Don't trust reviews

[Dodgeboard]

I stopped trusting reviews a long time ago. Let me tell you why....

I've been a TigerDirect customer for years and always used the reviews to help me decide on purchases - that is, until I decided to post a review. It was a negative review about a product that I felt was crap and it never showed up. So I posted it again. It was very professional and to the point, without emotion. Still, it didn't show up. I tried a third time. Still no go. So I posted a whole bunch of reviews over ten or twelve items I had recently purchased. None of the negative reviews showed up. A bunch of the positive ones did, though.

After closer examination, and reading on other message boards, I learned that other customers experienced the same thing. This is when I learned that they (Tiger Direct) filters the reviews and allow only the positive reviews along with one or two loony negative reviews to be posted. I suspect they feel if they allow some negative reviews to post, this will lend some sort of validity to the reviews. And of course, customers will conclude upon reading the loony negative reviews, that the reviewer was a kook or too demanding.

I eventually learned that this was common practice among retailers, to filter and manipulate the reviews. All this time, I thought the review system was on the "up and up". The last time I was that let down, was when I learned that Tru-TV's "Repo Man" was fake. LOL! Now, I simply take reviews with a grain of salt. They are all manipulated in one way or another.

Just thought I would share that.

 

[Jake Bunce]

I followed IMDB reviews for Star Trek 11 very closely before and after its release. I actually copied and pasted negative reviews from IMDB to my forum where I was discussing the upcoming movie. Shortly after I would copy the negative reviews they would be deleted from IMDB. Example:

http://www.mscclan.com/forum/showthread.php?p=137085#post137085

Those are two negative reviews that I copied. You will see in the following posts that the reviews were deleted from IMDB. When I tried to expose this on the startrek.com forums I was accused of fabricating negative reviews and trying to create a false conspiracy.

 

[Dodgeboard]

I followed IMDB reviews for Star Trek 11 very closely before and after its release. I actually copied and pasted negative reviews from IMDB to my forum where I was discussing the upcoming movie. Shortly after I would copy the negative reviews they would be deleted from IMDB. Example:

http://www.mscclan.com/forum/showthread.php?p=137085#post137085

Those are two negative reviews that I copied. You will see in the following posts that the reviews were deleted from IMDB. When I tried to expose this on the startrek.com forums I was accused of fabricating negative reviews and trying to create a false conspiracy.

Interesting. So I guess this happens pretty much with everything. Ya can't trust anything you read on the internet anymore.

 

[Forsaken]

I followed IMDB reviews for Star Trek 11 very closely before and after its release. I actually copied and pasted negative reviews from IMDB to my forum where I was discussing the upcoming movie. Shortly after I would copy the negative reviews they would be deleted from IMDB. Example:

http://www.mscclan.com/forum/showthread.php?p=137085#post137085

Those are two negative reviews that I copied. You will see in the following posts that the reviews were deleted from IMDB. When I tried to expose this on the startrek.com forums I was accused of fabricating negative reviews and trying to create a false conspiracy.

Those crazy fanboys .

I stopped trusting reviews a long time ago. Let me tell you why....

I've been a TigerDirect customer for years and always used the reviews to help me decide on purchases - that is, until I decided to post a review. It was a negative review about a product that I felt was crap and it never showed up. So I posted it again. It was very professional and to the point, without emotion. Still, it didn't show up. I tried a third time. Still no go. So I posted a whole bunch of reviews over ten or twelve items I had recently purchased. None of the negative reviews showed up. A bunch of the positive ones did, though.

After closer examination, and reading on other message boards, I learned that other customers experienced the same thing. This is when I learned that they (Tiger Direct) filters the reviews and allow only the positive reviews along with one or two loony negative reviews to be posted. I suspect they feel if they allow some negative reviews to post, this will lend some sort of validity to the reviews. And of course, customers will conclude upon reading the loony negative reviews, that the reviewer was a kook or too demanding.

I eventually learned that this was common practice among retailers, to filter and manipulate the reviews. All this time, I thought the review system was on the "up and up". The last time I was that let down, was when I learned that Tru-TV's "Repo Man" was fake. LOL! Now, I simply take reviews with a grain of salt. They are all manipulated in one way or another.

Just thought I would share that.

This is a big reason why I do not use TigerDirect for purchases. Newegg does it to some degree (At least they have), however for the most part they have quality reviews that actually give you some idea of any issues that might be plaguing the product. I also do a search on Google for any discussions on the product before I buy as well.

 

[Ingenious]

I've experienced this too on unrelated sites, along with reviews being edited to remove some comment or other which is actually critical to the point being made. I'm pleased to say here in the UK there was some legislation brought in which has helped, particularly with fake endorsements and fake reviews which are just as much of a scourge as the filtering of negative ones.

 

[DRE]

Ain't that some ship.

