I've just been looking on Amazon for either a wifi AP or range extender, and looking at various products then reading the reviews. Some reviews for 1 particular range extender talk about switches for games. For another, it talks about a storage bag for tools .
Eh, whats all that about
Amazon desperately need to sanity-check their reviews to make sure that:
a) the review is about the product that the review is attached to and not a completely different one (as in the examples you give)
b) the review is about the product and not about the delivery process
The latter is annoying: you find that some people give a poor rating to a product because it was broken in transit or was left in a stupid place when there was no-one at home. Very often the product itself is not even mentioned in the review.
All we can do as punters is mark irrelevant reviews as "not helpful" so maybe an internal review will weed them out.
Nick
Probably "review merging":
Part of the problem is that a seller can update a product description, and carry forward all the existing reviews. This makes some sense where there is some minor or cosmetic change to a product.
However some sellers abuse this by changing the product for something else entirely.
For example Dymo recently got caught out doing this in a big way. They had a thermal label printer that hooked up to a computer called the LabelWriter 450. It was very popular with people who needed to print packaging or inventory labels etc. It had a really good range of genuine
5* reviews.Then they introduced a completely new model called the 550. Rather than make a new listing for it, they updated the one for the 450. What they neglected to mention was that they have now introduced DRM into it so that you can now only use official Dymo rolls of *paper* (not ink, its a thermal printer, but paper!)
These are at least three times the price (sometimes ten times) compared with generic rolls. Loads of people bought one, found out the hard way and wrote a mass of very pissed off 1* reviews since it made the thing far less attractive, and no longer cost competitive.
However because there were already getting on for a thousand good reviews, it still looks like it has a 4.5* rating with 1060 reviews. (and it seems they have been deleting the 1* review as well)
See here:
Yup that really gets on my t*ts as well. Trying to find out some critical bit of information about the thing, and you have wade through countless diatribes about how daft their local courier is!
Amazon has always tossed in stuff that is nothing like your search keywords.
They do it that way because some decide they want one of the extras too.
A subtle variation on that is that their review for a product may be bundled with manufactures different models of a product, and often of a product no longer available combined with reviews of their latest model. One I've seen recently was for LED floor standing lamp but when reading the review it became apparent, to me, that customers were writing about floor standing lamps or table lamps with different "bulb" technologies (led and cfl).
Amazon will reject negative reviews for a product if you criticise the manufacturer or seller in the review. Their excuse is that the review must be solely about the product. In the case you are writing about they may allow a review warning that the machine can only be used with the manufactures consumables costing 10x that of generic replaceable. They may reject the review if you then express a negative view about about that particular company for this type of practice.
Before retiring part of my role was to manage the companies supplier account with Amazon. Part of that roll was an arduous product listing procedure using Amazons online supplier portal. A common shortcut was to edit an old listing for a discontinued product entering the details of a different product. Much quicker but results in the reviews of the old product still showing.
My biggest disappointment with the Amazon reviews is they do not allow for reviewing different suppliers selling via the same product listing. We had many third party sellers buying our product wholesale and tagging themselves on to a listing I had set up, which was not a problem for us as long as they actually shipped our product.
Often bad reviews were so obviously (to me) for an inferior product, often of doubtful Chinese manufacture, delivered by a third party but the review system makes no provision to mention the third party supplier.
Rant over Mike
a.. AUTOMATIC LABEL RECOGNITION: Label printer lets you see the size, type and number of remaining labels at a glance b.. ELIMINATE WASTE AND HASSLE OF SHEET LABELS: Print precise label quantities with ease c.. NEVER BUY INK AGAIN: Direct thermal label printer, no expensive ink or toner required d.. PRINT FAST: Up to 20% faster than the LabelWriter 450 ? prints up to
62* labels per minute* e.. ONLY WORKS WITH AUTHENTIC DYMO LABELS: Uses only high-quality, BPA-free DYMO Authentic LabelWriter labels; paper labels are made from FSC certified material f.. FREE DYMO CONNECT FOR DESKTOP SOFTWARE: Create and customise 60+ label types through USB connectivityOnly works with authentic Dymo labels.
I'm not sure that Amazon do this any longer, but at one time they'd email all recent purchasers with any questions. Then, they'd post the answers without any filtering, so you'd get lots of "oh, I don't know, dear, as I haven't opened the box yet".
"Amazon has noticed unusual reviewing activity on this product. Due to this activity, we have limited this product to verified purchase reviews."
I'm not at all sure that I would be prepared to sell on the Amazon Marketplace. If it's a winner, Amazon will buy shedloads of stock and undercut you. Or, people will sell cheap clones, using your listing. Either way, you're onto a loser.
Many time with bot h amazon and ebay, you find the product you want, then google it, and discover a n unconnected website has it cheaper. OK, you don't get the buyer protection, but most of the people on amazon marketplace and ebay, have their own web sites and channels.
In the case of a £5 item its not worth the hassle, but when its '£500, it gets to be worth looking elsewhere..
I remember when I ordered my shower tray 20 years ago...the bloke said 'it will be a few days before I am in your area'... he turned up in a lift tail luton and delivered my heavy shower tray , He worked out of a shed in his garden and a computer in his bedroom, and was running at far less overheads than the big boys - he did his own deliveries nationwide.
Amazon and ebay run big operations and need their margins. Sole traders can easily undercut them and regularly do.. But you get a measure of gurantee with amazon ... yer pays yer munny
But all that does is increase the cost of shafting your competitors with bad reviews.
Yeah, I get loads of those "Does this laptop...", type questions, where I had it drop shipped to a client, and have never seen it!
I notice one of the questions:
"Why are there reviews going back to 2016? And not for the item listed in the page? Reviews are to match 1:1 with the item being sold, not 'variated'. "
With a typical mealy mouthed response from the company rep:
"Hello, this is Marta from DYMO Consumer Care. Thank you for contacting us regarding our LabelWriter 550. I appreciate you taking the time to contact us and share your feedback. Amazon offers the ability to variate different products on one page, therefore, the ratings and reviews visible on the top of the page are applicable to all products, however, with the Product Style under review, it is possible to filter the date and location to see which product has been reviewed. The need to filter by product ensures, due to the large variation in DYMO labels available, that our Consumers not only have a wider choice, but can easily find a compatible DYMO label. I hope this provides some clarity to the situation, however, if further clarification is needed or you have any questions, please do not hesitate to contact DYMO Consumer Services directly."
See how she swerved that to be about labels and not printers?
I was selling to Amazon not on Amazon. Plus I priced everything list plus 10% to cover the hassle factor and to allow regular customers to compete.
Mike
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