This was years ago so I can’t be sure I remember the details correctly, but it didn’t seem like a joke. Well, the bit about the name “Brian” may have been, but the reviewer seemed genuinely angry that her favorite singer had such a small role in the movie.
Yeah, I’ve seen a lot of one star reviews about how the product never arrived, was damaged, etc. LEAVE A SELLER REVIEW, PEOPLE!
I’m sure you’re right. And the company referred to in my description was the very best place to work, simply because we employees - from the newest part-time dishwasher up to the top managers - were encouraged and empowered to apologize for mistakes and fix them on the spot. Too many business entities don’t know the simple and profound power of “I’m sorry. How can we fix this?” Too bad that my grandboss there was a giant asshole, or else I wouldn’t have turned in my keys that first time, much less the second.
But when I moved to another corporate customer service position in a similar company, I told the owner, during my second interview, that my training philosophy included encouraging folks to make sincere apologies. Not “I’m sorry you think X,” but “I’m sorry I/we messed up.” And “how can we help make this situation better?” And I explained to him how I found it effective - clients are happier, because someone listens and makes a sincere effort to fix things, right there; employees are happier, because they are allowed to do something, instead of waiting for some higher-up to authorize a simple and relatively predictable remedy (free breakfast, or a room discount, or comped parking, for common examples;) and that $10 breakfast or $15 parking fee is cheaper than an unhappy customer.
Tl&dr: “I’m sorry. Here’s how I can try to fix this.” It’s a powerful tool in business.
Today’s stupid review, on Facebook: One star. The line at the drive-through was 20 cars long. No one goes there, because of the wait time!
I once read a review of a well loved family style restaurant that has been in business 75+ years in the N. GA mountains where a lady was complaining in great detail because the meat was very salty and almost too tough to chew. She mocked the manager for protesting that the meat was always like that and for not comping her breakfast. The meat in question? Country ham. Salt cured, which removes pretty much all of the moisture. It’s damn near jerky, but heaven on a biscuit. It’s like panning baklava because it’s sweet and gooey.
If you are going to review something, at least know what it is supposed to be.
Ref the above, how did that owner react to your POV? DiId he think this was great, or simply a way to empower employees to give away the store to greedy jerk customer-thieves? Did you get offered the job? Did you take it? Did it work out?
As someone who does the vast majority of their shopping online, and as someone who reads waaaaay too many reviews to get an informed opinion before making a purchase, this shit drives me crazy.
My favorites on Amazon fall into a few categories:
“I thought I was buying X, but I bought Y. One Star.”
“Item is bigger/smaller than I expected. One Star.”
“I accidentally drove over it after I dropped it in the driveway and it broke. One Star.”
Recipe and cooking reviews are the worst. “1 star - I didn’t have any strawberries, so I used mushrooms. And my oven is broken, so I cooked it in the microwave for 45 minutes. It was awful!”
When I really don’t know which of competing products to get, I’ll look at the one-star reviews. I figure, problems are problems, and if the negative reviews make sense, they are probably correct.
But what I find, is that, in some cases, both products have large numbers of negative reviews giving the same faults to both brands. I start to wonder if these are just posted by each other, dissing the other product. Who can you believe anymore?
One funny example: I had just recently watched Tombstone for the first time, and was impressed by the quality of the movie, as well as the historical accuracy. So I was surprised to see so many one-star reviews claiming exactly the opposite. Several said that Wyatt Earp was the better movie, the one to see, that Tombstone was crap. So I went to read the reviews for Wyatt Earp. Sure enough, all the one-star reviews said WE was crap, and Tombstone was the movie to see! Just a big circle, with no useful data.
Back in 1975, a television reviewer for a major newspaper was writing about the premiere episode of the Ellery Queen series. She went into detail about why she didn’t like it, giving away the solution to the mystery in the process.
Several years later, the same reviewer was covering the debut of Star Trek: the Next Generation. She observed that Gene Roddenberry’s future world is apparently so litigious that starships need to keep an attorney on board. I found this comment puzzling, until I saw the episode and it hit me: Ms. Reviewer, Deanna Troi is not that kind of counselor .
