Some Amazon 1 star reviews: "great product, delayed by the post."
Ratings generally have become nonsensical. Between paid reviews, influencer reviews, bot-generated reviews, one-dimensional reviews that confuse multi-dimensional experiences, friends-and-family reviews, bucket reviews where you can't tell which product of a range is being reviewed (Amazon...), and hostile fake reviews, reviews have become all-but useless.
FWIW I had to pick a removals company recently, and I crossed one company off my shortlist when I found they used a suspect ratings company for their review listings. It's possible they were fine, but any company that pays to hide or remove bad reviews may easily not be.
I'm not sure if it's even possible to create a reliable independent review system. It might seems like a trivial problem, but given all the issues it's actually incredibly hard to get it right.
Ratings generally have become nonsensical. Between paid reviews, influencer reviews, bot-generated reviews, one-dimensional reviews that confuse multi-dimensional experiences, friends-and-family reviews, bucket reviews where you can't tell which product of a range is being reviewed (Amazon...), and hostile fake reviews, reviews have become all-but useless.
FWIW I had to pick a removals company recently, and I crossed one company off my shortlist when I found they used a suspect ratings company for their review listings. It's possible they were fine, but any company that pays to hide or remove bad reviews may easily not be.
I'm not sure if it's even possible to create a reliable independent review system. It might seems like a trivial problem, but given all the issues it's actually incredibly hard to get it right.