 

[craigiri]

Amazon reviews seem pretty honest. Just FYI.

 

[yavuz]

Amazon reviews seem pretty honest. Just FYI.

Yeap, I think a smart reader can distinguish bad reviews from angry bashing reviews. I purchased five-six items in the past months all deserve the rating & review that they've had. It takes a lot of reading but it's a worthwhile efford in the end.

 

[EQnoble]

I followed IMDB reviews for Star Trek 11 very closely before and after its release. I actually copied and pasted negative reviews from IMDB to my forum where I was discussing the upcoming movie. Shortly after I would copy the negative reviews they would be deleted from IMDB. Example:

http://www.mscclan.com/forum/showthread.php?p=137085#post137085

Those are two negative reviews that I copied. You will see in the following posts that the reviews were deleted from IMDB. When I tried to expose this on the startrek.com forums I was accused of fabricating negative reviews and trying to create a false conspiracy.

Which is bad either way, fans have a right to an opinion and explicitly allowing only one side of a split to be heard by removing opposing views kinda panders toward kiss-assery for the purpose of control...and when you are talking about reviews especially ones with time, thought and effort put into them, and someone goes and removes those...essentially you are invalidating a whole group of real people and their genuine opinions with a single click.

I can understand startrek.com trying to deny them being responsible for destroying the storyline and technological facts as it has already been known to exist in the world of star trek, but to try and ridicule you when you were bringing it to the attention of CBS that certain unhappy fans have had their reviews removed on what I would guess is the biggest and most used movie and television db makes me think that they have something to do with them getting removed. Who else would have a valid interest in removing activity from a site...certainly not the owners of imdb...that is why they have a review system...if everything was good they wouldn't need reviews as nobody would use them.

I know I don't like the idea of imdb removing negative reviews though....that kinda waters down the whole purpose. You shouldn't be able to curry favor to have things opposed to you removed from a review site as long as the review is of sound mind. When I buy a computer component online and it arrives DOA I specify that in a review, I do that because it can provide a valid point of view for someone reading reviews looking for others experiences. How is it any different for a movie review?

To run a large review site or section you must be completely impartial to the subject matter otherwise it is nothing but a masked marketing tactic..which tbh I find disgusting. It makes me want to run a real review site this way I know I can be reading everything that was posted not just the excerpts that people want me to see.

I stopped trusting reviews a long time ago. Let me tell you why....

I've been a TigerDirect customer for years and always used the reviews to help me decide on purchases - that is, until I decided to post a review. It was a negative review about a product that I felt was crap and it never showed up. So I posted it again. It was very professional and to the point, without emotion. Still, it didn't show up. I tried a third time. Still no go. So I posted a whole bunch of reviews over ten or twelve items I had recently purchased. None of the negative reviews showed up. A bunch of the positive ones did, though.

After closer examination, and reading on other message boards, I learned that other customers experienced the same thing. This is when I learned that they (Tiger Direct) filters the reviews and allow only the positive reviews along with one or two loony negative reviews to be posted. I suspect they feel if they allow some negative reviews to post, this will lend some sort of validity to the reviews. And of course, customers will conclude upon reading the loony negative reviews, that the reviewer was a kook or too demanding.

I eventually learned that this was common practice among retailers, to filter and manipulate the reviews. All this time, I thought the review system was on the "up and up". The last time I was that let down, was when I learned that Tru-TV's "Repo Man" was fake. LOL! Now, I simply take reviews with a grain of salt. They are all manipulated in one way or another.

Just thought I would share that.

Tigerdirect and newegg I understand have to censor certain aspects of reviews, in the case of newegg they have a business arrangement with UPS it would not be prudent to allow people to bash them when something arrives broken because sometimes tech items just arrive broken(when you run a company that makes money by shipping your merchandise around...you probably don't want to piss off UPS) and that is the way it is...and that is what the reviews are intended for at least on newegg as far as I know...to talk about the quality usability and reliability of the product.

If you want to say such and such motherboard is horrible and constantly crashes after making sure you have everything properly configured... the review won't be removed...in fact half the time someone from the mobo maker's company is probably going to respond directly to you in the reviews to try and solve the problem and I know that from experience and the end result was my problem being fixed and me being satisfied.

I can also from experience say that a good review system can be great...but a bad one has no place to exist...yet unfortunately they do.

 

[Robert F Schmitz]

T-mobile and Verizon's reviews seem to be across the board and if a phone is a POS, you can pretty well bet it gets a load of bad reviews. I was never impressed with Tiger Direct so it isn't surprising that they would conduct their review process in such a manner.

Well where there is money, there is often times corruption and deception.

 

[Adam Howard]

T-mobile and Verizon's reviews seem to be across the board and if a phone is a POS, you can pretty well bet it gets a load of bad reviews. I was never impressed with Tiger Direct so it isn't surprising that they would conduct their review process in such a manner.

