A discussion on negative reviews and reviewer integrity

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.

Sure. I’ve got $6000 in my back pocket. Wait, who am I kidding? :disappointed:

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.)

wle

No, just keep the objective bad review and point out that people giving good reviews on a bad product either don’t really know anything about flashlights or are fake/bought.

here is a bad position to be in: they tell you to buy a $100 light and review it, and they will pay you back somehow

you buy the light, pay for it, write the review, but they won;t reimburse til you make the review the way they want

it can happen!

the honest guys will reimburse right away, before the review

wle

Wellp, there’s negative, and there’s negative. There’s “Holy God, this is the worst piece of crap I ever got, and I feel like I gotta go shower now to get its stank offa me!”, and there’s, “Well, threads need lube, the switch needs to be replaced with something better, blah blah blah”, as in mention the bad but point out what can be done to improve it.

Ultimately, you have to decide if your review would sucker someone into buying something they shouldn’t, or if you’d be grateful in reading an honest review with all the negatives and then be able to make your own informed decision.

Eg, a 10pak of SK68 clones for 13bux is 1.3bux each, so how cheeeeeep can they be? You know they’ve got craptastic off-brand LEDs and garbage drivers, yet despite the bevy of “Wow! These Are Great! I Got 2 Packs To Give Away To All My Friends Who Are Just As Wowed As I Am, And Some To Keep For Myself!” type comments, you really should warn the unsuspecting that even for a buk each, they’re still garbage.

You wanna dress up a turd somewhat, have at it, but do be honest with the essentials.

On Amazon??? Easy. Trash it in the reviews, then a-z return it.

Problem solved.

I had one mfr send me a light to review, did it. Genuinely nice light, no problems being honest. They didn’t want me to review another, and said my review, while complimentary to the light, was “too professional”.

They just wanted a quick “Wow! Great light!!!111oneoneone”. Go figure…

I did a wood stove fan accessory review not too long ago for a chinese seller. The product was a complete POS, gave it 1 star, and pointed out the reasons with photos why it was bad. Vendor refused to refund my money. I told them they had 24hrs to refund or I would return it, with an email to Amazon how this vendor was attempting to trade product for good reviews. Didn’t hear from the vendor, so I returned to Amazon. I noticed my review was the only review for some time, then eventually product became unavailable.

It’s not cheap for a seller to have a customer return an item to Amazon FBA…

https://www.topfreetest.com/

I don’t know ? Just got a Email from this lot , so ?

? Playing the refund game , risky .

“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. ”

The original poster own words above. Why would he review KNOWING PRIOR about issues with light? Makes NO SENSE !!! Now he comes and asks for our opinion? What would you guys say after reading post?

Waste of time CORRECT?

Talk is talk …
Peoples got things to say …
OP was a catalyst !

I think there is an implied,“They ship it to me without saying which flashlight” in there after the review is accepted?

It doesn’t hurt to ask, right? :wink:

Actually, I’d bet real money right now that, because it’s you, if you were asking for something that would enhance your ability to do all the things you do around here, for which we are eternally grateful, and if it were price-wise within the grasp of a quick fund-raiser, you’d have what you wanted in short order. Somebody would start collecting funds, find the item at best price, get your delivery information, and make it happen.

But I’m sure you know that, hence the $6000 synthesizer request. :wink:

Don’t hold your breath TK, but should I ever win a lottery…. you will have one of THESE delivered to you. Wrapped & complete with a big bow on top. :wink:
Along with anything else you need to accompany it too…. :+1:

From my personal point of view (I’ve spent a few k$ on integrating sphere and spectrophotometer 8) mostly for personal use) - most of the cheap lights are crap and do not meet specifications. It’s only a matter of bang for a buck ratio, and you cannot do anything about that… If something is crap it will be crap, and somebody sooner or later will write about that, If you are thinking about yourself as a member of “enlightened” :innocent: community You will write the truth, click send, and be a happy man : 8) .

Recently I was contacted by a fairly new member (only a few weeks old) with a Chinese name, and asked me if I’d like to review their flashlights. They sent me links to two Amazon product listings. The light brand is new to me (NiteNumen), but the specs and design look interesting. A little pricey for what you get, relative to well established brands. You expect a no-name to be priced a good bit less as they try to establish brand recognition.

Anyway, the person said that they’d send me the first one and if they thought the review fair and well written, I would then buy the 2nd one and they’d reimburse me after I posted the review. I sent them a pretty good example of one review I did for Olight and she said it was very nice. But now… she’s asking me to purchase both flashlights and that she’d reimburse me after the reviews are posted. Her profile is completely absent of any identifying information and there’s no company signature either. At least with Olight, it was an official Olight username and she included a company style tag line in her signature. I never had to buy those Olight flashlights I reviewed either.

A friend of mine here mentioned about this, the “bait and buy” thing and that I should avoid that. He’d heard of cases where someone does a review and then they never get reimbursed. The username just goes defunct.

Has anyone here experienced this?

I’ve experienced it with known and unknow members from flashlight companies/stores.
With the known member (company), I agreed to do that, bought the light, got refunded, made a review saying the goods and bads of the light!

With the unknown member (from an amazon store), I replied, and never heard of him/her ever since, as the account was probably deleted by our administrator (sb56637). Those are shill and spam techniques that are not well regarded here and that can/shall(?) be denounced to the adminstrator .

BTW, NiteNumen in a known flashlight brand, had some interesting lights, disappeared and now it seems to be back!

I wouldn’t do a review under those circumstances. Either I’m already planning to buy the light, in which case reimbursement isn’t expected or needed, or I’m not, in which case they’d have to give it to me first before any review was made/posted. Reviews are work and take some amount of time to do right. And I’m not even as thorough as a lot of the members here that do reviews. Buying a product I wouldn’t have otherwise been interested in buying, in order to do a review, in hopes of getting reimbursed after I’m done, is a non-starter for me.

On Amazon? It’d be really stooooooooopit with a capital “stoo” if someone were to screw you over. All you’d have to do is “modify” your review…

“Holy Crap! The light started to get hot and sparking all over the place! I had to run and toss it outside before it blew up! I’ll never ever ever buy another XYZ brand light ever again!”

Thankfully, all the lights I’ve been asked to review have been genuinely good to excellent. Lotta times I’ll have to find something to pick on, just to make the review look “balanced”, when in reality the light’s almost perfect as-is.

Then again, they were all from reputable dealers, too.

Only once or twice did I have a review-chaser want to “buy” a review. I gave a rather thorough review (decent light, too, if I recall), and found out later all they wanted was “Wow, great light!” and that’s it. Oh, well…