News - Ebuyer "misleads" customers with favourable reviews

[ik9000]

I'd agree this is pretty common. I'm not even sure I trust Amazon and play never to do it...

I left negative seller feedback on Amazon. The guy called me up to bitch at me. I told him where to go. He then called Amazon and got them to remove the feedback!! Now what is the point of that?

[Saracen]

When reviewing products, very few people are in this position, especially in certain industries (comp hardware and gaming being two examples). Lots of companies will cherry pick who gets to review their products first, based on the ratings those reviewers have given previously - if you constantly state that one companies products are bad (because they are), then they'll put you at the bottom of the list. As a result, you don't get the web traffic your site needs to sustain itself, and hence a lot of websites will give an award to everything.

E.g. Gamespot giving Kane&Lynch a 6/10, even though the site was plastered in K&L advertising, and the reviewer getting a swift boot.

I'm lucky enough to not be in this position, reviewing for a site which companies can't ignore for long. I've only given one award given in 20+ products this year, because an award has to be something special, not given away.

Personally, I would not regard any publisher or publication that let the company pick the reviewer as professional. And a lot of the reviews I've done have been in computer hardware, though not so much gaming.

Most of the time, I've approached the editor with the ideas and I end up doing the review. A manufacturer can agree to supply product for review, or decline to do so, but they can't pick the reviewer. As for site being plastered on adverts, well, that can go more than one way. If the site and or magazine is professional, it has no bearing on a review. In thousands of reviews, over 20 years, not once has advertising ever influenced the review, for the simple reason that not once have I ever had a conversation with the advertising team, and not once has an editor ever changed my opinions, or results, or indicated that they want a review to conclude anything particular.

In these days of anyone setting up a review site, which may or may not be "professional", I'd agree there are some questionable sites out there, and it's certainly the case companies and PR agencies often have limited product for review and prioritise publications where they will get the most high-profile coverage.

Any website that gives an award to anything and everything is, sooner or later, going to lose it's credibility with readers, and so is any reviewer that does that. They are also, IMHO, not "professional". I have no doubt they exist, and are likely quite common, but that's largely a function of how easy it is to set up a website. It's a LOT harder, and vastly more expensive, to set up a printed magazine, and to keep it going. And that is part of the task facing the users of reviews .... assessing whether you can trust the source of it.

[GingerNinjaRay]

I was really shocked when I saw this, I was really naive in thinking that a review would just be published automatically - I hugely rely on reviews as I'm not usually buying for myself on ebuyer it's usually just a Christmas thing, guess I'll have to be more careful in future