Rating-only reviews

[Kindofcrunchy]

Why do people bother leaving rating-only reviews? What is the bloody point? That doesn't help anyone choose a product!

Trying to find a decent sized bag to take to hospital when I give birth and cannot for the life of me find anything suitable. It has to be a rucksack or be on wheels for me to be able to manoeuvre it as I have pgp and sciatica. It would be nice if it opened all the way round like a suitcase so there's no faffing around trying to find things.

I looked at this one, thinking it ticked all the boxes: www.craghoppers.com/40l-hybrid-holdall-brick-red/ and some helpful soul has rated it one star with no explanation for no fathomable reason.

For the love of god, if you're going to rate something badly online, at least tell us why it's crap!!

Rant over

(Pregnancy hormones may have played a part in this post.)

I’m not prepared to spend my time providing free research, testing and marketing for companies. I’ve paid for the product, that’s enough. It takes two seconds to click a star rating, so I don’t mind doing that, but life is just too short for anything more.

I get that, but by leaving a short bad review, you're potentially saving someone else time and money. Like "zips broke on first use. Returned for refund" takes what, 30 seconds?Rating it one star literally helps no one!!

If it doesn't help you, why are you so het up about it?

I just ignore reviews, personally.

That bag looks great. Quite big for what you need though?

You are not wrong, OP. My favourite bad review was on the John Lewis website on those basic nappy changing stations. One star and a “poor quality, started to tear at the edges after a year”. The man really wanted his £15 worth.

Off topic but I used a giant supermarket reusable bag (one of those big ones with nice pictures on them) because it fitted everything in and was easy to get into, whereas the other women on my ward all had fancy wheeled suitcases and they couldn't actually lift them up from under their beds to get into them without help after their C sections. Also I had polyhydramnios and I was still leaking acres of fluid about 12 hours into labour and it got on everything including the bag so it was easy to clean after I got home.
Buut YANBU about ratings, if it's a one star I want gory details!

Take all reviews with a pinch of salt. I have been offered £40 this week to change my review or remove it. This is quite common on some sites and happens a lot.

Also yes a lot of places do pay to remove edit reviews.

Equally baffling are 5 star reviews given on the basis that it was delivered on time.

What the actual hell? Unbelievable. If your product is bad then bloody improve it, don't remove honest opinions. I hate unscrupulous companies.

I put more faith in a star value derived from loads of people than from a fewer number of opinions of people crazy enough to review products online

How did you make purchases before the internet came along?

This is copied from the last email I got, I do leave a lot of reviews and get emails like this quite often. I`ll admit I have tested them in the past and they have payed as promised.

"We are terribly sorry to hear the product you received doesn't meet your requirement and would like to know if we can assist you with a refund.
Customer reviews are very important to us, and we also attach great importance to the reviews left by buyers. Based on these reviews, we are working hard to improve the product quality and customer service.
For a shop like ours, a low-rating review is a fatal blow to us. Is it possible for you to delete the review? If you can, we would like to issue a refund of
£40.
to you to express our gratitude. Hope you can understand and give us a chance to make up for you.
Please let me know if you have received the email that we can pay you
If you are really disappointed with us and don't want to communicate about product issues any more, please feel free to let us know and we will not contact you again.
Best Regards."

Given that many reviews are complete nonsense, made up/by the supplier, focus on irrelevant things or are based on factors that someone else might consider important but you don't care about, I'm not sure that actual written words are that helpful. Plus different people use the star rating in different ways.

I rarely review anything, but rationally, I'd only give a 5 review, especially to accommodation/food etc if it was absolutely perfect, with 4 being the appropriate review for most things, because there is almost always a small annoyance or short coming, but I've seen many places/service say that they expect 5* to be the norm and it effectively covers all levels of satisfaction from 81% upwards, which is quite different.

For something like a high street level bag, I'd rather see the item and decide for myself whether it suited my needs and was appropriate quality for the money, so as long as I can buy it from a shop or order it from somewhere I can return it without charge, I don't care what anyone else thinks about it.

I do read reviews but ultimately make my own decision.
I did forward one to someone asking about SCS on here but she said trustpilot showed they were fine. Ok..

I assume people bought rubbish items that broke and then complained to their friends, or wrote angry letters to the manufacturer?? I have no idea, I'm in my 30s so I've never not had internet!

I take reviews with a massive pinch of salt, especially the star ratings.
I assume a lot of positive reviews are faked in some way.
I work for a company with a load of great Google ratings.....all done by the staff who have worked there through the years, or the owners family!

I'm with you, OP - I don't take notice of start ratings without reviews. What's the point if you can't even be bothered to put a short sentence? You'd be better to just ignore and not leave any rating at all.