Rating Services - Caveat

[ChiliPepr]

I often wondered why such busy establishments got reviewed highly. If I have to wait 40minutes for my reservation, and another 40 before the food shows up, it's certainly not a 5star experience. Yet these trendy places have lines out the door waiting.

Waiting 40 minuted for a reservation anywhere would certainly drop the rating. As for waiting 40 minutes for "the food", that is a bit different, was it 40 minuted to the main course with apps in the middle? Higher end restaurants definitely go with the 2-3 hour meal, where the lower ones try to "churn and burn", get you order in and apps and food out in 10 minutes so you are out the door in an hour so they can seat more tables.

When I go to a top restaurant and need to be out at a certain time I make a point to tell the server that. Usually they will accommodate and have me out on time. Some higher end places will never drop the check until you ask for it.

 

[Blue Collar Guy]

For a good laugh, check out these:

One Star Yelp reviews of National Parks
Responses to one star Yelp reviews
One star Yelp reviews of Texas Landmarks
The restaurant that wants to be the worst on Yelp

i love 1 star reviews, every time i see an as seen on tv item i want to buy it. the bride looks up the reviews, finds the worst ones and reads them to me, we howl with laughter, usually i dont buy it.

 

[JoeWras]

So let me get this straight - you gave a 1 star bad review on a product, and the manufacturer went out of its way to try and make it right, even sending you more software.....and you are pissed

If only half of companies acted like that one did, there would be many more satisfied customers!

I thought he was annoyed because his experience was 1 star, he rated it honestly, and the company pursued him to get him to change his honest rating due to their subsequent actions.
Or maybe I am chopping logic?

I wish you were all in my brain so it was obvious.

I'm sorry, wrote that too fast. Let me explain.

I got a little hardware/software USB nub to implement bluetooth on my PC.

It only intermittently worked. It was frustrating.

They sent me a new one. Still no go. Then they started a string of emails like this: "Try this setting in Windows. Try this setting. How about this one?"

Still no go.

Then, "Try this alpha driver we have. Please." I did. Still no go.

I was willing to do all this. I'm a tech guy, I get it. But it wasn't working.

They kept telling me "I'm the only one." However, evidence of other reviews said otherwise. I kept trying. After a while, I said I'd had enough.

But they kept sending me mail: "Please try this. Please don't give us a bad review."

By then, I had enough. I was basically becoming their product tester.

Sorry I wasn't clear about this. In summary, they tried to help, but could not. It seemed they felt that their effort was enough to demand 5 stars.

 

[JoeWras]

I should add that the Big Box people I review for don't allow me to edit reviews. In some cases, this is good because it avoids the back and forth I mentioned above.

But in other cases, if a product fails at month 3, I cannot update the review! I'm thinking of creating an alter-ego identity to capture my products that fail after a while (I've only had a few).

 

[Blue Collar Guy]

I tried to leave a mediocre review for dollar shave club, they did not post it. I went to amazon to post it.

 

[ohyes]

Absolutely. I like TripAdvisor and have contributed a couple hundred reviews to it myself. I try to be as detailed and specific as possible, and only compare anything to very similar places.

When I read others' reviews on TA, I make it a point to read through as many as possible. I agree that it's usually pretty easy to separate the wheat from the chaff.

That is also the way with me. TripAdvisor and vrbo are the only two reviewing sites I frequent. I read through many, many reviews before making a decision. With restaurants, the final choice may be considerably down on the list. I focus only on reviews from folks who have posted quite a few reviews.

A couple years ago, we stayed in a wonderful vrbo property in Atlanta. One of the family members asked how I consisently find such great places to stay. It is no super power (ha!) of mine, but because I only book properties with many great reviews -- and those must be from folks who have shared quite a few reviews.

Reviews of products are a different beast. I find almost all of them suspicious.

 

[Osprey]

It has become harder for me to use trip advisor. It used to be if I looked for restaurants in a town a list popped up showing ones with best reviews on top and lower ones below.

Yesterday I was looking for the name of an Italian restaurant I wanted to revisit on a upcoming trip. I plugged in the name of the town and at the bottom of the page was list of all restaurants but not in order of best reviews and included restaurants from other towns. I had to click a button to limit the search to the town I requested to begin with to get a truncated list to find the one I was looking for.

More frustrating than in the past.

 

[Maenad]

I've even had trouble with Consumer Reports. Our dishwasher died a couple of weeks ago, and every one of the highly-rated dishwashers on CR had pretty poor user reviews. It was frustrating enough that I ended up buying one from a Big Box Home Store that had thousands of good ratings. We'll see how it goes, it certainly installed easily enough (we did it ourselves).

 

[JoeWras]

I've even had trouble with Consumer Reports. Our dishwasher died a couple of weeks ago, and every one of the highly-rated dishwashers on CR had pretty poor user reviews. It was frustrating enough that I ended up buying one from a Big Box Home Store that had thousands of good ratings. We'll see how it goes, it certainly installed easily enough (we did it ourselves).

You may have read my review.

Actually, I really like the dishwasher I got to review. 1 year going and it is working well and cleaning well.

Now, if only I could rebuild my kitchen to put the thing on a pedestal. Dishwashers hurt my back.

 

[braumeister]

I've even had trouble with Consumer Reports.

Bought a car once based solely on the extremely positive review it got in CR.
Worst. Car. Ever.

I believe they have their biases just like everyone else.

 

[JoeWras]

Bought a car once based solely on the extremely positive review it got in CR.
Worst. Car. Ever.

I believe they have their biases just like everyone else.

They do, and they exposed it when they started reviewing "social issues" back in the late 80's. That was weird, weird enough that I stopped subscribing, even though I mostly agreed with their point of view.

One of the biases I think that happens is for the reliability surveys. People sometimes are influenced by what they read in CR and fill the survey based on that, instead of real world result. Example: my SIL lost a transmission on car brand "H" which was highly rated. SIL saw no issue with it because it was replaced under warranty, and still was best car ever, as she read in CR.

As I mentioned when I get free products to review, it warps my brain too, even though I try hard to avoid it. I admit I must have a bias.

 

[misshathaway]

Still makes no sense to me.
Some random person looked on Yelp and found a bunch of unpublished reviews. If they weren't published, how could anyone see them?

They have a link at the very bottom of all the reviews called "Not recommended reviews" or some such negative label. I'd have to log in to see the exact wording. I know b/c some years ago I posted a negative review of my then health club, every word of it factual, and it went there.

 

[Cobra9777]

They have a link at the very bottom of all the reviews called "Not recommended reviews" or some such negative label. I'd have to log in to see the exact wording. I know b/c some years ago I posted a negative review of my then health club, every word of it factual, and it went there.

I also had one show up there. I emailed Yelp and they responded with some boilerplate about how their proprietary algorithm weeds out fake reviews but sometimes flags legitimate ones. A few days later it was promoted to the "recommended" reviews.