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Reviews still have one purpose left: On a product I'm about to buy, I'll read a handfull of 2-star-reviews and look for frequent problems and failure modes of t
by corty 6y ago
Reviews still have one purpose left: On a product I'm about to buy, I'll read a handfull of 2-star-reviews and look for frequent problems and failure modes of the product. If I find them convincing and relevant to my use case, I maybe refrain from buying.
But other than that, reviews are at best useless or at worst criminally misleading.
- christophilus 6y agoThose are often fake, too, though.
- fock 6y agoprobably not the ones with the device failing documented by photos.
- corty 6y agoMaybe. But a vendor not getting rid of such fake negatives (which is said to be easily possible) is at least a bad sign of apathy and neglect from the vendor. And since not buying is the safer choice anyways, the existence of fake negatives isn't that much of a problem.
- sukilot 6y agoYou prefer vendors who manipulate reviews over ones who focus on the product and service?
- corty 6y agoI do prefer a vendor who gets rid of obvious fake reviews. As always, I can only hope they leave the legitimate ones alone. But in general, a vendor should at least read and handle reviews, leading immediately to a better product and service. Reviews are the simplest way for a customer to provide feedback. And some review hygiene, removing the fake ones, is also part of customer service, enabling the customer to get an objective impression.
- stronglikedan 6y agoOne-offs, maybe, but trends are less likely to be fake. For example, when buying a dryer, I looked at many 1-2 star reviews for each product to spot the problems that most people reported. Finally I found one where the only problem frequently reported was that the lint trap would snap in half after a couple of years, because of the plastic hinges. No other problems, and the replacement lint traps were easy to acquire, so I could live with that.
- ebg13 6y ago> trends are less likely to be fake I understand why someone would think that, and I do it myself too, but do we have evidence that it's true?
- dazc 6y agoNoticed this myself when looking at a certain TV, all negative reviews were about a missing app which could be downloaded in 10 seconds.