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Almost 40% of U.S. Consumers Trust Online Reviews Less Than They Did 5 Years Ago

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Re: Almost 40% of U.S. Consumers Trust Online Reviews Less Than They Did 5 Years Ago

#161

Post by TRcontrarian »

bsd44 wrote: post #149

Nowadays I look for reviews on Reddit. If I can't find any that I consider to be legitimate, I won't buy the product if it's more than £10.

I'm afraid it's only a matter of time before that becomes an astroturfing target as well. At least there's account history associated with it, so there is some effort associated with creating or purchasing accounts with believable histories. Long term I think facebook wins this space because they have the most in depth real digital identities tied to people.

Re: Almost 40% of U.S. Consumers Trust Online Reviews Less Than They Did 5 Years Ago

#162

Post by bluGill »

throwawayboise wrote: post #145
lotsofpulp wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Surely buying a brand name disinfectant by the gallon and paper towels and a spray bottle are orders of magnitude cheaper. And probably orders of magnitude better for the environment?

Not to mention it isn't really necessary. It's pretty clear now that surface contact is not a major vector for COVID transmission. https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/prevent-getting-si...

Covid isn't the only reason to disinfect surfaces. Proper disinfecting surfaces does prevent a large number of diseases. Covid we now know isn't one of them, but the others are still a worry.

Re: Almost 40% of U.S. Consumers Trust Online Reviews Less Than They Did 5 Years Ago

#163

Post by bluGill »

egypturnash wrote: post #44
conception wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This I think stems from a different issue. Doordash has a very easy, one second review they ask from everyone. And I think 99.999% of folks think “oh yeah that was fine, 4 stars” or “it was pretty good, five stars.” Do people get what they expected from that McDonald’s? Was it cheap, fast and nostalgic? 5 stars. The people doing these reviews are not good critics, or critical with any sort of depth. They are the sort…

There is also unevenly distributed cultural knowledge: anything less than five stars starts causing hassle for the driver. I hate this inflation but I also wanna make sure the person who gave me competent service that I would realistically mark as three stars - not bad, not great, job done exactly as specified and I'm perfectly happy with that - is going to get five. (hassle varies: offered fewer/worse-paying jobs is…

I've given up on leaving reviews. For 3 stars to be average, you need to actually give average reviews to some things, thus I rate almost everything as 3 stars which results in the "what went wrong", "Nothing, you were average, just like everyone else". I got sick of that exchange and gave up. Doing better than average is almost impossible in my book because almost everyone is doing their best. Sometimes someone will mess up and get a 1, but not often, and not bad enough that they make enough of a difference as to raise everyone else to 5.

Also, I just don't buy enough of most things to honestly know. Is Brand X thing better than Brand Y - how should I know? I don't have the time to spend a week trying each item to give a fair review. I happened to choose Brand X, and it is fine but it might really be far worse than Brand Y if only I had tried the other in stead.

Re: Almost 40% of U.S. Consumers Trust Online Reviews Less Than They Did 5 Years Ago

#164

Post by bombcar »

somethingwitty1 wrote: post #119
discardedrefuse wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Does Walmart (online) co-mingle their inventory with third party inventory like Amazon?

Amazon doesn't co-mingle their inventory with 3Ps, they do co-mingle 3Ps that don't opt to avoid it. This is one of the reasons I look for the "sold and shipped by Amazon" for important purchases. Unfortunately, I've never seen information about how Walmart handles this. Given their massive shift to 3Ps providing most of their products online...I'd imagine they use a similar strategy (it improves same/next day availa…

I'd heard that they DO mingle their 1st party inventory, but that you have an easy return when it turns out to be fake; but perhaps the story changes.

Re: Almost 40% of U.S. Consumers Trust Online Reviews Less Than They Did 5 Years Ago

#165

Post by bluGill »

niklasd wrote: post #42
OhSoHumble wrote: post #22

I recently bought some sheets. Actually sorting through the sheets on Amazon was a hassle because 90% of the reviews would be obviously fake "best sheets I've ever slept on - 5 stars" and the remaining 10% would be 1-3 star reviews that would be photographs of poor fabric or tears in the arriving product. It is almost impossible to buy quality goods online and I'm afraid that is just going to get worse.

