Do you believe online user reviews?

by Rosalyn Page  |  Thursday 17 February 2011
Do you believe online user reviews?

How much are you influenced by the positive and negative online comments and feedback from other users when you're researching new things to buy?

If you shop online, then you probably do a bit of research on different websites. This means that you might read testimonials or comments from other users on websites or Facebook pages that belong to the shopping site.

But the court of public opinion online can be notoriously unreliable when it comes to both good and bad reviews, and there are a couple of examples of this happening at the moment.

As most savvy online shoppers know, it’s important to research a website before taking the plunge and buying something as many forums contain feedback from other buyers and can alert you to potential problems such as delivery, warranty, refunds and so on.

But what if the comments are fake?

If a business uses public testimonials or other comments on its Facebook page, website, YouTube videos or via Twitter pages it is responsible if they are false, misleading or deceptive. It may not be responsible for the initial publication of the fake comments, but they must be removed according to the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC). The regulator took action against a company and its been fined for the practice and ordered to publish corrective advertising.

While this case relates to positive reviews, bad reviews can also cause headaches. In the US, travel site TripAdvisor is threatened with being sued because of bad reviews and has had to defend accusations that its reviews and opinions are not written by real travellers. Hotels, restaurants and other travel providers are unhappy that their businesses can be tarnished by bad reviews and want to take action against what they see as unfair, unbalanced, inaccurate or even defamatory reviews.

How much are you influenced by the positive comments and feedback on web sites?

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Comments: 8
kevin_watters
17 February 2011
 Similar things happen with magazines that review products made by companies they provide advertising space for. A bad review may impact on the company negatively and thus they pull their paid advertisements. As a result, a positive review is made, even if the product does not deserve it.

This happened to me with a 'reviewed' .MP3 player (that happened to be advertised in the printed version of the magaine). The review was glowing ! The product was absolute junk ! It had features missing that were 'reviewed' (only one model).

Since then I do not rely on reviews from that magazine.

The magazines name is one that readers here will know.


Comment made about the PC & Tech Authority article:
Do you believe online user reviews??
How much are you influenced by the positive and negative online comments and feedback from other users when you're researching new things to buy?

What do you think? Join the discussion.
afrogers
17 February 2011
 Believing the comments made, I think, is determined by where they are situated. I would probably believe in comments made in, for example, Whirlpool Forum, or probably most forums. However, a comment made and posted in the website belonging to the maker or seller of the product would be suspect. Magazines that review products I would believe, as they have more to lose than just advertising revenue.
Sputnik
17 February 2011
 It depends. Even places like Amazon where products are reviewed. If you went out and bought a $3000 plasma TV would you really pan it? You'd look a bit like a fool.

Sites like TripAdvisor, you often wonder if staff from reviewed hotels are logging in and doing glowing reviews of their own hotels and poor reviews on the competition.

Independent generic sites seem the best, like an screen/hifi site where reviews of multiple systems are done by their own staff. Choice is another good one and as mentioned above, Whirlpool. (Because if you post lies you're quickly found out and shamed).
Rallygreg
17 February 2011
 Testimonials from users on a companies website always need to be looked at hard - you wont see the big companies (genuine) doing this.

As for reviews, I do respect information on computers that I find at sites like Toms Hardware or AnandTech and this website of course. Forums like Whirlpool can be very good sources of information but you need to sort the chaff from the wheat as some products get bagged severely by one or two users when there may in fact be 1,000's of users who are happy and have nothing to say - heck I have a top end Billion modem which I think is junk compared to others I have but have said nothing about it online because I'm not sure yet if it is in fact a faulty modem, but I'm sure most users would have given it a thumbs down big time.

There are also many websites dedicated to providing reviews of products that they sell or are paid by - do a search for something like Anti Virus reviews and see how many dodgy sites you get.
Haratu
17 February 2011
 I find that often the reviews are done well, but the ratings (stars, etc) are off. I have a suspicion that many reviewers cover their rear ends by giving a well balanced review, but then giving a high rating in order to keep the brand happy with them to supply further gear and support. this means that even if the written review is bad, the company is happy to publish the high rating.
Interestingly the only balanced reviews I see for hardware is in software magazines/sites, and the only balanced software reviews I see are in hardware magazines/sites.

Personally I enjoy you-tube for the best reviews, you can see the product, there is usually several people showing it off, and you minimise suprises alot. Sure the people on you-tube are often not professionals, but many of them are just doing it for popularity, not a paycheck. They need trust, trust they have to earn.
Palm
17 February 2011
kevin_watters wrote:

Since then I do not rely on reviews from that magazine.


You partly provided a solution to the problem. Maybe we should ask ourselves: "Would a respected magazine allow itself to give a poor or misleading review?" People would soon realize that a particular magazine or an online website gives scam reviews and will not trust it anymore. Where there's no trust, there is no money and that magazine or website would not survive. Thus, a good magazine would care about well and objective reviews.

If a review of a certain product interests me, I look on how trusted this source is, and I do it by looking online, by examining users and comments (if it is an online resource), and even how often articles are updated, because junk sites don't update many articles because they don't have many people to write for, for a simple reason: people don't trust them, and don't visit them.

There are clues to help you determine if a source is respectable or not. No matter how many advertisers are presented on magazine pages, there wouldn't be many advertisers if magazine gives misleading reviews, simply because there wouldn't be many people to read that magazine.

If people don't get what they are promised, they leave and together with them leaves their money, and no one can afford that.


Edited by palm: 17/2/2011 09:57:21 PM

Edited by palm: 17/2/2011 09:58:14 PM
.:Cyb3rGlitch:.
18 February 2011
 I cross reference reviews. It helps to iron out bias.
rubaiyat
18 February 2011
 …only if I wrote them.
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