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Google engineer writing Amazon reviews on USB-C cables that don't work

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Re: Google engineer writing Amazon reviews on USB-C cables that don't work

#151

Post by ghaff »

mikestew wrote: post #112
larrybud wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Really? If a product meets your needs, is a fair price, and seems to be working fine after 30 days, you would not give it 5 stars? It would need to perform miracles to get 5 stars?

If a product meets your needs, is a fair price, and seems to be working fine after 30 days, you would not give it 5 stars? And then along comes the cable which, when I plug it in, causes a religious miracle to occur. How do I rate that one? Five stars is already taken. (Or maybe it should be two stars. I want to get my work done without being distracted by a prominent religious figure appearing next to my desk.) To p…

I'm more inclined to reserve 5 stars for really good films and books (even if they're not in the truly great category). For a cable though? If it does it's job, appears well-made, and is a good price, I'm not sure why I'd hit it in the ratings. I suppose I can leave lower numbers of stars in a quixotic quest against review inflation but doesn't seem really fair to the products involved.

Re: Google engineer writing Amazon reviews on USB-C cables that don't work

#152

Post by bengoodger »

x0x0 wrote: post #137
bkmartin wrote: post #17

The average consumer has no idea if one of these cables will actually do what they proclaim. The only way to really know is when other customers review the product, which we know is barely useful most of the time due to fraudulent reviews. Great job on the part of this Google engineer for writing such clear and technical reviews of the products. Now that an expert has called some of these cables out as not adhering t…

And in a nutshell, that's why people buy stuff from apple. imo, their brand is "here's a good thing, and we promise it will work". Amazon's is "you're on your own, but it's really fucking cheap!" That's not to say amazon doesn't have good customer service, but the whole thing is still shit. I just wanted a [cable|dongle|hdmi adapter|battery|plant spray|charger] that was what it claimed to be and worked correctly the…

Funny story. I wanted to buy a cheap iPad for my son. I could have got one from Amazon but after hearing so many stories about scams or refurb devices or devices with someone else's state on it I decided not to deal with that headache and ordered direct from the Apple website.

Upon turning on the device for the first time it showed a screen saying it was controlled by the LDS Church and wouldn't proceed through guided setup until I acknowledged that. After some time on the phone with customer service, we determined there was no way to remove this configuration. I ended up having to return it to an Apple store. The rep there said "yeah that happens sometimes" (someone pulled from the wrong pile in fulfillment most likely). So sometimes you're damned if you do, and damned if you don't.

If anything Amazon's customer service is better - to resolve an issue like this for items they ship I don't have to drive anywhere, just put the box back on my front doorstep. I wish they would make it clearer when you're buying things from them, and would do a better job of associating compatible products. This seems like data they should be able to have, and UI they should be able to build.

Re: Google engineer writing Amazon reviews on USB-C cables that don't work

#153

Post by vidarh »

semiel wrote: post #100
fpgaminer wrote: post #83

The current rhetoric when it comes to the failings of online reviews is to point at fraudulent reviews. I posit that, rather, it's the lack of weighting reviews by the expertise of the reviewers. Clearly the reviews of a hardware engineer at Google should have more weight to them than an average consumer (on products like this), because as bkmartin points out, the average consumer has no idea as to the true quality o…

When buying something online, I make a habit of reading a couple of the negative reviews. Sometimes they're, "I meant to buy a toaster, and misclicked on this television instead. Makes poor toast. 2/5." But sometimes they're more like, "It worked great for two years, and then became sentient and strangled my pet fish. 2/5" Rating distributions only tell you part of the story.

> "It worked great for two years, and then became sentient and strangled my pet fish. 2/5"

Of course, for some that would be a 5/5.... Which is another reason to read the negative reviews: Sometimes they confirm that the only downsides to a product is stuff you don't care about or don't see as a negative.

Re: Google engineer writing Amazon reviews on USB-C cables that don't work

#154

Post by shostack »

ck2 wrote: post #36

Amazon reviews become useless as Amazon allows third-party vendors from China and HK to flood the original listing with clones. So people buy based on the review and then they find out the vendor shipped a clone, so then they give a bad review but it's not for the original listing. Amazon made a huge mess with that, they should never allow third parties to sell on the original listing.

I'm confused--if the person purchased from Listing A, but the vendor shipped Product B, are you saying the user does not have the option of leaving a review for Listing A?

Re: Google engineer writing Amazon reviews on USB-C cables that don't work

#156

Post by CamperBob2 »

mikestew wrote: post #112
larrybud wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Really? If a product meets your needs, is a fair price, and seems to be working fine after 30 days, you would not give it 5 stars? It would need to perform miracles to get 5 stars?

