Every little thing I buy, within a couple weeks is followed by an email asking me to leave a review. For EVERYTHING! WTF do they do with their billions of reviews?
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wrote last edited by [email protected]
I want to start telling all these companies to leave me the f*** alone. I bought their product & I didn't complain & I didn't return it. Isn't that good enough for them??
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I want to start telling all these companies to leave me the f*** alone. I bought their product & I didn't complain & I didn't return it. Isn't that good enough for them??
I assume they're fishing for data and active email accounts. If someone replies with a review, they know it's an active, monitored email address and can sell it for a better price.
Block and delete.
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I want to start telling all these companies to leave me the f*** alone. I bought their product & I didn't complain & I didn't return it. Isn't that good enough for them??
They pick and choose the good reviews and mix in a few medium reviews to sell more products
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I want to start telling all these companies to leave me the f*** alone. I bought their product & I didn't complain & I didn't return it. Isn't that good enough for them??
Why are you giving away your email? Use a throwaway.
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I want to start telling all these companies to leave me the f*** alone. I bought their product & I didn't complain & I didn't return it. Isn't that good enough for them??
Set up an email filter that removes emails that contain "leave a review".
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I want to start telling all these companies to leave me the f*** alone. I bought their product & I didn't complain & I didn't return it. Isn't that good enough for them??
how do you buy stuff online? do you read reviews on the big shopping platforms?
back in the day reviews were a good and honest way to find out if a product is usable. the idea was that normal people do honest reviews and other people can use that as a guidance.
this was probably true for some years, until the system got rigged: users were payed to take bad reviews offline, or users are payed to post good reviews. simple products with good reviews got exchanged with cheap complex products, so the reviews seemed to be for that product.
what you see is one part of this system: a seller is asking you to do free advertisement for them.
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I want to start telling all these companies to leave me the f*** alone. I bought their product & I didn't complain & I didn't return it. Isn't that good enough for them??
If they want reviews on any service that relies on an algorithm it is to improve their rating and therefore visibility. Advertising essentially.
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I want to start telling all these companies to leave me the f*** alone. I bought their product & I didn't complain & I didn't return it. Isn't that good enough for them??
Good user reviews simulate word of mouth advertising which is the most valuable sort. They want free labour from you to help with that. This would be a great application for a spam filter.
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I want to start telling all these companies to leave me the f*** alone. I bought their product & I didn't complain & I didn't return it. Isn't that good enough for them??
get an email address just for spam, which you can mostly/fully ignore, and use your main email only for more important things.
alternatively, if giving them your email is completely unnecessary, use a throwaway like one of those "10 minute email" things.
::: spoiler i haven't tested the functionality below:
i think some services support writing your email as
username+<text goes here>@provider.urlso you can do[email protected]and the mail will appear in a separate folder in your email client.
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I want to start telling all these companies to leave me the f*** alone. I bought their product & I didn't complain & I didn't return it. Isn't that good enough for them??
Its called continuous development. Or data driven business strategy. Its all about getting mass amounts of data for a range of products seeing what people like and don't like and refining/improving to make it better. That's just the way to stay ahead of the Darwinian marketplace of consumerism.
Its a loop of make, get feedback, refine, remake, repeat. Forever cos line must go up.
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I want to start telling all these companies to leave me the f*** alone. I bought their product & I didn't complain & I didn't return it. Isn't that good enough for them??
Lucky you, I get asked to leave a review before delivery on the regular. One company called me after leaving a negative review, asking why I would do that when the goods weren't even delivered.
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Its called continuous development. Or data driven business strategy. Its all about getting mass amounts of data for a range of products seeing what people like and don't like and refining/improving to make it better. That's just the way to stay ahead of the Darwinian marketplace of consumerism.
Its a loop of make, get feedback, refine, remake, repeat. Forever cos line must go up.
Very well then. But I really doubt actual real humans are reading ALL those millions of reviews(?) and care about all the repetitive same feedback over and over. Does anybody know anyone whose job it is to read reviews all day long 8 hours a day 40 hours a week? Ugh
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Good user reviews simulate word of mouth advertising which is the most valuable sort. They want free labour from you to help with that. This would be a great application for a spam filter.