What is also strange is when comparing "different" offerings they sometime turn out to be exactly the same product, just with a slightly different picture/text and a (sometimes substantial) price difference. For products like iPhone cases it feels like there is one factory in China which produces a few different models, which lead to the 200 offerings you'll see when searching for one at Amazon.

Making something in a factory is skill and there are scale factors. You can buy a lawn mower from dozens of different companies, but the vast majority are made in one factory. If you want to sell lawnmowers you just need to order some quantity (I'm guessing 1000) and they will paint their standard mower with your colors and got to word and substitute your name in the manual. Easy enough for them to do and they don't need to worry about marketing at all.

Nearly all store brands are the same way. A lot of other brand name products are also the same. That iPhone case factory will probably make any patter you want.

Don't assume though that store bands are the same quality. There are some choices. They can use thicker metal in lawn mowers for quality. They can use source plastics of different qualities for the iphone cases. However the price isn't that much different and so sometimes the expensive products are the lowest quality.

Re: Almost 40% of U.S. Consumers Trust Online Reviews Less Than They Did 5 Years Ago

#166

Post by cout »

discardedrefuse wrote: post #103
sharkweek wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I used to trust Amazon for just about anything I needed to buy, but I'd guess maybe in the last 6-8 years I'll mostly only order something if I recognize the brand name selling me the product. Tried to buy a pair of cheap-ish bluetooth headphones off there a few months ago. Three different pairs and none of them even worked out of the box. Gave up and bought a more expensive pair from a known brand.

You can't trust ANYTHING on Amazon; including name brand. They co-mingle their legit inventory with counterfeit 3rd party inventory. When you order something, even if it's "Sold and Shipped from Amazon", they ship you the closest product. You may very well end up getting the fake 3rd party item.

If it's Amazon brand (e.g. Kindle), I'd be surprised to get a counterfeit.

I also trust less popular brands to not be counterfeit, though I expect that to change in the future.

Re: Almost 40% of U.S. Consumers Trust Online Reviews Less Than They Did 5 Years Ago

#167

Post by bluGill »

throwawayboise wrote: post #151
kevin_thibedeau wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It was humorous when they started doing computer reviews in the 90's and they clearly didn't have a clue about what they were reviewing.

How so? I mean, I could imagine that they were reviewing computers on practical things that real-world users cared about, but maybe a tech enthusiast would find irrelevant.

I remember they rated the Atari (8 bit) computers a best buy. At the time I was an Atari fan and that how great it was. On hindsight, it was obvious even back then that the Atari was obsolete and the PC was where everyone was going for a reason. (though they could reasonably put mac/St/Amiga in the review, at least they were not obsolete)

That would have been the mid-late 80s, but it set the tone for the time: rate something high because it was cheap not because it was the best for the job.

Re: Almost 40% of U.S. Consumers Trust Online Reviews Less Than They Did 5 Years Ago

#168

Post by akvadrako »

OhSoHumble wrote: post #22

I recently bought some sheets. Actually sorting through the sheets on Amazon was a hassle because 90% of the reviews would be obviously fake "best sheets I've ever slept on - 5 stars" and the remaining 10% would be 1-3 star reviews that would be photographs of poor fabric or tears in the arriving product. It is almost impossible to buy quality goods online and I'm afraid that is just going to get worse.

It's not impossible to buy quality goods online, but it is on Amazon.

Re: Almost 40% of U.S. Consumers Trust Online Reviews Less Than They Did 5 Years Ago

#169

Post by jedberg »

throwawayboise wrote: post #145
lotsofpulp wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Surely buying a brand name disinfectant by the gallon and paper towels and a spray bottle are orders of magnitude cheaper. And probably orders of magnitude better for the environment?

Not to mention it isn't really necessary. It's pretty clear now that surface contact is not a major vector for COVID transmission. https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/prevent-getting-si...

Teachers have been using disinfecting wipes for decades, not just for COVID. Kids spread lots of germs.

Re: Almost 40% of U.S. Consumers Trust Online Reviews Less Than They Did 5 Years Ago

#170

Post by ChrisLTD »

Blackthorn wrote: post #32

You can't even search for information about products anymore. All that shows up is affiliate spam pages that read like they were generated from a ML algorithm.

This is what's going to kill the search engine ad market if the algorithm designers aren't careful.
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