4 ms·

Why have I only heard horror stories about the Nest? I see their reviews on Amazon and I see huge problems with this product .

acdha 11y ago
Because happy users don't feel motivated to tell people everything is okay. It's a common bias which you have to constantly remind yourself to correct for.
- CamperBob2 11y ago
  That would make sense if there weren't plenty of other product reviews in which people are gushing about how awesome they are.
  - acdha 11y ago
    What's the ratio of happy to unhappy users? If 80% of Nest users are happy you could see twice as many positive reviews as negative and still overstate the percentage of unhappy customers.
  - cookiecaper 11y ago
    They're usually astroturfed. Some vendors will go as far as offering a small rebate to customers who leave a positive review of the product. I would guess that probably 85% of "user-generated content" on mainstream outlets like Amazon is the result of astroturfing or other paid schemes. It's practically impossible to compete in any online marketplace without turfing the crap out of every slightly relevant outlet. Your competitors are doing it constantly, and the disadvantage will be really big if you don't play ball too. One example: our objectively superior product with a great design and great functional foundation was substantially less popular than the dirty rip off that had their site built with cheap oDesk labor and designed with cheesy stock photos, but spent ridiculous amounts of money on SEO and fake Facebook comments. We were substantially cheaper too. There was literally no reason to ever use the other person's offering, and there was no reason for them to show up ahead of us on searches, but they did. Don't believe Google's line of BS that to get to the top you just need to put out good content. It's total nonsense. What you need are backlinks, which are bought and laundered into a network of sites controlled by the same SEO group, and social media clout, which is bought by paying third-world contractors $1.50/hr to make fake Facebook and Twitter profiles and talk about your company.
scoates 11y ago
Mine's fine, FWIW. My heating system (hot water baseboards) doesn't really respond quickly enough for it to be super useful for things like away detection, but as a programmable thermostat, for the most part, it works better than I expect most software to work.

acdha 11y ago

Because happy users don't feel motivated to tell people everything is okay. It's a common bias which you have to constantly remind yourself to correct for.

CamperBob2 11y ago
That would make sense if there weren't plenty of other product reviews in which people are gushing about how awesome they are.
- acdha 11y ago
  What's the ratio of happy to unhappy users? If 80% of Nest users are happy you could see twice as many positive reviews as negative and still overstate the percentage of unhappy customers.
- cookiecaper 11y ago
  They're usually astroturfed. Some vendors will go as far as offering a small rebate to customers who leave a positive review of the product. I would guess that probably 85% of "user-generated content" on mainstream outlets like Amazon is the result of astroturfing or other paid schemes. It's practically impossible to compete in any online marketplace without turfing the crap out of every slightly relevant outlet. Your competitors are doing it constantly, and the disadvantage will be really big if you don't play ball too. One example: our objectively superior product with a great design and great functional foundation was substantially less popular than the dirty rip off that had their site built with cheap oDesk labor and designed with cheesy stock photos, but spent ridiculous amounts of money on SEO and fake Facebook comments. We were substantially cheaper too. There was literally no reason to ever use the other person's offering, and there was no reason for them to show up ahead of us on searches, but they did. Don't believe Google's line of BS that to get to the top you just need to put out good content. It's total nonsense. What you need are backlinks, which are bought and laundered into a network of sites controlled by the same SEO group, and social media clout, which is bought by paying third-world contractors $1.50/hr to make fake Facebook and Twitter profiles and talk about your company.

scoates 11y ago

Mine's fine, FWIW. My heating system (hot water baseboards) doesn't really respond quickly enough for it to be super useful for things like away detection, but as a programmable thermostat, for the most part, it works better than I expect most software to work.