Is leaving a review really free labor? I view it more as community building. Nobody has reviews shoved down their throat without asking, they are sought out and helpful for the consumer. And so sellers like reviews because consumers like reviews and it makes them more likely to patronize their business.
I enjoy leaving good reviews. Helps my fellow humans find quality things that I enjoyed and helps the business I like make more things I like. It's a win win win situation. This is especially true for small business, many of which live or die on reviews.
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They pick and choose the good reviews and mix in a few medium reviews to sell more products
I never trust reviews on first-party sites. However, reviews on other sites can be very helpful. Maybe not yelp lol.
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Is leaving a review really free labor? I view it more as community building. Nobody has reviews shoved down their throat without asking, they are sought out and helpful for the consumer. And so sellers like reviews because consumers like reviews and it makes them more likely to patronize their business.
I enjoy leaving good reviews. Helps my fellow humans find quality things that I enjoyed and helps the business I like make more things I like. It's a win win win situation. This is especially true for small business, many of which live or die on reviews.
It's definitely free labour. Even if you don't mind doing it, it's still that. As for the rest, I'm sympathetic to your point of view. I have used reviews and occasionally left reviews on products I liked particularly.
However, online reviews are so gamed at this point that I don't think anyone ought to feel pressured to leave a review like they try to do with the emails OP is receiving. It's one thing to like a product so much you are moved to leave a review. It's another to be asked for it every time you purchase something. -
I assume they're fishing for data and active email accounts. If someone replies with a review, they know it's an active, monitored email address and can sell it for a better price.
Block and delete.
No, the sellers already have the email address, that's how they ask for reviews. It is simply the way the current internet works: reviews are king, but if the bought thing works as expected most people don't leave a review, while people with problems are much more likely to leave a bad review. So sending an email asking for reviews is cheap as hell and one of the easiest way to boost their reviews, because if even only every 10th person leaves an "everything is fine", that boosts their numbers immensely. And after 1 or 2 weeks, chances are that the big draw backs and failures didn't manifest yet. So also increasing the good to bad review ratio.
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Very well then. But I really doubt actual real humans are reading ALL those millions of reviews(?) and care about all the repetitive same feedback over and over. Does anybody know anyone whose job it is to read reviews all day long 8 hours a day 40 hours a week? Ugh
Nobody reads them all. U run some advanced data analysis on it. Many reviews helps that.
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No, the sellers already have the email address, that's how they ask for reviews. It is simply the way the current internet works: reviews are king, but if the bought thing works as expected most people don't leave a review, while people with problems are much more likely to leave a bad review. So sending an email asking for reviews is cheap as hell and one of the easiest way to boost their reviews, because if even only every 10th person leaves an "everything is fine", that boosts their numbers immensely. And after 1 or 2 weeks, chances are that the big draw backs and failures didn't manifest yet. So also increasing the good to bad review ratio.
Fair, but I still think an email address they got a response from is of higher value for them to sell than an unmonitored junk email address as well.
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No, the sellers already have the email address, that's how they ask for reviews. It is simply the way the current internet works: reviews are king, but if the bought thing works as expected most people don't leave a review, while people with problems are much more likely to leave a bad review. So sending an email asking for reviews is cheap as hell and one of the easiest way to boost their reviews, because if even only every 10th person leaves an "everything is fine", that boosts their numbers immensely. And after 1 or 2 weeks, chances are that the big draw backs and failures didn't manifest yet. So also increasing the good to bad review ratio.
if the bought thing works as expected most people donโt leave a review, while people with problems are much more likely to leave a bad review
That's a good point, though maybe a better way for retailers to deal with that would be to use the percentage of sold items that are associated by a review as an input into a ranking. I mean, maybe "no reviews, lots of items sold" should be used to indicate that an item is favorable rather than neutral.
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I never trust reviews on first-party sites. However, reviews on other sites can be very helpful. Maybe not yelp lol.
I still find ratings/reviews on Amazon to be at least somewhat useful. A horrible product generally won't have a 4.8-5.0 rating
