Newegg.com hardware reviews

[dieselfrog]

Greetings all, just wanted to get your take on this...

About 3 weeks ago I submitted a review of a case that I had purchased from newegg. The review was very honest and fair and included some pros and some very honest cons. The review was well written (at least I thought so) and would certainly be suitable for posting.

I'm wondering why it hasn't shown up in their list of reviews. My intent was to give a potential buyer an honest review and present both the good and bad aspects of the product. All I see are the same old lame "newegg was the best" or "great shipping" or "buy this product no matter what". Complete with the requisite multi-exclamation point endings.

What gives? Will they not publish a review that contains less than glowing remarks about the product or their service? Anyone else get censored by "the man"?

EDIT: It should be noted that reviews published well after mine were published so any "maybe they just didn't get to it" arguments are B.S..

 

[Matthias99]

What gives? Will they not publish a review that contains less than glowing remarks about the product or their service?

To some extent, yes. I think they started doing this more explicitly about 6-12 months ago; you can probably find the threads about it if you search. This is why they warn that you should not make buying decisions based off of their reviews.

 

[dieselfrog]

To some extent, yes. I think they started doing this more explicitly about 6-12 months ago

Then what is the point of even having them? That suggests shady business practices to me.

 

[fishmonger12]

the reviews should be honest... as long as it cracks on the item and not newegg, i dont see why they would have a reason to not put it up there. if anything, it would encourage someone to buy something higher quality, which in turn would be more expensive and might get newegg a little more $$$.

 

[Matthias99]

Originally posted by: dieselfrog

To some extent, yes. I think they started doing this more explicitly about 6-12 months ago

Then what is the point of even having them? That suggests shady business practices to me.

I'm not entirely sure what the reasoning behind this move was.

My best guess would be that they were getting complaints from vendors that customers (possibly even competitors posing as customers) were slandering their products unfairly (which may or may not have been true), and they decided to just stop posting negative reviews. The 1-5 star ratings are still accurate, though.

Conclusions: if you see something on Newegg with a lot of ratings but few 'reviews', it probably means a lot of the reviews were negative. And if something has a less-than-stellar rating, that's a bad sign.

 

[dieselfrog]

Originally posted by: Matthias99

Originally posted by: dieselfrog

To some extent, yes. I think they started doing this more explicitly about 6-12 months ago

Then what is the point of even having them? That suggests shady business practices to me.

I'm not entirely sure what the reasoning behind this move was.

My best guess would be that they were getting complaints from vendors that customers (possibly even competitors posing as customers) were slandering their products unfairly (which may or may not have been true), and they decided to just stop posting negative reviews. The 1-5 star ratings are still accurate, though.

Conclusions: if you see something on Newegg with a lot of ratings but few 'reviews', it probably means a lot of the reviews were negative. And if something has a less-than-stellar rating, that's a bad sign.

That's a great observation Matthias99. The ironic thing is that I recommended potential buyers upgrade the case's sub-standard power supply with something more robust... this would have been a substantial up-sale for newegg.

I can understand the reasoning of guarding against a person or company tainting the reviews in favor of a particular product, but once bias has entered into the system it can no longer be a legitimate system and should be removed all together.

I guess the thing that torques me off the most is that a n00b (which I was until I came here and absorbed the knowledge from you fine people ) will disregard newegg's disclaimer and be swayed by the overwhelmingly favorable reviews for a mediocre product.

Thank goodness you guys are here to answer the "what do you think about... " type questions

 

[N3cr0]

From what I read, they always did this. The thing is, previous to the story being 'broken' on a few hardware sites it was never explicitly stated not to base buying decisions on the reviews. They added in the review disclaimer and that was the end of it. So...unless something has a 4-5 rating...there are some issues with it.

 

[Texun]

They almost never post mine unless use five stars and close with "NEWEGG ROCKS!!!!" I've tested it, and while not totally scientific, the results did favor a straight forward praise for the product and New Egg.

I've given honest and objective feedback without any flames at all and most of the time my posts are dumped. I don't even bother anymore.

 

[UsandThem]

Originally posted by: Texun
They almost never post mine unless use five stars and close with "NEWEGG ROCKS!!!!" I've tested it, and while not totally scientific, the results did favor a straight forward praise for the product and New Egg.

I've given honest and objective feedback without any flames at all and most of the time my posts are dumped. I don't even bother anymore.

Same with me. They post reviews that seem worded from 12 year olds, but anything less than four or five stars there is a good chance they will not dsiplay it.

It really is a shame that they do this.

 

[strend]

Add me to this list. 4/5 stars gets posted, anything less forget about it.

 

[dharmariver2005]

yup, you guys are right. Newegg has a team and a program to screen all your comments and, of course, they decide which is good which is not to be posted. Maybe you can try give the product 5 stars and then put bad words.... maybe it will cheat the program and get your words voice out.

 

[slash196]

I can't believe they actually have someone sitting there, censoring bad reviews. I've read PLENTY of bad reviews on Newegg, mostly about power supplies.

 

[Chosonman]

Yup, I wrote 2 reviews. One got posted the other didn't. Obviously the good one got posted and the bad one didn't.

 

[ViRGE]

Originally posted by: Matthias99

Originally posted by: dieselfrog

To some extent, yes. I think they started doing this more explicitly about 6-12 months ago

Then what is the point of even having them? That suggests shady business practices to me.

I'm not entirely sure what the reasoning behind this move was.

My best guess would be that they were getting complaints from vendors that customers (possibly even competitors posing as customers) were slandering their products unfairly (which may or may not have been true), and they decided to just stop posting negative reviews. The 1-5 star ratings are still accurate, though.

Conclusions: if you see something on Newegg with a lot of ratings but few 'reviews', it probably means a lot of the reviews were negative. And if something has a less-than-stellar rating, that's a bad sign.

That pretty much sums it up. Competitors slandering products basically sealed the deal.

 

[2smokingbarrels]

Their disclaimer states that product review approval is contingent upon the author?s adherence to NE's Submission Guidelines on the Product Review main page, and in the actual review submission form.

NE?s newsletter recently reported that they receive over 700 product reviews each day. It appears NE has begun embracing a more Amazon-esque criterion as a precedent for review filtering.

The only real difference I see is that if you were to receive a defective or DOA item, you would not be allowed to post a review since you did not experience the product's full-feature set, which seems logical when you think about it. If the product works fine but does not live up to expectations for whatever reason, you can post a negative review as long as you accede to the aforementioned guidelines.

ZZF, BB, Mwave and CDW don't give customers the ability to write reviews at all!

NE has always shown me love, so I recommend that the next time your review doesn't get posted to forward them your write-up ... once you've verifed the copy is in accordance with that legal jargon.


============================
The only thing that scares me is Keyser Soze.

 

[21stHermit]

Originally posted by: 2smokingbarrels
ZZF, BB, Mwave and CDW don't give customers the ability to write reviews at all!

That's correct, but NewEgg implies that all relavent reviews are posted when in fact they are not. This leads me to distrust NewEgg. Tis a shame. :disgust:

 

[21stHermit]

Originally posted by: dieselfrog
What gives? Will they not publish a review that contains less than glowing remarks about the product or their service? Anyone else get censored by "the man"?

Sad but true, 3 of my last 4 reviews were never posted. Even products that had no reviews. None of my reviews were flames, just the facts, nothing but the facts, so help me . . . .