I for one am done doing any reviews and for that matter, will not enter for any free give-aways.
Let the new members have the shot at new free product for a slice of their dignity.
The repetition and clone reviews get old right quick and of no fault of the reviewer’s, as they all hit the shores at the same time and all manufacturer’s demand a quick review on multiple platforms.
How thorough your review really is, does not matter to the “Shotgun Blast” of reviews intended solely to up Google searches and flood Amazon with reviews.
I think that is sensible unless the manufacturer is addressing an issue identified in a review.
Interestingly most of the multiple reviewed lights recently have actually been quite decent lights that could sell themselves with much fewer reviews. The first few reviews will get much higher views and google ranking than later reviews. Thus too many reviews can be counter productive for the vendor, and under appreciated effort for the hard working reviewer.
Too many reviews ?
Not sure about that ! I have no issue with information .
Sometimes it can be difficult to cut through fact and opinion ( one mans rubbish is another mans treasure ) .
But more reviews = a better chance at the product getting seen from more than one perspective .
Sometimes its good to see a review through another’s eyes and experience , even if its the first time some one has done a review .
If they make mistakes , that’s great because it also becomes a learning experience .
The waters fine - come on in !
Really disappointing that olightstore.com is resorting to these desperate tactics of spamming and shilling recently. How far they’ve fallen…
Also, I updated the first post in the Hall of Shame thread to explain more clearly what information should be listed there. Remember, discussions are not allowed in the Hall of Shame, but here in this thread discussion in open.
I also find the case of Olight disappointing. I don’t own any other lights and it appears it will stay so.
On a separate topic, time I have mixed feelings about those vendors that spammed for some time but later recovered and turned to useful members. I believe Vapcell is such vendor.
On one hand they deserve a mention. On the other I feel that the mention should be somehow down-ranked.
I’ve seen Olight asking other people to post their stuff on reddit for years. The rules on /r/flashlight allow three marketing posts per month, and the solution to this problem was to count obvious shill posts toward the total.
It will look draconian if we never retire companies from the list after long period.
Yet, it will look too lenient if we do retire someone from the list after certian periods.
I’m definitely open to removing companies from this list after they establish a track record of honest business with us. Thus far, I’ve had a grand total of zero requests to do so, which I guess proves the point that companies stoop to this level when they simply don’t care anymore.
Are they even aware of being enlisted?
Some learned to be good members eventually (Vapcell is on my mind) and I would be surprised if they didn’t care.
Vapcell is the only one that seems to have turned things around. I still think they deserve to wait a year to be removed, which hasn’t passed yet.
Wurrkos recently spammed the crap out of people via PM, requesting reviews of a dive light. The terms involved getting refunded after the review was posted. I didn’t do it, though I did see the light in question also show up in the WTS forum shortly after…
I constantly receive emails from new unknown flashlights brands to review their products (not specifically in BLF). Weird thing is I’m not even an active reviewer anymore and my last flashlight reviews was very long time ago.
And even weirder is that they have my personal email address from which I have never contacted them before. I assume there is a pretty extensive “reviewers contact list” that’s being passed around between manufacturers. Just imagine the amount of people out there receiving free lights and posting false 5 star reviews everywhere.