Amazon Product Reviews/ratings.. misleading, possibly a scam

Bogalot wrote: »

So you're voting someone down to make sure they're no longer published? That's not constructive, it's nasty.

I bought a knife sharpener. Now there's not much you can say about that, it either works or it doesn't. What more needs to be said than "fine" or "it works"? Do you need a detailed description of how I swipe the blade across it, perhaps its colour or other aesthetic qualities?

You claim that "fine" is of no use to anyone. Perhaps you should stop trying to speak for everyone, when you have no idea what other people are looking for in reviews.

If "there's not much you can say about" a purchase. . . then why say anything?

It's not a condition of sale that some Amazon posting ID that means nothing at all to anyone other than the poster himself / herself must go online to pronounce on an Amazon acquisition about which nothing at all can be said anyway.

A customer product "review" is just that: an individual's recorded view of an individual purchase expressed in such a way as to convey insights to any prospective purchaser of that same product.

Those who have something in their lives about which nothing can be said can always open a Twitter account.

As for Amazon users who mark a "review" unhelpful, you should be thanking, not criticising, them for their kindness in assisting a witless reviewer to realise that he / she really should get out more.

I'm glad you agree that we are all entitled to different preferences. Therefore it follows that we are at liberty to vote up or down according to those preferences. If someone reviewed a roll of sellotape as 'sticks well' I wouldn't vote them down. That would be silly. But just two words on something a lot more complex might get my down vote.
Personally I don't revisit my reviews - unless I am editing them. It gives me a fuzzy warm feeling if I find my review has been helpful. But I won't lose any sleep if I get a thumbs down.

Maybe you should read up on the definition of 'review'.
Don't ever become a film or a book reviewer will you. It will be a short lived career if you simply write 'Fine' or 'Interesting' etc :rotfl:

ScorpiondeRooftrouser wrote: »

He's saying the knife sharpener was fine. What more do you want him to say?

Sigh . . . What aspect of my post did you find difficult to understand? Plain English could not have been more plain. Ah well. Just to help you:

I do not want him, you, or anyone else to say anything at all when he, you, or anyone else has nothing of any meaning to say. Not "good". Not "fine". Not "arrived OK". If ever the day comes -- God forbid -- when I want to read a tweet from a twitterer, I won't log into Amazon.

ScorpiondeRooftrouser wrote: »

I think the veriest idiot would be able to work out that if it's fine, it sharpens knives ok, and if it's "rubbish", it didn't sharpen the knives very well.

Verily, you have the wrong end of the knife sharpener again. Why, prithee, would anyone with a functioning brain wish to waste it on "working out" what the less functional have to say? A "review" isn't there to be "worked out" but to be read, as in:

"Good knife sharpener, we've had ours for six months and it works as well now as it did out of the box." Or:

"Bad buy, this so-called sharpener. Hardly sharpened anything before falling to pieces. We returned it to Amazon but the replacement's just as bad, too."

Ooh. Reviews. Who'd've thought it?

ScorpiondeRooftrouser wrote: »

The fact that you and a couple of other people need this spelled out to you doesn't impose an obligation on a reviewer to cater for you, rather than catering for people with a much higher degree of understanding than you.

As an assertion of superior intellectual authority, :rotfl:that paragraph may be lacking.

Have you not yet grasped that people do not need anything spelled out to them? Your issue of "need" relates solely to those of egos so fragile that they need to see their little dribbling verdicts online, the pointlessness of such contributions mattering not so long as they've demonstrated their facility to type some keyboard characters in so astonishingly correct an order as to actually result in a word. Or, possibly, even two.

What they "need" to understand is. . . they need not bother.

ScorpiondeRooftrouser wrote: »

Bear in mind that it might well be because they get out more than you do that they don't spend as much time as you do writing reviews of tuppenny pencils.

As I was unaware of the Amazon pencils price until your revelation, getting out more would seem to be the kind of prescription that you should be writing for yourself. With that 2p pencil, but of course.

hybernia wrote: »

Well that's going to come as news to the hundreds of review websites out there maintained by film and book enthusiasts who pen their reviews for the love of it. Not the money.

Ok I haven't been on one of these site but do they have an 'unhelpful' vote button or are they just sites where people can share their views freely without having to suffer the rudeness of being called 'unhelpful' when all they have done is given up their time to try to help others.