And yet somehow people who are satisfied do post, say, amazon ratings, and not just the unsatisfied ones. Here. That's a customer review page for a blender I selected at random. As you can see, satisfied customers will not just tick a star, but also write walls of text on what they thought of the product. Most of the reviews are very good while one in particular is very bad, due to the unit failing early, customer support being bad, and it taking a long time to get a replacement. According to your theory, none of those positive ratings should be there. Yet they are. The vast majority of them are. What I take from this is that the blender is very good, but in the off chance it breaks, i'm SOL. Even I write reviews, and the vast majority are positive. I can't even remember the last negative review I wrote.
When Amazon first came out I thought the same thing as you said “
none of those positive ratings should be there. Yet they are.” I was astonished because most people dont normally write reviews unless there is a problem. The ones that are frustrated with customer service or have to pay return shipping or never get a satisfactory response typically want to lash back and tell the world to alert others of their misfortune. The guy that is happy just wants to ride his new ride mower, not sit down and write back to the company.
Then the articles started coming out, Amazon was tickling their customers with “Would you take a few minutes to tell us what you think about your new Blender”? Which was mildly successful and accounted for generating more positive reviews, but Amazon and other online merchants demanded more so they started paying people with cash and free merchandize if they would write positive reviews.
Sandra Parker, a freelance writer who was hired by a review factory this spring to pump out Amazon reviews for $10 each, said her instructions were simple. “We were not asked to provide a five-star review, but would be asked to turn down an assignment if we could not give one,” said Ms. Parker, whose brief notices for a dozen memoirs are stuffed with superlatives like “a must-read” and “a lifetime’s worth of wisdom.”New York TimesI will pay for positive feedback on TripAdvisor.” A Craigslist post proposed this: “If you have an active Yelp account and would like to make very easy money please respond.”Paid ContentPsy, if you look closely at the reviewers of the blender, you selected at random, you will notice that they have written hundreds of reviews on various products. The 5th one down “Joanna Daneman” has written reviews on 8 sewing machines over the past few weeks (for a total of $2,300) along with over 100 reviews on several other products, over 500 in the past year and 2,500 total. Her history can be seen here (
Joanne Daneman). The ones who had problems with their product have no history except the negative review.
She is a very busy lady but I dont think her hobby is sewing if you know what I mean. This is just a random person that you linked to, what are the chances?
Buyer beware, I never believed those reviews from the start. Human nature counters their validity.
Why is it that the vast majority of "reviews" here by former participants in programs are negative? Is there something about programs that make them unique when it comes to "customer" reviews. I grant you that it's not a valid scientific study (and neither is Behrens), but at the same time I think most who shop online will tell you that customer ratings, averaged, are generally a pretty good indicator of the quality of the product. Is there something unique to programs that exempts them from this principle that applies to pretty much everything I can think of? Or is the more plausible explanation that the quality of the product really isn't that great in reality. Can you explain this? I mean it's not like i'm removing positive reviews. After all. You're still around, despite almost universal insistence I get rid of you.
If we were able to get a list of all the kids as they graduated from programs and asked them to come to fornits and write a review I think you would see a lot more positive postings. I also believe that there were many kids who hovered and read here and decided not to post based on the hostility that existed here on the boards in the past. People with “positive outcome” posts were not treated very well here if you remember. They were all accused of having Stockholm syndrome, but I don’t want to open that can of worms, this discussion can be for another time, another thread maybe.
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