Filtered, Moderated, and Fake Reviews - Ranting About Online Reviews

I, like many customers, depend on reviews to determine if a product is right for me. But when we sense foul-play in reviews, it can drive us away. We may not shop at a place if we suspect they cherry-pick reviews, or if there are what seem to be fake reviews posted by employees of the company that makes that product.

Customer reviews can even be a good source of technical support, especially when your search engine brings them up when you're trying to find a solution to a problem. But the main reason we write reviews of products is because we are trying to be helpful.

For one example, I bought a microscope camera for work from microscope.com. It worked well and I wanted to post my opinion since there weren't any reviews for that product on their website. So I spent some time and created a very nice review, but I also had a couple complaints.

It's pretty unrealistic to have a 100% positive review on a product that isn't perfect. I submitted the review and they never posted it. So I had to assume that they don't post any reviews that aren't 100% positive. Therefore, I am very hesitant to shop there again. I depend on reviews for an honest opinion of other users' experiences with the product.

So then I bought some stuff from tigerdirect.com. Since I hadn't posted any reviews there before, I was unfamiliar with their operating procedure. I had several of my reviews posted, but my review of the motherboard and CPU still weren't posted, so I posted another review on the CPU. Here it is:

Ok, now I sound like a total dork. How was I to know they'd actually post THAT one!?

Here's what I can tell so far about reviews on tigerdirect.com:

• The review moderators don't like to read. If you post a lengthy review, it may never get posted. Shorter reviews are approved and posted quickly. The longer a review is, the longer it takes to get posted, if ever. I assume the 1000 character limit is because they know their moderators don't like to read.
• Good luck editing your review. Trying to change it after it's posted doesn't seem to work. Maybe it's because again, I'm trying to post 1000-character reviews. You've already read 1285 characters on this post so far, so there's only so much information you can cram into 1000 characters.
• Threats to go shop somewhere else actually elicit a response, but I'm not sure they do anything about your complaint.  
• They have standards for reviews, but I can't find them posted anywhere on their site. So I'm not sure why my reviews aren't being posted. I don't use any bad language, bad grammar, or personal attacks. I did, however, link to this blog for the X9SRA motherboard review. They haven't posted that one.
• Checking the box that says send me an email when my review is posted, (wait for it) . . . does nothing.

Update 6/20/2014

So after at least four previous attempts at posting a lengthy review on a computer case, I caught some attitude and wrote this.

Victory at last!

Update 29 December 2016

I saw a computer on bestbuy.com and had never heard of this brand before. I was intrigued by their 4.7 out of 5 star rating with 364 reviews. I was skeptical. It's a computer. It runs Windows. Even if every system they sold had no problems, how do you get 4.7 out of 5 stars? You can't please everybody. Some people are just difficult.

Sorting that computer category on BestBuy by best selling, the BB921 was on top. But the next best seller only had 53 reviews. Nobody else even came close to 364 reviews. There was a 4.4 star Asus with 206 reviews. Hmm. The number of reviews doesn't correlate well with the best selling rank.

Let's do some comparison shopping. So I checked on amazon.com under Electronics > Computers & Accessories > Computers & Tablets > Desktops > Towers.

I found a computer with 4.6 stars and 735 reviews. Ok, so maybe it's possible. Then for the same specs and the best I could find with anywhere close to the same number of reviews was a 4.0 star with 294 reviews. It was a Dell computer.

So maybe the rating is plausible. That means we need to do some verification.

The IBUYPOWER computer on amazon with the most reviews only had 90, and it was 3.7 stars. Note the 24% 1 star reviews. That's telling. Ok, this doesn't match with the BestBuy rating.

Let's compare reviews from other sources online. Here's what Yelp.com had to say:

Let's skip over that alert and check the rating. Let's see, the majority of their reviews are 1 star. It seems like most people hate this company. And look, it went from 1.4 to 3.8 stars in June. I wonder how that happened.

That doesn't match the BestBuy rating either.

I checked TomsHardware, cnet, and youtube. They really made some customers upset. Several complained about the $99 shipping fee.

Now, here's IBUYPOWER's rating on the Better Business Bureau. They got an F.

Hmm. Really doesn't match the BestBuy rating. Something's suspicious here.

So, if you filter out all the bad reviews, then I can see how you'd get 4.7 out of 5 stars, but 364 reviews? That's funny. When I click to read the reviews, it never loads. I do block some ad sites, so maybe that has something to do with it.