there were any legitimate one terabyte SDXC cards available, several Amazon sellers were claiming to have one terabyte SD cards. Not SDXC mind you, just SD. And the spec for SD explicitly says that they stop at 32 gigs. In the case of these junkers, a really big clue was in the specs they gave for the read and write speeds. Those may have been accurate. They looked like USB 2.0 speeds. So had it been a terabyte, it would have taken 12 hours to write it.
@werehatrack I just barely ran across a Linus Tech Tips video on YouTube about exactly that.
I would go ahead and link it here, but it turns out I’m feeling way too lazy for that right now.
@gfreek I rarely shop them either (or anywhere actually) but they are useful to look at the reviews when I am deciding what, specifically, to buy when I need something that’s not a throw away item.
Critical reviews that are either good or bad. Just a star of any sort tells me nothing. Give me a detailed reason why it’s 1 or 5 stars. When I’m buying something on Amazon I want that feedback.
They’re all fake. I don’t trust that site at all anymore. Sometimes Reddit has some insight on certain things but Amazon is no longer trusted
@show_the_maw Preach! Amazon allows so many counterfeit and fake products on their site I will never spend my money there again.
The one stars, when not complaining about shipping, broken, or customer service, can really tell about the product.
@hchavers I agree. If all of the 1 stars say stuff about shipping or it arrived broken but they replaced it, I’ll look at the other reviews closer. But if they all say “This is junk, doesn’t do what it’s supposed to, not the item pictured, too small/too big” then I steer clear.
What I had gotten the most benefit from on Amazon reviews were the replies that followed, which they no longer do. Sometimes there were great back and forths, drawing out all the nuances of product performances or the cred of the posters. This also gave feedback to how much to rely on any particular review. Once the Bezos crew quit allowing those, I no longer paid as much attention to the reviews. They throw out the baby with the bath water, then go anal on whether anyone is gaming their system.
@phendrick similar to when Netflix got rid of customer reviews of the films and shows… still have no idea why they thought it was better without.
Three. They complain too much, but if you take it down from 11, you’ll get a pretty good idea what’s wrong.
That said I spend most of my time reading 4s and reading into the sometimes understated complaints.
One of my favorite, simple 1-star reviews.
@heartny I bought the wrong item and it doesn’t fit!
@heartny @narfcake Fedex threw the box with this set of tea cups from 65 feet away and on my Ring camera I heard the sound of glass cracking. By the time I got home someone had stolen the package and the camera never alerted!
@heartny
so much conflicting data!
/giphy head exploding
@heartny At least as much fun as some of the dumb reviews, are the dumb answers in the Q&A sections. A sample retort to a question about a smoke detector:
Question: What is the distance between mounting screws?
Answer: I don’t know as my husband hung it. He just pounded a nail into the wall and hung it that way.
The only trustworthy review on Amazon.
https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/review/B000OE2OLU/R2XKMDXZHQ26YX?ref_=cm_sw_r_mwn_dprv_68GT57GYH8TFPHHGWFKM
@tweezak I was really hoping that someone would bring up Three Wolf Moon.
Thank you. Now I don’t have to go find and post it myself.
@tweezak @xobzoo
I am especially impressed by the fact it is listed as “size: youth size 2-4, small”
@tweezak
I don’t know how I’ve never read that before
I like the way you now have to log in to filter only verified purchased reviews.
It’s almost like they’re upset that they even have to offer it to us when we’re logged in lol
All 5 stars means is that they bought bot reviews.
I have no opinion, I don’t shop on Amazon.
The one star glowing “best purchase ever” reviews. WTF… Do they still not understand how this works ??
@chienfou you get a gold star!
/giphy gold star
@chienfou In the small Texas town known as Tom Bean, there is a pizzeria of sorts in a gas station. I’m sure that when they ordered the sign for the pizzeria, they intended for it to say Lone Star Pizza. What they got, however, was One Star Pizza. It’s been that way for quite a while.
I start with one star, more on to two star… and look for trends in what people don’t like to see if that matters to me or speaks to the quality or function of the item. I tend to skip the 5 star ones. If there are a number of hundred of reviews I’ll also judge on the overall rating.
@Kidsandliz Legit.
@Kidsandliz If comparing two options that both seem reasonable (based their negative reviews), reading some of the 4- or 5-star reviews can sometimes find people’s favorite things about them.
But yes, definitely read through the complaints as the main thing.
@xobzoo I look at negative reviews as reasons not to buy. Reasons to buy that vs another one or to buy at all I think are more complex. At least for me.
I check Fakespot first, but they seem to be less reliable lately themselves.