Well where there is money, there is often times corruption and deception.

I agree with your experience and opinion in regarding cell phone company reviews are typically straight forward and you can get honest feedback. Community forum software is also something you typically can get a straight forward and honest review. Much like the reviews for cars for example.

I believe these are markets where most people see real-life and public results based upon experience and opinion in which it is harder to cover up the truth of their short comings, while with hardware (Tiger Direct) its normally less transparent (and less public).

As those types of markets (cells, cars, web software) are saturated and noticed by everyone (normally). So outside sources away from the manufacture or developing sites (control) are very telling.

 

[Jeremy]

I stopped trusting reviews a long time ago. Let me tell you why....

I've been a TigerDirect customer for years and always used the reviews to help me decide on purchases - that is, until I decided to post a review. It was a negative review about a product that I felt was crap and it never showed up. So I posted it again. It was very professional and to the point, without emotion. Still, it didn't show up. I tried a third time. Still no go. So I posted a whole bunch of reviews over ten or twelve items I had recently purchased. None of the negative reviews showed up. A bunch of the positive ones did, though.

After closer examination, and reading on other message boards, I learned that other customers experienced the same thing. This is when I learned that they (Tiger Direct) filters the reviews and allow only the positive reviews along with one or two loony negative reviews to be posted. I suspect they feel if they allow some negative reviews to post, this will lend some sort of validity to the reviews. And of course, customers will conclude upon reading the loony negative reviews, that the reviewer was a kook or too demanding.

I eventually learned that this was common practice among retailers, to filter and manipulate the reviews. All this time, I thought the review system was on the "up and up". The last time I was that let down, was when I learned that Tru-TV's "Repo Man" was fake. LOL! Now, I simply take reviews with a grain of salt. They are all manipulated in one way or another.

Just thought I would share that.

Most companies monitor reviews before they are posted. Some may filter out negatives, some may just filter out obscene, etc., but pretty muc ha decent amount actually read and remove reviews.

 

[Biker]

There's a TigerDirect store about 3 minutes from my front door. What I tend to do is research the product first, and then see if TigerDirect has it in their store as their prices tend to be better than most. I'd rather go pick it up myself than fuss with ordering on-line.

 

[Stuart Wright]

Posted my own review

 

[Dodgeboard]

Posted my own review

+ or - ?

 

[Edrondol]

Whenever you want to know how good or bad a product is, don't go to the 1 or 5 rated posts. The 5 stars could be shills or fake reviews and the 1 star could be someone disgruntled with some aspect of the thing (like the last book in the Wheel of Time series - the reviews were BRUTAL...because it didn't have a Kindle version released on the same date as the hardback).

What you do is go for the 3 star reviews. They usually are honest and give both positive and negative points on the movie or product and will give you a better idea of what you are dealing with.

 

[Forsaken]

Whenever you want to know how good or bad a product is, don't go to the 1 or 5 rated posts. The 5 stars could be shills or fake reviews and the 1 star could be someone disgruntled with some aspect of the thing (like the last book in the Wheel of Time series - the reviews were BRUTAL...because it didn't have a Kindle version released on the same date as the hardback).

What you do is go for the 3 star reviews. They usually are honest and give both positive and negative points on the movie or product and will give you a better idea of what you are dealing with.

I usually pay attention to 4, 2 and 1 star reviews. With 1 star reviews, I make sure my idiot detector is set at maximum, and only pay attention to the ones that show actual issues with service or the product, ignoring random crap that could be user error or just nitpicking.

 

[Dodgeboard]

I make sure my idiot detector is set at maximum

 

[AdamD]

I always buy items from sites which have a customer review feature, usually powered by Kelkoo

But I tend to buy things like computer parts from the same store, so reviews there tend to be accurate (ebuyer.co.uk)

 

[0xym0r0n]

I read reviews all over the web if possible. I never trust just one site for reviews. If there is just one site for reviews, then I have to give it more time and thought.

When i was running the paid posting company we had numerous requests for false reviewing. I didn't deal in that business and did not want to. I dealt in 'fake activity' but I did not deal boosting a company by false reviews.

BUT I did do it one time for a hosting company. I only did it because he actually allowed the posting team to try his product out for 3 months. After the 3 months we were asked to review in a neutral or positive manner *if it was negative we were to leave it out* lol. So he kinda treated us like a focus group? Then asked for our reviews and selected the ones he liked most. He paid a pretty penny for it too...

I used to always get requests to bump forum advertising, comment on products, or do false reviews. IT HAPPENS A LOT! This was about 5-6 years ago too. I can't imagine how much worse it has become...

I know yelp.com will delete and ban your account if they find you're doing this sort of thing. Lots of sites claim to do this, but I'm sure if you hand them a stack of money, then they will not argue.