The Problem with Reviews

Dr. Keith

Not a doctor.
Dr. Keith
Joined
Jun 29, 2009
Messages
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Location
Texas
So, I'm looking to buy a simple consumer product, in this case a coffee pot with a thermally insulated carafe, but really it doesn't matter. I go online to look at my options. I go to stores that sell that item, I go to sites that review the items, and inevitably I end up at Amazon.

All good so far, I've eliminated some items and shortened my list to a few good contenders. Then I make the mistake of reading the reviews.

The good reviews are all the same: best coffee maker ever. Ok, whatever. The bad reviews though bring terror. One brand is known for having carafes whose inner glass lining explodes (implodes) while another is known for releasing water and coffee all over your counter and the third has a constant heating element which seems counter to the whole point of the thermal carafe and has no measurement guide to help you know how much water to put into it. None of them would make my morning better.

Now I am terrified of buying anything. They all sound horrible. But that is only looking at less than 10% of the reviews. These are all highly rated items with hundreds or thousands of good reviews and relatively few bad ones, but all of the bad ones are worse than my current coffee pot.

Information overload. I should have just gone to a store and bought something without doing any research. Then I would have likely been content, or if it acted up I could have done my research and been outraged. Either is better than being terrified.

(Feel free to move to appropriate forum)
 
"TMI" applies in more than one context, doesn't it?

I don't usually look at lots of reviews. Instead I take the advice given to me many years ago in reference to a lawn mower, but it applies generally:

Unless you are buying an essentially discardable item, don't buy the cheapest and don't buy the most expensive. Somewhere in the middle will do fine.

This has worked for me for tools, computers, cars, and even clothes back when I was wearing suits.

(Now I shop at Goodwill thrift stores mostly. I love their senior days: combine a senior discount with the correct color tag for the day and they almost pay me to take it.)
 
Dr. Keith said:
So, I'm looking to buy a simple consumer product, in this case a coffee pot with a thermally insulated carafe, but really it doesn't matter. I go online to look at my options. I go to stores that sell that item, I go to sites that review the items, and inevitably I end up at Amazon.

All good so far, I've eliminated some items and shortened my list to a few good contenders. Then I make the mistake of reading the reviews.

The good reviews are all the same: best coffee maker ever. Ok, whatever. The bad reviews though bring terror. One brand is known for having carafes whose inner glass lining explodes (implodes) while another is known for releasing water and coffee all over your counter and the third has a constant heating element which seems counter to the whole point of the thermal carafe and has no measurement guide to help you know how much water to put into it. None of them would make my morning better.

Now I am terrified of buying anything. They all sound horrible. But that is only looking at less than 10% of the reviews. These are all highly rated items with hundreds or thousands of good reviews and relatively few bad ones, but all of the bad ones are worse than my current coffee pot.

Information overload. I should have just gone to a store and bought something without doing any research. Then I would have likely been content, or if it acted up I could have done my research and been outraged. Either is better than being terrified.

(Feel free to move to appropriate forum)
Click to expand...

Consumer Reports????
 
By the by, be aware that Amazon does not require that a consumer must have actually purchased the product, nothing there prevents people paid or employed by a competitor from making negative reviews (and, the reverse of course). Consumer Reports does not suffer from that potential problem.
 
fuelair said:
By the by, be aware that Amazon does not require that a consumer must have actually purchased the product, nothing there prevents people paid or employed by a competitor from making negative reviews (and, the reverse of course). Consumer Reports does not suffer from that potential problem.
Click to expand...
But, Amazon does provide the information if someone actually has bought the item from them. Those are the only reviews to which I even start to lend credence. I can't help but suspect bad faith of people who go to Amazon to write reviews of products they've bought elsewhere. They could simply be people giving their honest opinions but there's too much scheming on Amazon not to be suspicious.
 
Fuelair mentioned the magazine Consumer Reports.

I used to look at it, but found that for home appliances, tools, and similar items, almost never was there a recommendation of what I would describe as moderately priced items. (See my post above.)

I remember in the 1980s looking for a washing machine, and seeing that CR did not recommend any machine under about $800. Yikes.
 
