7 ms·

One thing I've noticed is that negative reviews, even very specific ones, often just serve to delay my purchase. I was looking to buy an ab wheel recently, and

One thing I've noticed is that negative reviews, even very specific ones, often just serve to delay my purchase. I was looking to buy an ab wheel recently, and almost every single option on Amazon had some negative reviews which seemed legitimate and did give me pause. "Handle snapped off after just one week, causing me to smash into the floor and loose a tooth", for example. Of course I don't want that to happen, so now I end up spending over an hour looking through products, all which are under $40, none of which are free from some sort of specific complaint - "Handle is too narrow, this is not good for your lats. Can't believe the manufacturer would cheap out on this, I ended up with back pain after less than two weeks of use.", "The additional wheel makes this too stable. I've had many in the past, I clearly do not get as good a workout from this one. Will be returning it." etc. These all have 4-5 star reviews, and otherwise seem perfectly fine. If I saw them in a store I would have purchased them without a second thought. Ultimately I just went back and bought the first one I saw. It seems perfectly fine, I can't see any issues with it.

eckza 7y ago
But have you made it past the one-week mark yet?
ptero 7y ago
I think I have the same approach to the items I consider inexpensive (I would define it as forgetting about loss of money in a month if the thing turned out to be a total loss). But I see this "delay purchase" after reading negative reviews as a feature: it encourages a quick second look which occasionally makes me switch plans. For things that are more expensive and/or long-term, for example a car (which I buy as new and drive until it truly starts falling apart) I tend to pay much more attention to negative reviews, either digging in for statistics or thinking about whether a particular feature being dissed is important for me. My 2c.
arcturus17 7y ago
I also tend to check the one-stars but sadly I’ve become so untrusting that I always think it might be a competitor trying to undermine the product.
nickjj 7y ago
I had a similar thing happen to me over the weekend where I was reviewing studio light kits to brighten up my videos. It lead down a path of an entire evening researching a bunch of lights, but finding a number of "worked great for 2 weeks but then the bulb died" type of reviews on kits that had generally decent average ratings. Then I started thinking more about the bulbs, which lead to reading white papers about how long term exposure to CFL bulbs could potentially cause irreversible retina damage and other eye problems and now, not only do I not have lights, I'm not sure I even want them. LEDs also had their own set of eye issues, especially in the 5500k range (which is what most flattering light is set to).
Chris2048 7y ago
This seems confounded by the fact that many sellers seem to sell different, but similar items under the same listing - i.e. they sell one thing, but then switch supplier.
Timberwolf 7y ago
I went through this with power tools. What I found was products would end up with three broad classes of negative reviews, segmented mainly by price: * Expensive tools would have gripes about price or lack of inclusion of accessories. If I bought something in this category it would be problem-free, but so far in excess of what I need as a hobbyist/DIYer that it was comical, e.g. a circular saw that could happily saw my car in half when all I'm doing is building bookshelves. * Cheap tools would have a consistent pattern of reviews mentioning one or more specific failures that occurred during normal use - e.g. belt sanders that swallow belts or drills where the chuck quickly comes loose. If I bought something in this range, I'd experience exactly the same failure myself. * Finally, mid-price tools would have the same number of poor reviews as the cheap ones, but the scenarios described would be abusive or unrealistic expectations: people complaining that they couldn't use an orbital sander on concrete tiles or fit enormous router bits to something consumer-grade. The realisation I wish I'd come to earlier is that stuff in the last category is fine, particularly when it comes to a tool I only use occasionally. Stuff here does exactly what I need, gives good results, and doesn't result in me paying for power I'm never going to use. I guess that's part of the problem with online reviews - needing to get to the level where you're analysing them in depth to differentiate between "it broke because it's badly made" and "it broke because I was doing something completely crazy with it".
dawnerd 7y ago
Same thing here too. What I end up doing is ignoring any product where the name of it/the company is in all caps. Pretty good giveaway that it's just white-labeled junk.
shpongled 7y ago
Be careful using the ab wheel! I pulled my lower back so bad that I couldn't walk for a couple days. And I had been powerlifting for a couple of years at that point. Really have to use proper form

eckza 7y ago

But have you made it past the one-week mark yet?

ptero 7y ago

I think I have the same approach to the items I consider inexpensive (I would define it as forgetting about loss of money in a month if the thing turned out to be a total loss). But I see this "delay purchase" after reading negative reviews as a feature: it encourages a quick second look which occasionally makes me switch plans. For things that are more expensive and/or long-term, for example a car (which I buy as new and drive until it truly starts falling apart) I tend to pay much more attention to negative reviews, either digging in for statistics or thinking about whether a particular feature being dissed is important for me. My 2c.

arcturus17 7y ago

I also tend to check the one-stars but sadly I’ve become so untrusting that I always think it might be a competitor trying to undermine the product.

nickjj 7y ago

I had a similar thing happen to me over the weekend where I was reviewing studio light kits to brighten up my videos. It lead down a path of an entire evening researching a bunch of lights, but finding a number of "worked great for 2 weeks but then the bulb died" type of reviews on kits that had generally decent average ratings. Then I started thinking more about the bulbs, which lead to reading white papers about how long term exposure to CFL bulbs could potentially cause irreversible retina damage and other eye problems and now, not only do I not have lights, I'm not sure I even want them. LEDs also had their own set of eye issues, especially in the 5500k range (which is what most flattering light is set to).

Chris2048 7y ago

This seems confounded by the fact that many sellers seem to sell different, but similar items under the same listing - i.e. they sell one thing, but then switch supplier.

Timberwolf 7y ago

I went through this with power tools. What I found was products would end up with three broad classes of negative reviews, segmented mainly by price: * Expensive tools would have gripes about price or lack of inclusion of accessories. If I bought something in this category it would be problem-free, but so far in excess of what I need as a hobbyist/DIYer that it was comical, e.g. a circular saw that could happily saw my car in half when all I'm doing is building bookshelves. * Cheap tools would have a consistent pattern of reviews mentioning one or more specific failures that occurred during normal use - e.g. belt sanders that swallow belts or drills where the chuck quickly comes loose. If I bought something in this range, I'd experience exactly the same failure myself. * Finally, mid-price tools would have the same number of poor reviews as the cheap ones, but the scenarios described would be abusive or unrealistic expectations: people complaining that they couldn't use an orbital sander on concrete tiles or fit enormous router bits to something consumer-grade. The realisation I wish I'd come to earlier is that stuff in the last category is fine, particularly when it comes to a tool I only use occasionally. Stuff here does exactly what I need, gives good results, and doesn't result in me paying for power I'm never going to use. I guess that's part of the problem with online reviews - needing to get to the level where you're analysing them in depth to differentiate between "it broke because it's badly made" and "it broke because I was doing something completely crazy with it".

dawnerd 7y ago

Same thing here too. What I end up doing is ignoring any product where the name of it/the company is in all caps. Pretty good giveaway that it's just white-labeled junk.

shpongled 7y ago

Be careful using the ab wheel! I pulled my lower back so bad that I couldn't walk for a couple days. And I had been powerlifting for a couple of years at that point. Really have to use proper form