I usually read a bunch of Tripadvisor reviews when I’m planning on visiting a hotel in, say, Mexico. There are countless reviews that say things like “There were ANTS in our room!” You’re in the jungle, baby. Or better yet: “The website is VERY misleading - there was NO BEACH AT ALL. The tropical storm that blew through three days ago also made the water murky!” And my favorite: “Lots of people were INTOXICATED by the pool!” At an Adults-Only, All-Inclusive resort in Cancun.
I see so many reviews like this on Yelp, when people are complaining about the food tasting how it’s supposed to taste. I kind of wish there was a way to respond to these. One was a reviewer complaining about her massaman curry (a type of Thai curry) was weird because it came with potatoes. Now, I’m sure there’s many ways of preparing it, but potatoes are standard in massaman curry, at least every time I’ve ever had it. Or somebody reviewing a place that does traditional Neapolitan pizza and complaining because it didn’t have enough sauce, wasn’t heavily spiced, or somesuchshit. That’s how it’s supposed to be! I know I’ve seen far more egregious examples than that, but those two are the ones that immediately come to mind. Or people complaining about traditional foods that are served on the bone…
This. Drives. Me. Up. A. Fucking. Wall. Even the positive reviews where they’ve done a million substitutions. I want to see a review for the recipe. Not your recipe. I don’t mind reading about positive substitutions or additions, but I want to also read a review about the recipe done as described (or pretty darned close.)
Just got done posting a couple of online reviews and taking all your advice to heart.
I got my comeuppance though. There’s a Turkish restaurant in the area which I had previously reviewed with faint praise for its mediocre food and slightly annoying ambience (the background music sounded like a Turkish Moody Blues cover band). However, a more recent reviewer was wildly enthusiastic (and I quote):
I once saw a negative review for a dish the reviewer described as being boring because it was basically just chicken flavored rice.
The recipe was for chicken bouillon rice. The only ingredients were chicken bouillon, rice, and water. I can certainly understand preferring something a bit more exciting, but if you’re expecting something more exciting than chicken flavored rice when you have merely added chicken bouillon to rice then the problem is not with the recipe.
“This author REALLY needs to learn grammar and punctuation!!!” book was one of Cormac McCarthy’s. To be fair, a light-fare reader would probably not recognize the brilliance.
Drives me nuts when people bring down the average of a good movie or book because they need to be leaving feedback for the seller.
But some things on Amazon, the site invites itself. People review specific DVD releases of good movies with 2 stars, because the DVD has problems-- for example, one of the Universal releases of the 1931 Frankenstein with lots of extra material is not worth buying as a set, because much of the bonus material is unplayable. I forget which set it was, and there were three: there was a 60th anniversary; a Universal Legacy; and a Classic Monsters edition. They all had a nice restored edition of the movie (probably the same one) but different sets of bonus material. The reviews got lumped together. I forget which one had the bonus material that wouldn’t play, but it had lots of 2 star reviews because of it, and was lumped in with the other sets that were better, as well as the individual editions of just the movie by itself. So the average review for Frankenstein is only about 3.5.
I’ve seen this multiple times, and I really do have to think that there are some people that think 1 star means #1 or something, as opposed to 1 out of 5. I was just talking to an acquaintance a few weeks ago about this, as he was complaining that the university he works for wants to put in a rating system for something or other, and also an explanatory note about how 1 star is the worst and 5 stars is the best. At first, we laughed at how superfluous and stupid such an explanatory note like this is until somebody pointed out that some people really don’t seem to get it, citing situations such as the above with Amazon reviews and the like.
How far can the “it’s supposed to be that way” argument go, though? Hawaiian pizza is supposed to have pineapple on it, should I rate it highly even if I think pineapple on pizza is gross?
To give a completely different example, Michael Bay films are supposed to be nothing but explosions and sexy women. But I have no problem giving them low ratings for being nothing but explosions and sexy women.
Any public rating system has the problem of differing tastes. But it seems to me that rating something poorly for doing a good job of being something you don’t like is not helpful.
Make the effort to rate the things that are trying to match your tastes. And rate them according to how good they do at that job. Down-rating something because it’s not to your taste isn’t trolling, but ISTM it’s definitely popping in the information pool. Simply pas on rating stuff that you know isn’t to your taste.
The exception would be something advertised as something it’s not: “I went to this Michael Bay movie only because the ads promised me a thoughtful disquisition on the great questions of our time. Instead I got non-stop explosions and busty bikini babes. I rate it one star for false advertising.”