After hearing our complaint about the Apple Store’s rating system, reader Stefan Wrobel wrote in with his experiences with the rating system on Overstock.com. According to him, Overstock.com employees screen negative reviews from the website so that only positive reviews are posted. Has anyone else had an experience like Stefans? It’s a pretty bum deal if that’s the norm.
Stefan’s story after the jump.
Update: For the record, I just talked to Kristie B. at the Overstock.com online chat and she said she was not aware of any reason beyond profanity that negative reviews would not be posted. If that is the policy, it is not being implemented (or at least talked about) across the board.
Reading the post about the Apple store product ratings reminded me of an encounter I had with Overstock.com a while back about a “negative” review that I attempted to post about one of their products.
I bought a DVD tower from Overstock.com two months ago, and when I put it together, I couldn’t believe that it was so poorly designed. In my effort to forewarn other possible buyers, I submitted a review of its negative aspects to balance out the two glowing 5-star reviews on Overstock’s site. After I clicked submit, I was greeted with a friendly “Overstock will post this review as soon as we approve it” message. Assuming that meant they were scanning for inappropriate language, etc, I waited about a week and checked to see if it showed up … then another week. After 2 weeks of waiting, I decided to use their “live chat” online support to find out why my review hadn’t shown up. Much to my surprise, each of the 3 agents I talked to informed me that negative reviews were not typically posted, and that the reviewing process consisted of weeding out those negative product reviews. Here are some of my favorite quotes from one of their customer service reps (SW is me):
Brianna P: I have no way of telling who submitted it. I can just see the reviews, and if they were approved or not. SW: I can’t see any reason why it would not have been approved though, can you check? Brianna P: If it was negative in any way, it would not be approved.
SW: Well how can I submit a review that contains negative aspects of a product to warn other customers of them if it will not be approved? Brianna P: I am sorry, but I have no control over it. SW: That’s just the policy, that negative reviews are not posted at all? Brianna P: Usually not. But, we do not have any control of that here in customer service.
So there you have it, Overstock.com’s “fair” customer review approval process. Just be forewarned if you’re trusting customer reviews when buying from them, you’re not getting the whole picture (and I’d even go so far as to speculate that the reviews that are shown are faked).
