A small company contacts you. They just started out on Amazon, and they want you to review a flashlight. You say yes, of course.
The flashlight is bad. It’s a generic light that you’ve seen hundreds of times all over AliExpress and Amazon. It has multiple problems that you describe in detail. The bad outweighs the good. This flashlight is not worth the money.
While you’re writing your main review, you get an automated email from Amazon asking you to review the flashlight. You do, and it’s not a positive review. You point out the big problems and give it two stars because the included cell is actually pretty great.
A few days later the main review is done. The company emails you and thanks you for the feedback, saying they’ll work on the problems, but then the rep asks you to delete your Amazon review. They just got this job, and they’re afraid of losing it. The overall rating on Amazon wasn’t impacted all that much by your two star review; it’s still at 4.5 stars, but the rep is worried nonetheless.
Stay honest. You want that honesty to the buyers too, if the light is crap they should know that. It is sad for a seller to risk their business but how many sellers of bad flashlights can there be?
The bottom line DO NOT POST review. If you can not justify recommendation buying light then do waste your time. Getting ” free ” light means squat if you can not recommend someone buying it due ti quality, UI interface, etc….
I have been approached be a few light companies after seeing some of my reviews. I look at company, do research, etc… if worthy then I review. Otherwise, I say ” not interested ” even if light was ” free ”
Quite a lot. Have you ever just searched “flashlight” on Amazon?
This is what I did.
I disagree with this. Even if it’s known that a light is bad, people still need to know how bad and in what ways. This is especially important on Amazon, where consumers aren’t well informed when it comes to flashlights.
It’s not infrequent that people want to send me a light in exchange for posting a review. I don’t think I’ve ever taken anyone up on the offer. I don’t do reviews often, and when I do, it’s for lights I genuinely think are exceptionally good.
… well, except that one time when I got an unusually disappointing light, and I did a review about how the manufacturer’s specs were all wrong.
The main questionable thing I run into is deciding how to post about lights I was involved in making… because I’m not an impartial reviewer, so I can’t really claim to have an objective opinion.
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I disagree with this. Even if it’s known that a light is bad, people still need to know how bad and in what ways. This is especially important on Amazon, where consumers aren’t well informed when it comes to flashlights.
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So you would post negative review? Give the company some dual diligence with publicity? Total working against ALL facets of reviews. I would rather NOT give reviews and WASTING time if product was ” bad ” in first place. Do your research before accepting any type of ” free ” review samples. You said yourself ” bad light ” in your original post. Why then accept reviewing already knowing this? Does not make to much ” sense “.
If you CAN NOT honestly recommend light then NOT worth it to review.
BTW, Most of reviews are NON informative or NOT honest on Amazon anyway.
I understand what you mean, but most of the time, that’s the only way I get lights to review, and I believe in reviewing everything, if only to provide constructive criticism to the company. The only reviews I’ve turned down were items that weren’t flashlights.
There’s some good discussion here. It seems as if I have some different ideas on reviewing from the rest of you. I’m just going to keep doing what feels right.
*Not allowed: “Creating, modifying, or posting content in exchange for compensation of any kind (including free or discounted products, refunds, or reimbursements) or on behalf of anyone else.*”
One time I received a message from someone offering me a free light in exchange for writing a review on Amazon. I responded that such was against Amazon’s terms of service, and as such, I could not write a review for them on Amazon. Amazon is such a useful service, I am not willing to break the rules and jeopardize my access there for any promotion. Plus doing so would be the wrong thing to do.
However, I did offer to write a review for them here on BLF. They accepted my offer and I wrote the review. In my BLF review I included a disclaimer stating that the light had been provided by the manufacturer for review. And I gave an honest review describing all the pros and cons of the light.
I have occasionally written reviews of products on Amazon. But I only do this when I pay full price and actually buy the product on Amazon. When I do write a review on Amazon it is never because anyone asked me to do so, and I always give an honest review.
NOTE: If a manufacturer updates and fixes issues with their product I may amend my review, adding an addendum stating which issues have supposedly been fixed. After all, this may be useful information for buyers. However, I would only do this on my initiative. Since sellers and manufacturers do not pay me to write reviews on Amazon, I never receive requests to change reviews.
Yeah, I suppose I am in the wrong in that regard.
