Percival P. Cassidy wrote:
It's occurred to me that now, with such vendors as Amazon and NewEgg
listing items that are actually sold by other vendors, it's impossible
to be sure to what items a review is referring: is the review of a
brand-new item, a used item, an open-box item, or a used but refurbished/renewed item? Certainly I have seen complaints that the
reviewer thought s/he was buying a new drive, but the manufacture date
on the label had been erased, or the warranty had expired long before
the purchase, or the SMART data showed that it had clocked up thousands
of power-on hours.
Newegg shows you who is the seller. Plus, there is a search option to
look at items from a particular vendor. I always pick Newegg, so where
I'm buying is who is selling, and I know and have used Newegg's returns
versus having to deal with someone else. Amazon does the same: they
provide a storefront to other sellers. Doesn't Amazon show who is the
seller? As I recall, there is no search option to restrict the search
to just Amazon. Walmart does the same, too, and they have a search
option to find products sold by them, not by someone else. That way,
when I buy from Walmart, I can take it a local Walmart store for a
return instead of having to pay for return shipping. My aunt didn't
select "Sears" as the buyer, and ended up buying from Mayfair where
warranty returns were a bitch to get okayed, processed, and long to get
the replacement. Sears offers store fronts, too: search on "mower" and
notice which say "Sold by Sears" versus "Sold by <someoneElse>".
As far as the reviews go, you see whatever a prior buyer wants to say.
If they don't give details, well, that's the norm there, here, and just
about everywhere users are asked for a review. Go to the Google Store
and look at user reviews there. The boobs think a star rating with no
actual review is a review, like upvoting at Facebook with a "like".
Anyplace that allows reviews and has the user pick a rating should
reject the rating if the review form has less than, say, 120 characters.
Reject that "great", "sucks", and other useless /reviews/.
The problems you've noted, like the product not being what was
advertized, I've not run into at Newegg; however, I pick "new" for
condition. I have read about other users getting a bogus USB flash
drive, but Newegg was quick to respond and shipped out a valid product immediately without additional shipping cost to the buyer. I've only
bought from Amazon a few times but didn't get hit with a product not
being what it said it was. I have been hit at eBay. If the seller
doesn't make it right, I can employ eBay's Buyer Guarantee (which I've
done about 3 times over many years). Consumers are generally very
crappy reviewers. Sometimes you wonder why they bothered spending the 5 seconds to add a useless "review". Consumers have also been very poor
at even bothering to read the entire product description, too. They
didn't what they expected because they didn't bother to READ the sale.
--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
* Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)