Wednesday, February 9, 2011

Take On Amazon Reviews

Like many American's I do a lot of my shopping online between Amazon, Woot Overstock, Kodakgallery and FreshDirect I can get anything from electronics, pictures, groceries, diapers and a wine fridge delivered to my house for prices which are more than reasonable.   of course with any online operation you are putting faith into somebody else's hands.   You are depending and trusting the website to put out good products and although they usually offer a money-back guarantee if you get burned you are not as likely to come back.  But the best repercussion you always have is word-of-mouth.  If a company disappoints you then you will tell friends and colleagues about the negative experience which is death for a retailer especially one who cannot ever make a personal impression on you.
To combat this and to give people comfort there are often these areas for customer reviews which allow you to comment on an item you purchased.  In theory a natural community forms which helps fellow customers weed through the countless retailers on a place like Amazon.  The issue is that unless you have a really polarizing experience (good or bad) you really are never going to spend time writing up some lame review.
Well Amazon now sends out reminders and requests for reviews of items you bought and for somebody who easily buys 10 items per month online this becomes a daunting task.   Nobody asks me to review a cup of soup I buy at the deli or paper towels I buy at Rite Aid but in Amazon's world they pester you to review every last thing.
My biggest issue is that although some items are specialty items which might warrant a well thought out review the average purchase it completely mundane.
I just bought a bunch of Tassimo Coffee (went the Amazon route vs th Tassimo.com route after that last time)  and today Amazon is asking for a review with ratings on how satisfied I am.
What the hell should I say???  I ordered an item and paid for it and they delivered it.  I am not overly satisfied'and I am not disappointed I am just happy I got my coffee delivered..   I don't feel like they are owed anything more than a standard yes/no review.  Nothing made the experience exceptional or even noteworthy but I know the way people scan these things and if a retailer doesn't get 5 stars they are assumed to be bad.  I'm not hoping to put anybody out of business but don't feel like as a customer I should be doing backflips either.
 
 

Sent from my Verizon Wireless BlackBerry

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