Don't trust online reviews (personal anecdote)
I recently bought a product online. I wasn't able to find it in a bricks-and-mortar shop, so I had to buy it online to even see it, let alone try it. I received it, and it wasn't right for me. I was able to exchange it for a different version, but even the different version wasn't right. So I returned the product and got a refund. All along, the customer service was excellent, but the product itself turned out not to be what I wanted.
The way the product failed for me was connected to the "headline" description of the product. It wasn't a minor failure. It did something that they explicitly said it wouldn't do, which was one of the main selling features of the product.
After the dust settled, I wrote a review of the product. I don't normally do this: I neither write nor read reviews. However, I know that other people do rely on reviews and, seeing as this product is only available online, and its failure was linked to a major selling feature of the product, I felt duty-bound to inform other prospective buyers that it might not suit some people. I gave it a 2-star (out of 5) rating, as well as writing up why it didn't suit me (while allowing that it might still suit other people).
Since I submitted the review, I have checked the website (I'm an egotist: I wanted to see my words being published!). Other reviews with more recent timestamps have appeared, but my review has not appeared. I've now noticed that the lowest rating in their reviews is a single 3-star rating, with some 4-star reviews and lots of 5-star reviews. There are no 2-star or 1-star reviews. My only conclusion is that the company selects which reviews to publish - and which ones not to publish.
I've always wondered if companies would post negative reviews of their own products. Now I know for sure that at least one company does not.
I was looking at a product today (directly on the site of its manufacturer and seller) and noticed that several reviews that were critical of the product still had 5 stars on them. One noted that the product broke, and it still had a five star rating! I think it's safe to assume at this point that nearly any company in charge of their own reviews will not do so honestly.
The problem is that reviews on third-party sites seemingly can't be trusted either. I used to use a site called Fakespot to check the validity of online purchases (mostly on Amazon). While it definitely saved me from a few bad purchases, I started to notice that legitimate products from presumably trustworthy companies would, somewhat unexpectedly, have large numbers of fake reviews when I plugged them into the site. I initially thought this was a flaw in their algorithm, until I read an article about how Amazon's crackdown on fake reviews prompted sellers to buy fake reviews not for their own items, but for competitors' items in hopes of triggering fraud takedowns (or sowing distrust through sites like Fakespot). I searched around for the article but can't find it (if anyone has it, please link it!).
There's a third angle too, which is the "review as leverage" angle. You see this on sites like Yelp, as well as with particular cultural flashpoints in media. Probably everyone has heard about a noxious, entitled customer threatening a restaurant with poor reviews, and probably everyone has heard about a controversy that causes a movie or game to get "review bombed" on Metacritic, for reasons often unrelated to the media itself. Given the prevalence that reviews have in modern daily life (we can look up reviews for anything and everything!), it makes sense that many would use reviews not as a consumer product summary but as a lever or tool, but it also further dilutes our trust in them.
I think the sad thing is that even though I'm largely critical of online reviews of all types and put little to no trust in them intellectually, I still check them for nearly everything and allow them to anchor my expectations for things. I know I shouldn't, but I do, and I haven't quite sussed out why I continue to let that happen. I'll still sort my to-read list by Goodreads rating so that I can pick out something closer to the top which are, presumably, "better" than the stuff at the bottom, and I still check Steam review scores before purchases, despite many Steam reviews being little more than edgy memes written by children. I know the data is junk, but I can't help drawing conclusions from it anyway.
Well, one has to use something in the absence of real-life personal experience.
Myself, I've learned not to rely on reviews. I've liked too many movies that got bad reviews (and vice versa). I've learned that my tastes and preferences aren't the same as the majority's, so I've learned I can't rely on other people's opinions to decide whether I'll like something or not. And, nowadays, that extends to everything that gets reviewed.
But, sometimes they match up. Sometimes when someone else says X is bad, and I try X for myself, I find out that X really is bad. So reviews aren't totally useless.
For movies, television, books, and arts of all kinds, it's the "people who like things like this, like things like this" problem of fandoms, where consumers' critical perceptions are skewed by how much they enjoy a category of product rather than reviewing the specific instance of it. For example, I couldn't tolerate extended watching of The Witcher on the basis of contrived, incomprehensible plot and dire acting, while people who love fantasy gaming were over the moon about it. There are reviewers who've said the same things about The Expanse, which happens to belong to a category I enjoy. I greatly appreciated the famous U.S. film critic, Roger Ebert's approach to reviewing movies in the context of other examples of their specific genre.
