Use Amazon’s Product Ratings Wisely
When using Amazon, where you can’t hold a product in your hand or test it before placing an order, it’s important to understand how to use their customer rating system.
Who am I? I’m a power shopper on Amazon. I just checked, and in the last six months, I made 126 purchases which is about orders every 10 days. I’m sure most Amazon users can’t match that. Bear in mind, too, that an order can contain several different product purchases.
Here’s how I approach Amazon’s customer reviews based on my long experience with this service.
First, let’s talk about the reviews themselves, after which we’ll tackle their star rating system.
I love it when there are ten or more reviews, but when there are fewer, all is not lost. When there are few reviews, if they are at all lengthy, I read them and if I think they seem credible on their face, I look at their other reviews, if they have any, trying to notice any patterns like do they do only 5-star or 1-star reviews? Do they review a variety of products offered by diverse vendors?
So, the more reviews the better. Why? Because when there are few, they are more likely to be plants. What is a plant? It’s a reviewer who is there to drum up or suppress sales. Some dishonest vendors want to get off to a good start so they make sure the first few reviews are positive. Other vendors may want their competitors to be unsuccessful, so they manage to place dishonestly critical reviews.
Back to reviewers’ other reviews. Look for reviewers who seem to give everything five stars. Believe it or not, there are scam reviewers who either are the vendors themselves or work for them on contract or possibly in exchange for consideration doing fake positive reviews as needed. On the other hand, there are certainly reviewers who adopt the “If you can’t say something nice, say nothing at all” philosophy. You will eventually get a feel for which is which.
I place a lot more weight on a review if it is both in-depth and done by someone who has a record of reviewing a wide variety of products by diverse vendors, and especially if they aren’t always handing out five- or one-star reviews. These are more likely to be real users giving honest reviews.
The star system works better the more reviews there are. If there are ten or twenty reviews, plants will have more effect on the cumulative star rating than if there are fifty, a hundred, or more reviews.
Let’s assume there are plenty of reviews. Here’s how I deal with stars: I lump the 4- and 5-stars together as positive reviews and the 1- or 2-star reviews as negative reviews, and compare the totals. If the ratio is 5-to-1 positive to negative, I’m unlikely to buy. If it’s 20 to 1 I’ll probably go for it.
I ignore 3-star reviews as indecisive, although I read through those in case they are saying why their review wasn’t higher. Maybe whatever bothers them wouldn’t be an issue for me.
Some rules of thumb: 10% or higher negative views is a red flag, and of course the lower the percentage the better. On the other hand, 90% positive reviews or better is a green flag. If you have a goodly number of reviews and none of them are 3-stars or lower, that’s suspicious. Few products are so great that nobody can find something to criticize,
Still, there’s no substitute for reading reviews. That’s not possible with a large number of reviews, of course. Luckily, readers before you have rated reviews as useful positive or negative reviews. Be sure to read those.
You’ll learn on reading reviews that some reviewers don’t understand what the reviews are for. If I am looking at a guitar to purchase, I want to know if the build quality is high or isn’t, that it arrived with or without factory blemishes, that it sounds good or doesn’t. Being told that UPS ran over the box with a truck and destroyed the guitar is a fascinating tale of woe, but it isn’t a review. On the other hand, how were instances of customer service handled (including the guitar run over by the truck)?
Bear in mind that sh*t happens to everyone. And once an order leaves the warehouse, the delivery service takes over. Delivery issues aren’t part of product reviews.
Using reviews, you’ll make wiser choices on Amazon. Ignore them at your own peril.
I have found that if vendors won’t help you, Amazon customer service usually will. However, getting tbe most out of Amazon’s customer service is an article for another day. Watch for it.