[cbd7f73]

Reviews are worth a lot to sellers.

So much so that if you leave a 1-star review, there's a good chance you'll eventually get an email asking you to remove the 1-star review in exchange for a refund, a giftcard worth the price of the product, etc.

It encourages bad behavior though; You can basically gamble on what sellers will send you that email and thus give you the product for free.

[thewebcount]

I once bought an O-ring for my blender. It's literally a 1cm-wide circle of rubber with a diameter of about 2 inches. It has 1 job - keep liquid from leaking out the bottom of the blender.

The day after I received it, the company sent me an email asking me to please please please rate my new product!

Fine! I gave it 3 stars and wrote, "It's an O-ring. It does exactly what I expected it to and nothing more."

The next day I get an email saying, "We see you gave our product a 3-star review. What can we do to improve our product? What didn't you like about our product?"

WTF? It's a goddamn O-ring! There's nothing to review beyond "it works" or "it doesn't." What the heck do you want me to say about it? No O-ring is ever going to be 5 stars. Sorry! That's just the nature of the product.

At this point, it's just harassment. Stop begging for my approval, and especially when I give you my opinion, please don't question me about why. I explained it in the review.

[danem]

With the way I look at the review system, an O-Ring certainly could be worthy of 5 stars. By rating something like an O-Ring less than 5 you are implicitly saying that there are better o-rings out there, and that this one could be better. I don't see a rating for a given product as a comparison against all possible other products.

[JohnFen]

Yeah, this sort of discrepancy in the way that people think of ratings is why I no longer give or pay attention to ratings.

[kalleboo]

If I saw an O-ring with less than 4.5 stars on Amazon, I would assume it's due to piles of 1-star ratings due to it leaking, being the wrong size, etc.

If there is no conceivable way a product could be improved, it's worth 5 stars.

[sharmi]

An O ring, just took a few minutes from your life when it malfunctioned. It took a few more mins when you had to search and place the order.

It took some more when you received it and fitted in your blender.

If it did not do its job well enough then you will have to go through this cycle all over again. I have gone through that hassle enough times to hate it, even though amazon tries to be as helpful as possible.

That there itself is worth 5 stars or atleast 4.

Beyond that not all manufacturers care about our satisfaction. If some one does and wants to improve, it should be appreciated

[JohnFen]

> there's a good chance you'll eventually get an email asking you to remove the 1-star review in exchange

Wow. I've never given an Amazon product a 1 star review, but if I did, and I got such an email, I would absolutely update my review to warn everyone that this is happening, and that the real average review for the product is likely to be lower than is shown.

[sgerenser]

I assume many people take the bait. I recently updated my review to warn people what the seller was up to after I gave a 1 star review on a defective third party Apple Watch charger. The seller had contacted me three times to get me to remove my 1 star review.