Contributor
I look at the reviews and check the negative ones. Some of the negative ones are for ridiculous reasons.
I have NOCO jump starter and it is very well made. I have used it a couple of times especially to start some yard equipment. When I got mine, it did not have any incentive for doing a review. I did a review and rated it 5 stars. I think a poster on this thread just made a wild statement about them
Contributor
Time to vent, but my next annoyance is those that answer a question but provide nothing useful. For example, someone asks if the widget can do this, and someone responds that they don't know. Contributes absolutely nothing of value. Just think how useless the Q&A would be if everyone who bought an item responded to questions even if they don't know the answer to what is being asked.
Contributor
What you are overlooking is that if you have purchased an item, you may get an email from Amazon asking a question from a potential buyer. If you don't know the answer you can chose to ignore the email or respond "I don't know". I have answered "I don't know" rather than ignore it. If I recall Amazon may publish your response, you don't. Lee posted earlier that Amazon doesn't allow the seller to answer question, that, to me, seems dumb. I've often seen listings where, for example, it is unclear how many units are included. The listing may say one number in one place and another number elsewhere, who better than the seller to clarify it.Originally Posted by Mark Wedel
My pet peeve is people who give an item 5 stars because it arrived quickly and undamaged and then go on to say they haven't used it yet. They distort the rating for the product by rating the purchasing experience, two completely separate things.
Contributor
I like Amazon. I won’t be doing any commercials for them . Never had a problem with Amazon. Nice hardworking people bring our
new supplies right up to the door ,then ring the doorbell and leave. Once we got some stuff we did not order, sent message to them ,they
thanked us and told us to keep it. Yes , a rich guy owns it , that’s fine with me.
Contributor
I never read the reviews. And I never buy a new brand of beer because a paid model sitting at a fake bar says , “ This is great beer !”
Contributor
I certainly agree with your comment about paid models which I'll expand to what is called "influencers". If somebody like George Clooney wants to tell me how to act then it probably is worth listening too if I want to act. George Clooney's advice on which investment, coffee or anything else is worth nothing.
OTOH, I find reading reviews does have some merit if you read with a degree of common sense. Somebody's comment may bring to light some aspect of the product that you never thought of and if more than a couple say it fell apart in a month then maybe it isn't so great.
Contributor
I ordered flat lefsa from Amazon. I should have read the reviews before ordering. When it arrived half was broken and unusable as intended. When I tried to return it I was told the return window had closed December 31, 2023. There was no way to leave a review. After the fact, I read the reviews and sure enough, many complained for poor shipping and pieces being broken up.
Contributor
That being said George has some good tequila. Great in a Tequila Mule
Contributor
As well as paying for reviews that tout their own product, companies (in countries that don't enforce libel laws) can also pay for reviews that blast their competitors.
Contributor
I love all the people who write 1 star reviews for the stupidest reasons that have nothing to do with the product. "The item was a day late so it screwed up my weekend plans." "The product arrived damaged." "XXX happened so please contact me about this."
These are supposed to be reviews of the product, not customer service complaints. Reviews are not going to get someone to contact you about a customer service issue.
Contributor
I will look at the reviews on many items, concentrating on the negative reviews. I look for a trend on those negative reviews and agree that many of those negative reviews provide little to no pertinent information.
There can be some positives with reviews talking about shipping damage though. If you see a lot of those complaints, the seller/shipper may be the cause of the damage, not the transporter.
Clint
Contributor
The one problem I have with reviews related to shipping and packaging is that they often don't say who they bought it from. Many times, a given product is sold by a dozen different vendors. Some do their own shipping, others have amazon do the fulfillment. It may be that one company of that dozen does a lousy job packaging the stuff, and the other 11 do a fine job, but if I don't know which is which, not a lot to go on.
If it is fulfilled by amazon, I have a bit higher confidence that it will be packaged correctly, and if not, amazon will correct the problem. Third party seller may be more of a crapshoot.
Contributor
I'm not sure that Amazon does that great a job of packing items to avoid damage. I'm sure many remember when Amazon used to pack items in boxes way too large, and then threw in a minimum of packing material. These days, many items arrive in plastic bags with no padding at all. I guess the good news is I can't recall having anything damaged in years, but it certainly isn't the packaging that is stopping the damage. Amazon has been under fire from environmentalists for using so much packaging so they keep reducing packaging.
One thing I like about boxes versus the plastic packaging is boxes are easily recyclable, while plastic packaging is not. I like the paper padded envelopes that Amazon sometimes uses as they are recyclable.
Contributor
I think if amazon delivers it (vs UPS or USPS), their handling of the package might be kinder so it may be that the packaging in that case is not as important. The one damaged product I got from amazon was because the person packaging it did a poor job (and amazon refunded me the full value of the product - a case of catfood, of which only 20% or so was damaged, so I can't really complain much about that).
Amazon delivers enough packages that one would think they know how to package them to avoid damage (or damage at a low enough rate to be worthwhile). And since in many cases, they are handling the delivery, the cost for larger or different packaging might be different than a third party seller who is handing it off to UPS and may then want to minimize packaging costs, at the expense of damage which they then try to not take responsibility for.
Contributor
I think Amazon uses a computer program to decide what size box to use and how much packing material. I would even expect at this point to have a portion done by machine vs a human. Since I get so many packages from them I'm always surprised by how things are packed. There's rarely any thought about packing heavy items with light stuff. It's like they assume that the box will never get flipped upside down and the heavy object will always be on the bottom. Most likely an accountant figured it's cheaper to replace damage items than spend more time packaging things better.
I just received a radiator that was in it's own box inside an Amazon box that was at least 4 times the size of the factory box. No padding at all. It was the only thing inside the box. You could see lots of wear from the box sliding around inside the bigger box. But it made it. What bothers me is when a company that makes something can't be bothered to create good packaging for their product. Far too often the box breaks open and parts get scattered inside the bigger box. Since the bigger box usually isn't taped shut that well those parts get spread all across UPS's shipping locations.
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