I'll look at reviews from people who absolutely hate a product first. Frankly, I'm judging the reviewer more than the review content, to see if honest, knowledgeable, articulate, apparently unbiased reviewers have legitimate complaints. I've found that this is the most effective means of reducing the risk of buying something that's got false positive reviews. Fake bad reviews or completely misaligned tastes are (at least for now) fairly easy to spot.
The "people who like things like this, like things like that" algorithm doesn't seem to work for me. I've only encountered this in the context of online streaming services, like Netflix and Stan. And it's a very simplistic algorithm. It basically says "you watched this science fiction show (or comedy or drama), so maybe you'll like that science fiction show (or comedy or drama)". However, I'm fussy about what I like and don't like. There's a lot of science fiction I don't like. Even within the single franchise of 'Star Trek', there are instalments I love and instalments I hate. So recommending material to me on the basis that I watched 'Star Trek' isn't going to achieve much. So I've learned to ignore those recommendations.
Yep. :)
Back in 1999 or so, before recommendation algorithms operated by streaming services were available, I fed a lot of data to the Movielens "collaborative filtering" project. While some of the output was helpful, I couldn't tell it, for example, that I hated Kevin Costner as an actor and didn't want to see any movie that featured him. I couldn't specify that I didn't really want to see movies Woody Allen directed between 1979 and 2008. Foreign films, particularly Bollywood and Hong Kong action, were nearly impossible to get meaningful results for.
And these issues persist in Netflix or Amazon recommendations, 20 years later. It's even more irritating for books and other products.
But I mentioned it in the context of reviews. There are too many opportunities for people to down- or up-rate products and content solely on the basis of whether things were to their tastes, their political or other identity alignments, and sometimes what mood they're in. Example 1, example 2, example 3.
And finally, there are those (I include myself) who occasionally love trash for its own campy sake.
The IMDB recommendation algorithm has become terrible, when it used to be good.
Keanu Reeves was in Hardball - a film about an adult who makes bad decisions ending up coaching a child sports team. There are literally dozens of these, so you'd think IMDB would have plenty to put in the "more like this", but they don't. They fill it with more Keanu Reeves films.
I also love a bit of trash sometimes. :)
(I just finished watching this series of movies yesterday.)
It sounds like you’re specifically saying “don’t trust online reviews that are served from the same site as the seller”, would you say that’s right?
I’m realizing I have a pretty complicated mental formula for whether I trust an online review around how specific the details are, whether the poster seems to have reviewed other things, the “right” length, where the review is hosted, and whether positive and negative feedback is intertwined.
Originally, yes.
However, in light of @kfwyre's comment, I'd expand that to "don't trust online reviews that can be influenced by the seller in any way".
I too once foolishly trusted online reviews. I still do, but I used to, too.
I needed to replace the ancient clothes washer that I couldn't repair. Only one washer would fit in the limited space. A local brick and mortar hardware store had a large number of online reviews for that specific washer, a few very negative, but mostly very positive. A quick google turned up nothing overly negative. I thought it seemed legit.
Worst purchase ever. The clothes got unbelievably wrinkled. Sheets were constantly getting tangled up in the agitator in a gordian knot. It ripped holes in towels and sheets and clothes. It once started agitating so wildly, the device started walking along the floor. The absolute worst thing? It was completely incapable of washing even the simplest stains out of any item of clothing. It wasn't until I washed a white t-shirt while traveling that I realized how bad my washer really was.
When I searched deeper, I found a number of online reviews for same make, similar model, mentioning all these problems and more. The manufacturer kept revising the models, and each seller had a distinct model number. Amazon was the only site to have a very low consumer score for what effectively appeared to be the same machine. Amazon doesn't manually screen the reviews.
I still relied on online reviews to find another washer, but I started with reddit, looking for what appliance repair men recommended. I narrowed my options down to either a top loading Speed Queen, or the more risky front loading maytag. I figured out how to enlarge my space so that either option would work.
The thing that confuses me was that the hardware store clearly allowed some negative reviews. Now I am posting my own negative reviews on various hardware stores to see if they get posted.