Many online retailers, such as Amazon.com, have customer reviews as an integral part of their site's functionality: user buys something, tries it out, posts what they thought. The aim of having customer reviews alongside the product descriptions is to provide real, honest feedback from real people to allow for better-informed buying decisions. A side benefit for the website offering the reviews is lots of fresh content, which usually results in favorable treatment by search engines.
Let the gaming begin
Any system that is set up to be fair and balanced is bound to be gamed. Honest feedback coming in from real people was quickly accompanied by less-than-honest feedback from anyone paid to spin a happy yarn. Honest criticism was quickly accompanied by acts of one-star vengeance by paid hit-men. Bloggers and other website owners get into the act; complimentary copies of new books or other products garner rosier-than-typical reviews. Some merchants have resorted to outright bribery for 5-stars. (Reviews from those who took this bribe have been removed.)
It's more difficult now to garner useful information from reviews because there are other motives besides personal recognition and a desire to tell others about experience with a product. It's unwise to buy one item over another item based solely on how many stars the item has gotten.
Here are some of the things I do when I'm looking over reviews of a set of products on Amazon. Some of the things also apply to other sites with customer review components, like NewEgg.com or BestBuy.com.
- Consider the number of reviews. I tend to trust the reviews of a product with a hundred reviews more than one with only ten reviews. If a product averages, say, a 4.2 out of 5 with 100 reviews, I'll usually take it over one that average 4.5 out of 5 with only 10 reviews. If a product has only a couple of reviews, but they're all great, I don't put much faith in those reviews.
- Consider the helpfulness of the reviews. Some reviews are better than others, of course, and although each Amazon review is treated the same in the average, more helpful reviews should be given more mental weight, especially if there are a lot of votes as to whether the review was helpful or not.
- Read the reviews, especially the helpful positive ones and negative ones. The text of the review is where all of the information is. Even though there are algorithms that aim to sort out the honest reviews from the paid ones, a human reader is likely the best filter of all.
- Look for repeated issues. If more than one person complains that a product (or part of it) is cheaply made, then there's more chance that this actually is a problem.
- Be wary of perfect ratings. No product can be all things to all people. Some negative reviews can be reassuring. My wife's Civil War historical fantasy book recently got a 1-star from someone. I suppose it stings a little (especially when the reviewer writes partially out of ignorance — ha!) but critics provide some validation to the product. Twenty-three out of 23 five-star ratings might just be a legion of paid reviewers, or all might know the author personally. (A few of the reviews on my wife's book were by people who know her, but not all of them.) A critical review indicates that the product is really starting to make the rounds.
The bottom line is to take average customer ratings with a grain of salt until going through the reviews in detail. Unfortunately there are a lot of caveats that go into that average rating.
It is unfortunate that the system that was supposed to provide objective feedback is gamed! Worst yet, it makes it less trustworthy. I guess we a re back to buyer beware!
The big clincher is whether the reviews all sound as if they were written by the same person (same sentence structure, grammar, etc). That’s the problem with amazon these days – too many false reviews submitted by the product creator.
I read the reviews extensively, but that takes quite a bit of time. I wish there was a way to weed out those who are gaming the system.
Online entrepreneurs know how much customers value reviews and testimonials. I highly expect that a lot of the reviews in their products or services may come from them as well. With all this going on, I feel that getting my money’s worth is harder to find.
it is nice to see that a pitcher is overflowed by money which is really enticing and deserves a must second look .