ARCHIVED FORUM -- March 2012 to February 2022READ ONLY FORUM
This is the second Archived Forum which was active between 1st March 2012 and 23rd February 2022
Not aimed at B&O in particular, but what is the general feeling about user reviews such as those submitted to Amazon, or to department stores like John Lewis in the UK?
I would say that a good 50% of negative comments are really associated with the buyers ineptitude or failure to follow instructions.... such people usually give a rating of maybe one star out of five to the product when really it is themselves they are rating. I've concluded that the overall star ratings in all these review systems are meaningless and you have to drill down and try to eliminate both the negatives I've just described, and at the other extreme, the 'Fan Boy' reviews of individuals who are so in love with a manufacturer that they will give everything that they make 5 stars.
Graham
4 beolab 5, beolab 9, beolab 10, beolab 5000, beolab 8000 mk2, beolab 6002, beolab 3500, beovision 7 55 mk2, 2 beovision 11 46 mk4, beotime, beosound ouverture, beosound essence, beoplay A8, beomaster 900 RG de luxe and the collection continues...
Spot on Graham.
if you look at reviews on the French Amazon site, it shows how particularly inept some people are. If you actually read the reviews, they can be glowing in praise about the service and the item yet they only give 1 star! Bizarre, but I see this every time I look at reviews on there.
You can pick out the ones who give 5 stars no matter what, and the opposite, where if the postal service has been slow (through no fault of a seller who posted it on the day of sale) they give 1 star which is not a review of the product nor the seller. I just ignore those and use a bit of common sense.
It's the same with any review system from eBay, Amazon, Trip Advisor etc. They are all open to abuse by users and the companies involved. I once left a really good review at the request of Trip Advisore about a hotel I stayed in last year. It never reached publication. This particularly upset the hotel owner who thought I'd snubbed them!
I do look at the negative comments just to gauge the accuracy and frequency of comments (failures/breakdowns of products/customer service by a company). They can be revealing and useful.
Dave.
yep I'm with you on this Graham too and always read the reviews in mass then take them with a pinch of salt. The only John Lewis review I take seriously is when someone posts "I bought a large and it came up like a medium"
Flip this on its the head I bought a BeoSound Century due to all the fanboy comments and I'm happily blown away
we tend to forget there is more to design than designing.
I find them really useful and tend to go by them - but I think you are spot on in that some of them are ineptitude by the user, i.e buying something and expecting it do one thing when it is designed for something else.
I recently bought a walkman (for learning french as its better on cassette for me) from Amazon and it was a load of rubbish, hummed like made and didn't work - so will buy another that has user reviews.
Mind you I guess a bit like ebay what is good faulty or sounds excellent to one person will be poor quality to someone else or sound awful. Guess the point being that they provide an indicator to the product rather than an accurate guideline.
Veet for Men on Amazon has plenty of 5 Star reviews
Mark: Veet for Men on Amazon has plenty of 5 Star reviews
Yes but the customer questions at the bottom are hysterical - a much better read! I'm surprised Amazon haven't removed them yet! Made my afternoon. I'm moving a BV5 to where an Avant used to be and sorting all of the cables out and it's driving me mad! (Pentas, Playmaker and BL4000's, DVD player, Ouverture and sat box). I hate doing this bit.