JULY 2021 T 3 27Opinionast month was Amazon
Prime Day, so that has
fired the starting gun
for the next big sales
event, which will be Black Friday,
followed by Cyber Monday, then
the pre-Christmas sales, then the
Boxing Day sales, the New Year
sales and, eventually, with the
death of you, me and everything
on this planet. It’s an inspiring
thought! Apart from the bit about
me dying obviously.
I regularly shop on Amazon, as I
enjoy its mix of low prices, excellent
customer service and obviously
made-up reviews. When I was
shopping around for some good
deals this Amazon Prime Day- both to potentially buy myself,
and to write about for our website - I was struck once again by just
how much blatantly false bullshit
there is amidst Amazon’s reviews.
Now, we can all have a good
laugh about a review of £1 0
headphones made by a company
called something like ‘Ghwanhhhg’
or ‘Zreeb’ that says, “These sound
like magic being poured into my
ears! Easily better than rubbish
Bose! A must buy!” But when you’re
shopping for real bargains, it is a
big pain in the ass. And a pain that
is only made worse by fake reviews.
Actually, the non-fake reviews
often aren’t much better. Having
a high ranking from users has
become an obsession online, for
everything from headphones to
holiday cottages, but the whole
process of online reviewing is
intrinsically flawed. This is due to
three particular types of online
reviewer. Let me name and shame
them for you now.- Complainers.
“I bought this and it
didn’t work. One star.”
Okay, the one you got didn’t
work, but let’s go with the
assumption that whatever brand
made this doesn’t only send out
non-working products. If the one
you got didn’t work, send it back
and Amazon will send you a new
one that does, I promise you.
- Complainers.
- Over-enthusiasts. Of course,
lots of 5-star reviews are fake. But
are the non-fake 5 -star reviews
written by people who have clearly
not a solitary clue what they are
going on about any better? Sure,
we get that you bought one model
of laptop/headphones/dog basket
out of the 5 bazillion available and
you want us to know you bought
no bass”,
when I know
that they are plenty bassy and
extremely comfortable.
I have developed a system for
dealing with online reviews that
would be foolproof if it wasn’t for
people such as these. You just
ignore ALL the one-star reviews
and ALL the 5 -star ones, and take
an average of what’s left to give the
true rating. The problem with my
system is that most folks only want
to tell you when something has
gone horribly wrong, or when they
have bought something they are
super happy about. Outside of a
handful of people with way too
much time on their hands, who can
be bothered to sit down and pen a
3-star or even 4-star review?
So the issue is that if you ignore
the one-star whingers and 5-star
boosterists, you’re usually left with
about nine reviews to take an
average from. I still maintain it’s a
fairly effective system with certain
products though.
The other system I use a lot is to
just ignore user reviews entirely and
buy reasonably expensive stuff
from brands I’ve actually heard of. If
you get an expensive version of any
given thing, it’ll usually be a better
purchase in the long run than
buying a cheapo one; I don’t think
I’m exactly breaking the Official
Secrets Act by revealing that.“I enjoy Amazon’s mixof lowprices, excellentcustomerservice andmade-up reviews”what you think is the best one. Have
you tried the other 4.9 99999
bazillion ones available? No? Then
STFU. 3 or 4 stars are perfectly
positive scores.- Idiots in general. I have read so
many Amazon reviews of products
I am intimately familiar with that
contain claims that are objectively
not true. Sure, opinions are
subjective, but I have seen
reviewers say, “These headphones
made my ears bleed and they have
LDuncan Bell is
in his Prime
Amazonsends us gloriousthings
while driving us quietly crazy