Apple pulls all customer reviews from online Apple Store

#1

Post by minimaxir » Thu, Nov 21, 2019, 8:21 PM UTC

Apple pulls all customer reviews from online Apple Store
appleinsider.com

Re: Apple pulls all customer reviews from online Apple Store

#2

Post by mikece » Thu, Nov 21, 2019, 8:49 PM UTC

Darn! Some of those were pretty funny... though when they contradict the prevailing reviews at Amazon it's obvious that allowing comments on Apple.com just invites the trolls.

Re: Apple pulls all customer reviews from online Apple Store

#3

Post by LeoPanthera » Thu, Nov 21, 2019, 9:31 PM UTC

I'm not surprised. Most of them were just bitching about Apple, and not reviewing the product. Most of the reviews of the USB-C dongles were just complaining about USB-C, for example. Useless.

Re: Apple pulls all customer reviews from online Apple Store

#4

Post by acomjean » Thu, Nov 21, 2019, 9:37 PM UTC

Probably in prep for the president apple visit. Which included shooting a campaign ad and "opening the new" existing factory for the mac pro factory in Texas.

Re: Apple pulls all customer reviews from online Apple Store

#5

Post by mmanfrin » Thu, Nov 21, 2019, 9:42 PM UTC

I've found the reviews on a brand's own store page to be next to useless. The whole page is meant to sell me on a product, why would I trust "reviews" that are likely curated? Although, if I do find negative reviews on a retailer's site, it does engender some trust.

Re: Apple pulls all customer reviews from online Apple Store

#6

Post by generalpass » Thu, Nov 21, 2019, 9:44 PM UTC

mmanfrin wrote: post #5

I've found the reviews on a brand's own store page to be next to useless. The whole page is meant to sell me on a product, why would I trust "reviews" that are likely curated? Although, if I do find negative reviews on a retailer's site, it does engender some trust.

> Although, if I do find negative reviews on a retailer's site, it does engender some trust.

A marketing friend of mine calls this "verisimilitude."

Re: Apple pulls all customer reviews from online Apple Store

#7

Post by rgovostes » Thu, Nov 21, 2019, 9:46 PM UTC

The only thing remotely surprising here is that they lasted this long. It was frankly idiotic of them to have it there in the first place. No one is happy to spend $80 on a replacement MagSafe charger because the previous one frayed, so of course the listing was marred by 1-star reviews.

The community Q&A also tends to be garbage. I understand that the average consumer is not going to have the same level of technical knowledge, and so I don't fault them for asking the questions. But it seems very strange that Apple allows their product page to be polluted by often confused questions, and also allows random people to answer those questions instead of qualified salespeople.

Re: Apple pulls all customer reviews from online Apple Store

#8

Post by kps » Thu, Nov 21, 2019, 9:51 PM UTC

mmanfrin wrote: post #5

I've found the reviews on a brand's own store page to be next to useless. The whole page is meant to sell me on a product, why would I trust "reviews" that are likely curated? Although, if I do find negative reviews on a retailer's site, it does engender some trust.

Many ‘accessory’ products had overwhelmingly negative reviews, because Apple's form-over-function philosophy means that they're genuinely hot garbage.

… so they fixed the glitch.

¹ e.g. one I'm familiar with http://web.archive.org/web/20191113224149/https://www.apple....

Re: Apple pulls all customer reviews from online Apple Store

#9

Post by xhkkffbf » Thu, Nov 21, 2019, 9:53 PM UTC

rgovostes wrote: post #7

The only thing remotely surprising here is that they lasted this long. It was frankly idiotic of them to have it there in the first place. No one is happy to spend $80 on a replacement MagSafe charger because the previous one frayed, so of course the listing was marred by 1-star reviews. The community Q&A also tends to be garbage. I understand that the average consumer is not going to have the same level of technical…

I understand your point.

Still, I think that these reviews were helpful to Apple by collecting the bitching in one central location. It kept the product team on their game.

Of course at some point, people stop trusting reviews in general and so maybe it's time to moveon.

Re: Apple pulls all customer reviews from online Apple Store

#10

Post by ignoramous » Thu, Nov 21, 2019, 9:56 PM UTC

LeoPanthera wrote: post #3

I'm not surprised. Most of them were just bitching about Apple, and not reviewing the product. Most of the reviews of the USB-C dongles were just complaining about USB-C, for example. Useless.

> Useless.

Isn't it on Apple to assign resources to fix the problem instead of going nuclear on it? Surely, not all reviews are useless?

> Most of the reviews of the USB-C dongles were just complaining about USB-C, for example.

I've seen this problem with PlayStore too, but Google takes forever to delete the reviews: Even the ones that are unrelated. I wonder why AI isn't employed to weed out or help automate the process of flagging such reviews. May be someone should build it?