Couldn’t you write a snazzy Bulwer-Lytton one sentence review? I know you can do it.
What annoys me about Amazon reviews is they combine all reviews for different versions of a product.
For example, let’s say a company releases a DVD of a movie and also releases a BluRay of the same movie with some extra features. Amazon will combine these reviews together . So somebody reading the reviews for the DVD will see reviewers talking about the extra features and be misled into thinking they’re available with the DVD.
+1
If everything is peachy and you have nothing in particular to say about the item or the service, just give 'em five stars and write “Great!” That’s all there is to it. Everyone appreciates positive feedback, and you don’t need to put any, y’know, *effort *into it if you don’t want to.
Worst than that, even! To take a handy example, Star Wars The Real Movie has about 15 versions: original, Special Edition, Multispecial edition, VHS, letterbox, Laserdisc, widescreen, THX… So you see a review that says “the quality was poor”. Well, which version are they reviewing? You can rarely tell. When the review says “this is not the original 1977 version as shown in theaters”, does it mean it should be and isn’t, or are they too stupid to know they are watching the special edition?
Or the product was actually improved in 2012, and some reviews from 2008 that say it “sux” are reviewing the old version. But it isn’t obvious.
Or there are two versions of an album, but one is remastered and sounds like crap, and the original sounds great. Both reviews are lumped together.
What’s the difference between 4 stars and 5 stars? If you have this product four stars, i want to know what made it not quite 5? Just bare stars aren’t really useful.
“Works as expected, shipping was on time.” Cut and paste as needed.
Still not a “narrative”, an “opus”, a “colloquy” or a short novella in haiku form. 1 sentence to let people know A) how the item functioned and B) how the seller functioned.
Excellent idea. 
This might be a useful sentence on some sites, but on Amazon you rate the item and seller separately. So how the item functions is irrelevant to how you rate the seller unless you have some reason to think that a seller is selling fake or damaged stuff (or defective stuff and they gave you a hassle on a return), and it’s super-annoying to see one-star ratings for a product that someone never actually received.
This makes it easier, though, not harder.
I type “n/a” if I had no problems and am giving the vendor a 5-star rating. It’s enough.
If you’re gonna pit Amazon, it should be for their new practice of refusing to sell certain items to customers that aren’t Prime members (mostly certain video games - for now).
Or for randomly not selling some inocuous consumer products to overseas customers. It’s so frustrating seeing something you’d like at a fair price and seeing “This item is not available for shipping to your location” :mad:
I give your pitting 1 star, OP.
But I’m not gonna tell you why.
mmm
I guess buying things online is just not something I’m prepared to do right.
In my world, timely delivery of functional product is the minimum default expectation* for a transaction, and is properly the concern of the people who participated in the transaction. If my minimum expectations are not met, I consider the appropriate feedback to be that which can result in immediate corrective action; i.e., feedback directly to the person who accepted my money.
ONLY if satisfactory corrective action does NOT ensue, would I even consider making a statement visible to people who were not involved in my transaction.
*also the maximum default expectation.
ETA: OP, are you making a distinction between product reviews and feedback on specific transactions? Speaking for myself, I don’t view those as interchangeable subjects.
Which doesn’t account for the reviews I’ve seen which consist of stuff like “Crummy product but really fast delivery” or “they sent me two of these instead of the one I ordered and I had to pay for both, so only 1 star”.
The OP could also follow a common practice and post a review that simply says “Fabulous” or “Worthless”*.
A more appropriate bitch about Amazon is allowing commenters to vote down reviews or forum postings as allegedly not adding to the discussion, when the real gripe is “your view diverges from my half-assed opinion”.
*omitting punctuation saves the reviewer valuable time.
Honestly, I don’t know what the fuck I’m reviewing. Every time I buy something, they send me a form for feedback, asking yes/no questions and/or numerical scores. And there’s a text box for me to add addition input, but if I don’t put something into the box, I can’t submit the form.
So now I just delete them without even opening them.
Maybe we should have a star option for “Product was as expected and delivered on time.” Like, maybe you only give five stars for that. But if there’s any problem, if you want to give it any less stars, you should have to write why.
I agree with everyone else - your stars are less than useful, unless you are giving them five.
My beef with Amazon is when they list an item as in stock but it still takes a week or better for them to ship the damn thing.
I (used to) look at the highest-rated items when I’m buying something. It pisses me off to no end when most of them have the “I was given this product in return for my honest opinion” crap. It makes searching by how many stars something has absolutely worthless.
As long as you get it within the delivery time limit you paid for, what’s the problem?
What I do find weird is holding the product until the day before then overnighting it.