Friday, November 14, 2008

Product Review!

I do a lot of shopping on the internets.  Amazon is one of my favorite stores because of the product reviews attached to most products.  Especially when I am looking at something new to me, I like to read the reviews and see what other people think about a product.  It definitely affects my purchase decision.  

Then I started to think about who writes these reviews.  There is no incentive to write a review.  If I buy something, get it, and like it.  I have no reason to take my time running back to Amazon to tell everyone about it.  I'd be too busy playing with my new toy!  Now, if I get my product and do NOT like it, there may be some incentive to get back on Amazon and write a negative review.  I would be the first one to tell everyone that, "the lights aren't bright enough, the buttons not click-y enough, and the vibrating parts aren't vibrate-y enough!"   Writing a negative review gives you some power over getting ripped off.  Your intent is to kill the sales of that product.  Besides, if your new toy sucks that much, you aren't doing anything else, so you might as well get back on Amazon and find something else.  

The way to get more people to participate would be a system that reminds me of Ebay.  A week after you get your product, Amazon sends you an email asking for feedback on the item.  You should be able to reply to that email, without going to the website, and as you send your comments, theyare added to the product review.  

I have never written a review and I'm curious how many of you have.  That's why I created a poll at the top of the blog.  Take a second to click a few more times before you move on today.  

7 comments:

rakethetable said...

I do write good and bad reviews.

d e v a n said...

I LOVE Amazon and write tons of good and bad reviews.

jen said...

I'm a dork and I write long helpful reviews just for fun when I'm bored or stuck at the computer while nursing. You gotta problem with dat? :)

I'm more inclined to write a review when I'm really happy/not happy with something but sometimes if something is lacking in reviews I'll fill in.

Duck Hunter said...

based on your comments and the poll results so far, it seems I'm the only one not typing reviews. I appreciate all of you putting reviews up...it really does help. Maybe I'll try writing one some day.

Poptart said...

Do they sell pickles?

Aaron said...

Maybe I should send my vibrator back, it doesn't have any lights!

Anonymous said...

I write both good and bad reviews. It helps pass the time. Plus, if I'm unhappy with the item, I want everyone to know!!

Some reviews crack me up though. Like this one for the Aero Garden:

Easy assembly and directions, nice looking unit. The light is INSANELY BRIGHT - we put it on the bartop and it was like having the Arc of the freaking Covenant in the kitchen. It's good for eliminating Nazis from your cooking area as a bonus, I guess. I mean, it almost completely illuminated a 1 bedroom apartment. The pictures make it look like it's a nice, warm, soft and comforting glow; in reality, it's the glow of importing a firey stellar object made of nuclear gasses into your home. So... You may want to have a bigger space where you can put it someplace a little out of the way. Someplace like deep space, where you can bask comfortably in its rays and perhaps provide life-giving solar energy to another as yet barren, cold planet.

It's very quiet, though. Has a nice little water trickly noise if you're nearby, not enough to be distracting whatsoever.

The seed kits are a ripoff hands-down. I ordered an extra one, the "salsa" cherry tomato and jalapeno kit - twenty dollars nets you three pods with seeds and four plastic spacer plugs to stop up the other slots. For twenty dollars I can buy enough tomatos and jalapenos to live on a really boring but spicy salsa for like a week solid, even with organic produce. As an aside, they forgot to include any of the actual nutrient tablets with my extra kit, so I'll be calling customer service. Finally, they greatly over-packaged the seed kit in an attempt to make it look like it's really more than it is for the money.

After all that, for being a holy object, the source of all life on Earth, a made-for-TV scam, and the potential bringer of small quantities of edible greenery, it's kind of a neat toy, which is really why I bought it in the first place. Make of that what you will. I give it a noncommittal three stars, possibly to change dependent on herbal outcome.