If a product meets your needs, is a fair price, and seems to be working fine after 30 days, you would not give it 5 stars? And then along comes the cable which, when I plug it in, causes a religious miracle to occur. How do I rate that one? Five stars is already taken. (Or maybe it should be two stars. I want to get my work done without being distracted by a prominent religious figure appearing next to my desk.) To p…

"Didn't want a religious miracle. Robbed me of my free will. One star."

Re: Google engineer writing Amazon reviews on USB-C cables that don't work

#157

Post by vidarh »

eropple wrote: post #134
Johnny555 wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A central review clearinghouse will never happen with cheap accessories like this. If model "1234-X" gets bad reviews, the same product will just be renumbered to model "9863-V2" and even the company name may change. So there's no way to keep reviews associated with the same product -- it's the same reason why there are no good review sites for mattresses across all retailers -- the manufacturers use a variety of nam…

This is a really big thing. If you look at, say, a 10-port USB3 hub on Amazon, you will see the exact same thing, down to the boards (to say nothing of the casing), being sold under three or four different brands.

The thing is for a lot of low level electronics, you can buy "identical" products from a range of manufacturers, so while I know what you're describing happens too, it's tricky because there are also plenty of designs that "make the rounds" (e.g. lots of products are just tiny variations over reference designs from a chipset designer - you see this a lot with low end Chinese tablets, which are often almost-but-not-quite identical variations over what appears to be AllWinner and MTK reference designs).

Re: Google engineer writing Amazon reviews on USB-C cables that don't work

#158

Post by mikestew »

ghaff wrote: post #151
mikestew wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If a product meets your needs, is a fair price, and seems to be working fine after 30 days, you would not give it 5 stars? And then along comes the cable which, when I plug it in, causes a religious miracle to occur. How do I rate that one? Five stars is already taken. (Or maybe it should be two stars. I want to get my work done without being distracted by a prominent religious figure appearing next to my desk.) To p…

I'm more inclined to reserve 5 stars for really good films and books (even if they're not in the truly great category). For a cable though? If it does it's job, appears well-made, and is a good price, I'm not sure why I'd hit it in the ratings. I suppose I can leave lower numbers of stars in a quixotic quest against review inflation but doesn't seem really fair to the products involved.

If it does it's job, appears well-made, and is a good price, I'm not sure why I'd hit it in the ratings.

And hence my quandary; I don't consider three stars to be a "hit...in the ratings". It does the job, doesn't stand out in any other way, three stars. But, as you point out, it's not fair in the inflated system that we have available. So which wins out, an honest review system that benefits consumers, or review inflation that benefits product sellers? I haven't decided, nor figured out any means of compromise.

As I once heard about bug priority, if everything's a Priority 1, then nothing is a Pri 1. And if everything that isn't complete shite is five stars, then really nothing is five stars. Five stars just means it doesn't suck. Then why don't we have just one star or no stars from which to choose? In other words, the precision of the rating system is not what the five choices would imply.

Re: Google engineer writing Amazon reviews on USB-C cables that don't work

#159

Post by dalke »

larrybud wrote: post #78
mikestew wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Personally, I filter out one and five star reviews. To me, five stars means when you use the product, Jesus appears before you. One star means I ordered a cable and received a dead crab instead (pretty sure there's an XKCD that covers the last one). But others don't agree with my rating system, so "ordered blue, but it was robin egg blue. Werst company evar!!!11" means one star. Five stars means "I work for the compa…

Really? If a product meets your needs, is a fair price, and seems to be working fine after 30 days, you would not give it 5 stars? It would need to perform miracles to get 5 stars?

I love Elizabeth Zwicky's explanation at http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=C4r... :

> "Engineers do not give out 5s. If you tell an engineer that the possible rating scale is 1 to 5 and they like you, they give you a 4. Because tomorrow they might love you and then they would give you a 5. They probably won't, but they might, so they give you a 4 so that they have room. We all are totally okay with this. But the world is also full of this other class of people who if they like you give you a 5. They're quite consistent about it. 'I like you. I see nothing wrong with that. I'm giving you a 5.'"

Re: Google engineer writing Amazon reviews on USB-C cables that don't work

#160

Post by jarek »

ctdonath wrote: post #150
jarek wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How will any company, especially a VC funded company, avoid problems and dilemmas seen by other online-submitted-reviews companies like Yelp that basically turn the company into either a fake review haven or a protection racket?

By focusing on what makes this reviewer notable: he's a verified buyer, systematically reviewing products, and with a resume to show he's worth listening to. We don't want reviews from any & all yahoos who sign up, we want reviews from vetted people who have a professional interest in checking numerous products with appropriate knowledge, and can write meaningful descriptions suitable for general audiences. Personall…

I'm still not sure this would be a company suited for YC-expected massive growth, but thank you and respect for expanding on the idea.
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