The problem with consumer written reviews is the abundance of one-star and five-star reviews. Read the 2,3 and 4 star reviews from verified purchases only and they seem to be more balanced and thought out and less based on emotion.
 
There should be something that says I bought this product and know that it is correct. Instead anyone can write a review of any product and they may be paid either by a competitor or the company. Or almost as bad people who bought the product yesterday and want to wrote a review. If they do so they usually cannot amend it as they learn more. It would be great if people wrote blogs "My adventure with consumer items". And do so in ways other can find.
 
rjh01 said:
There should be something that says I bought this product and know that it is correct. Instead anyone can write a review of any product and they may be paid either by a competitor or the company. Or almost as bad people who bought the product yesterday and want to wrote a review. If they do so they usually cannot amend it as they learn more. It would be great if people wrote blogs "My adventure with consumer items". And do so in ways other can find.
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Both of these things are available in Amazon reviews.

I don't find reviews to be a panacea, but I do think they can be helpful.

Some rules of thumb I use. (Nothing is etched in stone.)

Rating averages tend to be more dependable as the number of reviews increases.

Read the bad reviews first. Often it turns out that many of then would have not been written if the purchaser had actually read and understood the product description. Many complaints have little to do with the product itself, and more to do with issues about delivery, service, etc.

Sort reviews by "newest" when possible. Often reviews are of versions of a product which have been improved (or lost ground) since they were written.

Looking at multiple sources for reviews can often reveal duplicate reviews (maybe from a paid promoter?).

It can be as much work as you want it to be, but it doesn't have to be a waste of time.

And it's never going to be perfect. Even the very best products can have lemons, so how well a company stands behind their product means a lot.

Example; Logitech is stellar. LG, not so much.

One of the reasons Amazon gets the lion's share of my online business is that their return policy is so good. They provide a huge additional buffer for product quality and vendor performance.
 
kajata said:
The problem with consumer written reviews is the abundance of one-star and five-star reviews. Read the 2,3 and 4 star reviews from verified purchases only and they seem to be more balanced and thought out and less based on emotion.
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I find the same problem with consumer restaurant reviews. Either they are really good, or horrible. It seems like people who have a bad experience have a lot of motivation to write an online review. Most consumers have no motivation to write a review at all unless there is a problem. A few people (perhaps a little manic?) write glowing reviews but these are usually not very helpful. If each consumer wrote their experience you could go by the average and get an idea of the failure rate of a product, but the usefulness of user initiated reviews is extremely limited by the the sampling bias. Occasionally someone writes a well rounded review with positives and negatives and these are the ones I pay the most attention to.
The same problem holds for Angie's list reviews, and don't get me started on them!

Regarding "consumer reports", many years ago the organization did actual tests of product reliability and functionality. Nowadays, their lists just enumerate the various features of competing products, without any testing of which ones might work better. Without such testing the products are rated based on just price versus features. The myriad versions of most products makes finding the exact model numbers they rate almost impossible.

I cancelled my subscription.
 
I quit reading CR when they gave a down-check to the Toyota Land Ccuiser (back in the `1970's) because compared to the pther vehicles, it rodde and drove like a truck.

The other reviews were of Sedans...
 
rwguinn said:
I quit reading CR when they gave a down-check to the Toyota Land Ccuiser (back in the `1970's) because compared to the pther vehicles, it rodde and drove like a truck.

The other reviews were of Sedans...
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I still look occasionally at CR for reviews of appliances that address their suitability as appliances, but a grain of salt is always required.

In some areas, such as cameras, audio equipment and bicycles, and the like, they're just not very useful, and often laughable. The cycling press has long had fun with the CR style bike review, in which "easy rolling" and the like are judged.

I stopped buying them back in the 70's when it became clear that they were judging many things, cars included, more subjectively than they claimed, and missing important points.

The last straw came when they reviewed radial tires. Presumably they went to local dealers and bought some tires, and reviewed what they got. No Michelin tires were tested, and no acknowledgement made that such a company even existed.