Cynical answer: None of them. They are bots or people who get “incentives” from the seller for a glowing review. Or idiots who think a rant about FedEx is a product review.
Real answer: Only the ones with a really long, detailed review of the product, which means they (probably) actually used it.
@rockblossom What, you mean a 5-star review that’s ‘Haven’t used it but it got here quickly and it looks just like the pictures.’ isn’t trustworthy?!?
Amazon Vine reviews that are 1 and 2 stars – you know a product is crap when it was comped and still wasn’t usable.
(FWIW, the products selected are treated as taxable income so they are not 100% free; Vine members are 1099-ed at the end of the year. Manufacturers/distributors do not have any input on who could or could not choose an item.)
@narfcake Agree. When I talk about “incentives” I was not really considering the Vine reviewers. Since they are identified and usually even mention that they got free products, I just take that into consideration when reading a review.
I was talking about products that arrive from the seller with a little card in the box offering various rewards (a free additional product up to lotsa dollars) in exchange for proof of a 5-star review on Amazon. While Amazon officially discourages the practice, the sellers don’t seem to be kicked off the site or be punished for it.
For the record, I never accept the bribes and never buy again from any seller who makes such an offer. (It’s not that I can’t be bought, but just not that cheaply! ) I wish I could find the review now, but I did laugh at one reviewer who complained that they had written the requisite review but never got the rebate/bribe from the seller, so they lowered the star rating.
@narfcake @rockblossom Amazon has been actively kicking sellers off for doing that for quite a while now. In fact, that’s exactly why all of the TackLife stuff has showed up here. They got booted for review tampering via incentives. If they had played it straight, they’d still be on there. Their stuff wasn’t that bad. Most of it was actually decent. Okay, so their cordless tools were kind of crap, but so are a heck of a bunch of the ones that Amazon itself sells under their Denali name. Meanwhile, over at Wally World, they’ve introduced the Hart brand that’s a mostly-good (for the money), not as badly mixed as you would expect bag. And Harbor Freight has actually been selling some cordless stuff that isn’t “use for one project and throw away” quality. Yes, of course, they still have the crappy ones as well. But they wouldn’t be Harbor Freight if they got rid of those.
@werehatrack Interesting. The first couple of times I got “the card” in a product package, I sent a message to 'Zon with a photo of the card. Amazon response:
and the seller was still around at least a month later. So I stopped bothering.
@rockblossom Their attitude has changed so much that last week, I got an email from them with explicit instructions on where and how to report exactly that kind of problem.
@rockblossom @werehatrack Yep.
@narfcake It’s almost like Walmart has decided that they don’t need to try to compete with Kmart anymore, since Kmart is gone now.
@rockblossom Hey, as a non-robot uncompensated humanoid who writes brief reviews, I resent this. But this is something a bot would say, isn’t it?
https://xkcd.com/1098/
Also:
https://xkcd.com/325
My most historically reliable indicator derived from the ratings is that when I see that there are more than a couple of hundred ratings registered, and more than 2% of them are one star, it’s best to keep looking for alternatives. Most recently, Amazon had somebody advertising one terabyte flash drives for about 30 bucks. There were less than 100 reviews, and their calculated star count was around three and a half, but when I looked at the individual categories, almost a third of them were one star. The drives were actually defective ones whose firmware was buggered to report a size vastly greater than what would have been there if they passed quality control. That scam has been around for quite a while. About 6 years ago, before there were any legitimate one terabyte SDXC cards available, several Amazon sellers were claiming to have one terabyte SD cards. Not SDXC mind you, just SD. And the spec for SD explicitly says that they stop at 32 gigs. In the case of these junkers, a really big clue was in the specs they gave for the read and write speeds. Those may have been accurate. They looked like USB 2.0 speeds. So had it been a terabyte, it would have taken 12 hours to write it.
@werehatrack I just barely ran across a Linus Tech Tips video on YouTube about exactly that.
I would go ahead and link it here, but it turns out I’m feeling way too lazy for that right now.
@xobzoo It was previously linked in this thread already.
https://meh.com/forum/topics/what-amazon-rating-gives-you-the-best-info#643e22f40bc3a72c0fed83ae
@narfcake That is how I came across it! Thank you.
I have no particular excuse for having forgotten that context.
Oh well.
Sorry, don’t shop Amazon…
not helpful!
@gfreek I rarely shop them either (or anywhere actually) but they are useful to look at the reviews when I am deciding what, specifically, to buy when I need something that’s not a throw away item.
Critical reviews that are either good or bad. Just a star of any sort tells me nothing. Give me a detailed reason why it’s 1 or 5 stars. When I’m buying something on Amazon I want that feedback.