I want to start telling all these companies to leave me the f*** alone. I bought their product and I didn’t complain I didn’t return it. Isn’t that good enough for them??
Also why tf are phone numbers required for every online order now?
What if i don’t want to have a phone number? These forms refuse VoIP numbers as well.
Because at some point someone said “if we have multiple ways to get in contact with our customer, we’ll be able to tell them about problems with their order faster.” And then it became industry standard, and everyone upstream of the order also wants a phone number, and so if you don’t put a mandatory phone number field in your form anymore, all the other ecommerce developers will laugh at you and call you mean names.
Lucky you, I get asked to leave a review before delivery on the regular. One company called me after leaving a negative review, asking why I would do that when the goods weren’t even delivered.
how do you buy stuff online? do you read reviews on the big shopping platforms?
back in the day reviews were a good and honest way to find out if a product is usable. the idea was that normal people do honest reviews and other people can use that as a guidance.
this was probably true for some years, until the system got rigged: users were payed to take bad reviews offline, or users are payed to post good reviews. simple products with good reviews got exchanged with cheap complex products, so the reviews seemed to be for that product.
what you see is one part of this system: a seller is asking you to do free advertisement for them.
I assume they’re fishing for data and active email accounts. If someone replies with a review, they know it’s an active, monitored email address and can sell it for a better price.
Block and delete.
No, the sellers already have the email address, that’s how they ask for reviews. It is simply the way the current internet works: reviews are king, but if the bought thing works as expected most people don’t leave a review, while people with problems are much more likely to leave a bad review. So sending an email asking for reviews is cheap as hell and one of the easiest way to boost their reviews, because if even only every 10th person leaves an “everything is fine”, that boosts their numbers immensely. And after 1 or 2 weeks, chances are that the big draw backs and failures didn’t manifest yet. So also increasing the good to bad review ratio.
if the bought thing works as expected most people don’t leave a review, while people with problems are much more likely to leave a bad review
That’s a good point, though maybe a better way for retailers to deal with that would be to use the percentage of sold items that are associated by a review as an input into a ranking. I mean, maybe “no reviews, lots of items sold” should be used to indicate that an item is favorable rather than neutral.
Fair, but I still think an email address they got a response from is of higher value for them to sell than an unmonitored junk email address as well.
Good user reviews simulate word of mouth advertising which is the most valuable sort. They want free labour from you to help with that. This would be a great application for a spam filter.
Is leaving a review really free labor? I view it more as community building. Nobody has reviews shoved down their throat without asking, they are sought out and helpful for the consumer. And so sellers like reviews because consumers like reviews and it makes them more likely to patronize their business.
I enjoy leaving good reviews. Helps my fellow humans find quality things that I enjoyed and helps the business I like make more things I like. It’s a win win win situation. This is especially true for small business, many of which live or die on reviews.
It’s definitely free labour. Even if you don’t mind doing it, it’s still that. As for the rest, I’m sympathetic to your point of view. I have used reviews and occasionally left reviews on products I liked particularly. However, online reviews are so gamed at this point that I don’t think anyone ought to feel pressured to leave a review like they try to do with the emails OP is receiving. It’s one thing to like a product so much you are moved to leave a review. It’s another to be asked for it every time you purchase something.
get an email address just for spam, which you can mostly/fully ignore, and use your main email only for more important things.
alternatively, if giving them your email is completely unnecessary, use a throwaway like one of those “10 minute email” things.
i haven't tested the functionality below:
i think some services support writing your email as
username+<text goes here>@provider.urlso you can dousername+spam@provider.urland the mail will appear in a separate folder in your email client.Set up an email filter that removes emails that contain “leave a review”.
The market is saturated with crap that doesn’t sell under its own merits. In theory a review signals that not only did that product sell, but somebody actually cared enough to leave a review.
An online market is especially tricky for consumers because you can’t really look at the product to judge it for yourself. You have to make do with a product description, specifications, or photos. All of which might be incomplete, poorly translated, or photoshopped / AI-generated.
So reviews tell you what other people thought. It’s their first line of marketing after SEO (Search Engine Optimization). Of course, unethical companies are out there using paid and fake reviews, so it’s not like a savvy shopper can even use the reviews to judge quality.
Anyway, as someone else said, don’t engage with these emails. You’ll just end up with more emails if you do.
Why are you giving away your email? Use a throwaway.
If they want reviews on any service that relies on an algorithm it is to improve their rating and therefore visibility. Advertising essentially.
They pick and choose the good reviews and mix in a few medium reviews to sell more products
I never trust reviews on first-party sites. However, reviews on other sites can be very helpful. Maybe not yelp lol.
I still find ratings/reviews on Amazon to be at least somewhat useful. A horrible product generally won’t have a 4.8-5.0 rating
