Amazon reviews

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ultimatehandyman
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Amazon reviews

Post by ultimatehandyman »

I often buy products online and sometimes leave a review, especially if the product is poor or has issues (I also sometimes write good reviews as well, depending on how much time I have).

A few months back I purchased some compatible cartridges from a seller on Amazon, the cartridges arrived in good time but the print heads needed cleaning several times before you got an even half decent print. A few weeks later and the printing is really bad, so I decided to leave a review of the product and even printed off a printer status report and attached it to my review.

I only gave the printer cartridges one star out of five because basically they are garbage and the print quality of my printer is crap compared to the print quality when using original. All other reviewers have given five stars :scratch:

At this point I started reading some of the reviews, some of which included lines such as "works great so far. no issues w/ leaking as some others have reported or w/ compatibility. " Ironically when you check the other 20 reviews (which all gave the product 5 stars) there is no mention of any leaking cartridges!

I've often wondered if companies gave false reviews or only published positive reviews, this proves to me beyond a shadow of a doubt that some companies do only publish reviews that fit their narrative.

A few weeks ago I wrote a review on a product that was for sale on Screwfix and I pointed out a few negative things about the product and that review was published, so it's good to know that some companies publish all reviews and not just "selective reviews"
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Re: Amazon reviews

Post by ultimatehandyman »

The original review that I wrote can be seen here-

http://www.ultimatehandyman.co.uk/forum ... 88899.html
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Re: Amazon reviews

Post by steviejoiner74 »

Trip advisor defo leave all reviews. I've stayed in a few shitholes and let them know about it!
Same with restaurants,they leave good and bad on trip advisor.
Amazon have a reputation for omitting bad reviews and also leaving lots of fake good reviews. I'm sure a few book publishers have been caught doing this on Amazon.
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Re: Amazon reviews

Post by kellys_eye »

If the seller can pick and chose which reviews are visible then it negates the whole point behind the system.

Call me a conspiracy theorist (many do) but I wouldn't be at all surprised to find that the printer manufacturers have the ability to detect after-market cartridges and deliberately cause crap printouts! This is something the geek industry needs to check into as the chaos they created when manufacturers put in a deliberate 'kill' command for cartridges that still had ink in them caused them to change their minds (I think) - at least it made people aware of such underhand techniques and allowed them to take their business elsewhere.

All that aside there is a need to check all is well with the kit before condemning the cartridges completely - cleaning is an essential part of printing given that the inks have to dry and to do so on 'open' heads creates many issues. Check that the printhead 'rest' position has a good 'pad' under it - they often deteriorate and/or get crapped up - and many printer users neglect to change this 'consumable' when they should.

I've had great success by standing the printhead in a very shallow bowl of water and waiting until the ink starts to 'flow' - occasionally it has needed some encouragement by the application of a soft brushing motion (no paper towels or cotton buds!).

If you don't use the printer often enough the problems (naturally) get worse.

Probably trying to teach you to suck eggs here Chez but as far as the basic issue of feedback is concerned I don't reuse suppliers that I find have the ability to pick and chose their feedback - this is an automatic indication that they are untrustworthy.

<edit> BTW, have you contacted them to complain? (politely at first!) - sometimes it works!
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Re: Amazon reviews

Post by big-all »

i never ever trust any reveiws connected to a selling site as they have an agenda
i start at the back at the worst one and decide from there they will tend to let the odd bad one through to make it believable so i work on the principle that most really bad have been blocked
i always do a general web search with wording like "problems with" or similar to try and find genuine
now you wont nescesarilly find anything but you loose nothing
we are all ------------------still learning
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Re: Amazon reviews

Post by ultimatehandyman »

steviejoiner74 wrote:Trip advisor defo leave all reviews. I've stayed in a few shitholes and let them know about it!
Same with restaurants,they leave good and bad on trip advisor.
Amazon have a reputation for omitting bad reviews and also leaving lots of fake good reviews. I'm sure a few book publishers have been caught doing this on Amazon.
I use trip advisor quite a bit when booking hotels and have always found their reviews to be honest and helpful :thumbleft:
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Re: Amazon reviews

Post by ultimatehandyman »

kellys_eye wrote:If the seller can pick and chose which reviews are visible then it negates the whole point behind the system.

Call me a conspiracy theorist (many do) but I wouldn't be at all surprised to find that the printer manufacturers have the ability to detect after-market cartridges and deliberately cause crap printouts! This is something the geek industry needs to check into as the chaos they created when manufacturers put in a deliberate 'kill' command for cartridges that still had ink in them caused them to change their minds (I think) - at least it made people aware of such underhand techniques and allowed them to take their business elsewhere.

All that aside there is a need to check all is well with the kit before condemning the cartridges completely - cleaning is an essential part of printing given that the inks have to dry and to do so on 'open' heads creates many issues. Check that the printhead 'rest' position has a good 'pad' under it - they often deteriorate and/or get crapped up - and many printer users neglect to change this 'consumable' when they should.

I've had great success by standing the printhead in a very shallow bowl of water and waiting until the ink starts to 'flow' - occasionally it has needed some encouragement by the application of a soft brushing motion (no paper towels or cotton buds!).

If you don't use the printer often enough the problems (naturally) get worse.

Probably trying to teach you to suck eggs here Chez but as far as the basic issue of feedback is concerned I don't reuse suppliers that I find have the ability to pick and chose their feedback - this is an automatic indication that they are untrustworthy.

<edit> BTW, have you contacted them to complain? (politely at first!) - sometimes it works!

Exactly, I won't be buying anything from Amazon again unless there is no alternative.

You could be right about the chips in the cartridges, but why make a copy of a product and post loads of positive reviews when the product is crap unless you are deliberately trying to con people- if they can copy the ink they can copy the chip?

I've had the printer a few years and never had a single problem with it, normally I just install the cartridges, clean the heads once and it's fine for months. This time I cleaned the heads several times and the print quality has just diminished the more documents are printed.
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Re: Amazon reviews

Post by ultimatehandyman »

big-all wrote:i never ever trust any reveiws connected to a selling site as they have an agenda
i start at the back at the worst one and decide from there they will tend to let the odd bad one through to make it believable so i work on the principle that most really bad have been blocked
i always do a general web search with wording like "problems with" or similar to try and find genuine
now you wont nescesarilly find anything but you loose nothing
Some sites publish positive and negative reviews, such as Screwfix and trip advisor.

I did Google "Uoopo printer cartridge reviews" and most of the reviews were on Amazon- http://bit.ly/2p3pkKr
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Re: Amazon reviews

Post by chrrris »

I'd guess that, as a seller, you could probably buy fake reviews. A few years ago, I wrote a little game for Android phones (it turned out to be a complete flop, which is neither here nor there...) within about a week of it going live on the Google Play Store, I was receiving about 2 or 3 e-mails a week from "promoters" offering, for example, 1000 5* reviews for $100 USD (they where also selling downloads of the game -- for apps, the download count is important as the more something is downloaded, the more it's promoted in the Play Store, etc).

Maybe if I'd been a bit less scrupulous and bought some 5* reviews I would have actually made some money on it :lol:
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Re: Amazon reviews

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