Now I’m in an even worse position than before. I reviewed the flashlight in exchange for a free flashlight, so I should remove my review as it goes against the terms of service. On the other hand, I should leave it up as it’s the only review that points out the flaws of the light.
I think it’s great to review “free” products only if you will be impartial. Some people believe that you can’t be impartial in a review of a “free” product. Well, I guess those people shouldn’t review “free” products then. Some of us were born to be critical. You could literally give me a $1000 bill and ask me what I think of it, and I could tell you all it’s flaws without blinking. Nobody can buy my vote, and I would certainly turn down a review “opportunity” if it were made known up front that a positive review is the only review that would be acceptable. I’ve heard of people getting that kind of “offer” but I’ve never been presented with it, thankfully.
I strongly disagree that a “bad” product should never get a review. Those, even moreso, need to get an honest review, so that people are fairly warned. Not that I’m going to buy a bunch of known bad products just to do reviews of them, but if one were given to me for a review, I’d treat it just like any other product review I’ve done.
As for the specific question in the OP, I’d say you shouldn’t change or remove your review on Amazon. If the company wants to be known as a good company, then they need to do their proper research before selling items that are junk. It’s up to them to earn a good reputation, not try to buy it with fake reviews, or in this case, by deleting unwanted negative reviews. It seems the rep isn’t worried so much about his company as his own job with the company. That makes sense, if he hasn’t been there long and has already come up with somebody giving a bad review for their products. But that’s not your fault. As long as the review is true, there’s nothing else you can do and maintain your integrity.
Negative reviews are useful. They help inform people about the product, including both the good and bad aspects of it. It’s not always worth the effort though. Not every battle is worth fighting. Sometimes negative reviews are appropriate, sometimes no review at all is a better choice.
Amazon reviews are both useful and … not. All too often, the reviewers there don’t know enough to be able to say anything really useful about a product. So it’s a good idea to search for reviews on enthusiast forums whenever possible. But when that’s not available, Amazon reviews are still better than nothing. Usually.
Amazon has a bunch of other problems though… not just uninformed reviewers. One issue which pops up a lot is when a single product listing has multiple vendors supplying the product, especially when they’re all “fulfilled by Amazon”. They put all the items into a single bin and pull one at random at shipping time. In theory that should be okay, but in practice it causes problems. Not all vendors actually sell the same product, so they get original items in the same bin as cheap knock-offs, and there’s no way to guarantee which one you’ll get.
Another issue which happens a lot there is when a vendor sells a quality item, gets a lot of good reviews, but then abandons or changes their product listing. The listing is then reused to sell a completely different product, often by a different vendor, and it shows up as having a lot of good reviews… even though the new product is junk.
It used to be really good… but things have been going downhill there for a while. These days, I find eBay is typically more reliable. I normally see lower prices there and none of the cross-vendor or cross-product issues found on Amazon. Which isn’t to say every item there is good. Ebay has a lot of junk too. But it’s usually easier to figure out which items and which vendors there are actually good.
OTOH, if anyone wants to send me some decent free synthesizers in exchange for reviews, I’d totally be up for that. I’ve been wanting a Novation Peak, an Access Virus Ti, an Analog Four MkII, a Digitone, a Waldorf Kyra, etc… I’ll even write a song to demo it. Because that’ll happen anyway, and I may as well include it in the review.
Oooohhh. I hadn’t thought of that. I guess the reason they don’t want reviews of “free” products is because those are assumed to be overwhelmingly positive. Your negative post is the opposite of what they expect from a “free” product review. So, I say keep it up if you want to. You’ve done at least thousands of potential buyers a service by telling the truth.
I just say what I don’t like and why, then I might say “but that may be what you want”.
Unless it is really something that no one would like.
Then \I’ll just say I hate this, your mileage may vary.
I also say “they gave me this, but I’m still going to be honest”.
Usually the quirky stuff is just that quirky but i still hate it, like levels that go up then back down… hate hate hate
(instead of LMH LMH they go LMHM LMHM etc.)
Some of us were born to be critical. You could literally give me a $1000 bill and ask me what I think of it, and I could tell you all it’s flaws without blinking. Nobody can buy my vote, and I would certainly turn down a review “opportunity” if it were made known up front that a positive review is the only review that would be acceptable. I’ve heard of people getting that kind of “offer” but I’ve never been presented with it, thankfully.