To not want to review every item I buy?

[MinnieCountrywoman]

I’m really fed up of being pestered to review items, getting flurries of texts and emails every time I venture into a store, being told I have to review something (etsy) - I am probably being grumpy but I find it really intrusive and annoying. Is it just me?

Me too

Also on a really good holiday I don’t particularly want to up the demand

I was thinking of exactly that episode!

Also, companies like Virgin Media try to get you to give them a review every time you do something on their website. Or when one of their engineers comes round to fix a problem. Two years ago I had 3 or 4 engineers around for a persistent problem and they all urged me to give them a good rating. One even wrote his name, a suggested rating and a smiley on a piece of paper.

I too hate constantly being asked to review every little thing. Just to add though, as an Etsy seller, the review requests sadly get automatically sent by Etsy and not the individual sellers (I’m always worried that it puts people off buying again).

Online reviews for mundane items is one of my favourite genres.

For instance, Wickes has managed to persuade 2,930 people to review bags of sharp sand. Loads have gone so far as to upload photos. I think that's quite impressive.

https://www.wickes.co.uk/Tarmac-Sharp-Sand---Major-Bag/p/131881

Then there's the John Lewis reviews for pillow cases...

That sounds like their pay reviews/bonuses are probably at least partially based on customer ratings. Which is a bit crap considering people are more likely to leave reviews when things go wrong.

I had an appliance delivered once and the delivery people said for every customer review they received they were entered into some kind of raffle/lottery, so the more customers they persuaded to leave reviews the more chance they had of a "bonus".

There are lots of us out there 😁

It's an email not a summons. You don't have to review them, hell you don't even have to even open them. Most email providers let you forward anything with certain keywords into a specific folder, so just banish them there and never open the folder.

And why can't you be truthful? You don't owe the Airbnb people anything, you gave them money, they gave you a service. Just say the good bits were good, the bad bits were bad, and the bits that were better for certain demographics were better for them.

Just ignore it.

Yes, that would make sense. It really reminded me of that Black Mirror episode, don't know if you've seen it. The engineer who was even keener than the others on a good rating had been with the company for 20 years, before it was taken over by Virgin Media. So very experienced and had a good reputation among his colleagues. Kind of sad he was almost be begging for a good rating.

The reason the problem took so long to sort out was that the first engineer didn't check something he should have checked (would have had to walk around the property) as he ran slightly late because of traffic and had to meet his target. The next two engineers assumed he had checked it and only the last one checked absolutely everything to get to the bottom of things.

But reviews like the Tracy's dog sex toy on Amazon are famous and hilarious.
Also some great ones for bic biros on Amazon.

The thing is, although it’s annoying, I’m so grateful people do leave reviews so I know what’s good to buy.

I have an Amazon store and despite trying above and beyond to please customers, we hardly have any reviews (compared to sales) but we know we’re good as we have so many repeat orders. So when we do get a negative one (Royal Mail messed up etc) our ratings plummet and Amazon tell us we’re at risk of deactivation. It affects us hugely.

so if you love a product, please do say so as people magically find time to complain but not to praise (and I include myself in that).

messages are automated, we have no control.

As a full time Etsy seller I hate that they do this, please know it doesn’t come from the sellers at all.

I agrée! Drives you mad

Lots of reviews are crap though and a simple, I am happy with it' is not useful in my opinion. Recently had this when I was looking at air bnbs, tell me whether there are stairs or a lift to the apartment, tell me if it's clean, parking nearby, comes well equipped, whether it is actually great for families or if it's especially noisy at night. Often you get the same kind of reviews for clothes. I want to know if it's true to the picture, comes up small, large or true to size, if the material is thin etc.

Etsy annoy me with this, I don't want to review items before I've received them. I also don't want to review the same seller 3 times.

Got this email and thought of this thread.