Their automotive ratings can be somewhat useful, but must be interpreted. Repair and failure records are collected only for newly purchased cars and only for a certain time. A car that blows up after 8 years may get all good marks if it runs nicely until then. Some areas are so broad that you cannot know whether a black mark is because the door handles sometimes stick or because the fenders fall off.

That said, they are pretty good on things like coffee pots, and if a pot is actually going to catch fire or blow up, they'll probably find out and tell you. Just don't put too much stock in what kind of coffee they prefer.

A few times in past years, I've looked at their reviews, and even bought their annuals.
 
Dr. Keith said:
So, I'm looking to buy a simple consumer product, in this case a coffee pot with a thermally insulated carafe, but really it doesn't matter. I go online to look at my options. I go to stores that sell that item, I go to sites that review the items, and inevitably I end up at Amazon.

All good so far, I've eliminated some items and shortened my list to a few good contenders. Then I make the mistake of reading the reviews.

The good reviews are all the same: best coffee maker ever. Ok, whatever. The bad reviews though bring terror. One brand is known for having carafes whose inner glass lining explodes (implodes) while another is known for releasing water and coffee all over your counter and the third has a constant heating element which seems counter to the whole point of the thermal carafe and has no measurement guide to help you know how much water to put into it. None of them would make my morning better.

Now I am terrified of buying anything. They all sound horrible. But that is only looking at less than 10% of the reviews. These are all highly rated items with hundreds or thousands of good reviews and relatively few bad ones, but all of the bad ones are worse than my current coffee pot.

Information overload. I should have just gone to a store and bought something without doing any research. Then I would have likely been content, or if it acted up I could have done my research and been outraged. Either is better than being terrified.

(Feel free to move to appropriate forum)
Click to expand...

My advice? See if there are a few bad reviews (NO product gets 100% ratings if the reviewers are honest). If there are a few, but not too many (95% positive is my sweet spot), the bad reviews are probably random flukes. Remember, the manufacturing process isn't 100% perfect; a certain number of defective products make their way through.

The other thing to bear in mind is that 50% of the population is below average intelligence (well....roughly, anyway). There are a LOT of stupid people out there. I've read reviews of books that make me question whether the person writing them was even literate, much less read the book!

As far as coffee goes, I've got a stainless-steel french press that doubles as a thermos (not perfect--the top doesn't lock tightely or anything--but much better than the glass ones). I could shatter it if I wanted; however, it would require substantially more than making coffee. I recommend that. :D
 
fuelair said:
By the by, be aware that Amazon does not require that a consumer must have actually purchased the product, nothing there prevents people paid or employed by a competitor from making negative reviews (and, the reverse of course). Consumer Reports does not suffer from that potential problem.
Click to expand...

I noticed this on download.com, run by C-Net (?) many years ago with antivirus products. Every single product is crammed with reviews that it "installs viruses". These I noticed were frequently copy-pasted between different products.
 
William Parcher said:
Here you are speaking of customer service and not product quality or reliability, yes?
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Yes.

I haven't owned enough LG products to really make any judgements about overall product quality. Mainly their Tone+ BT headphones. I've had a bit of trouble with them, but overall I've been pleased.

Logitech stuff I've owned many of. Quality has always been excellent. Combined with their customer support it's hard to complain.
 
Dinwar said:
...
The other thing to bear in mind is that 50% of the population is below average intelligence (well....roughly, anyway). ...
Click to expand...
Well, no, exactly, actually.

Otherwise, I agree with you. I try to select products that have a large enough number of ratings/reviews, and a high rating. Then I mostly concentrate on the bad reviews to avoid unpleasant surprises. I rate the reviews by usefulness [i[for me[/i] so to speak. A great deal tend to be useless, positive reviews more than negative, in my experience.
 
Sometimes you can read negative reviews and see that the reviewer didn't read or understand the product instructions.

Sometimes negative reviews are meaningless because you don't know and won't learn the real cause of the problem. A person could write that their new Smart TV is a piece of crap because none of the apps work and they are sending it back to buy a different brand. You'll never know that this person did not have Internet service in their home.
 
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