It's really annoying to sift through comments like "Amazon gave me the wrong product" or "the UPS driver kicked the box through my window" as if that has anything to do with the product I'm looking at. Those comments should absolutely get deleted.

> 4/5 stars : Price was good, hope it arrives soon!

Which I've seen a few times.

This difference is irrelevant when the seller is Amazon, but very relevant when it’s not. We all know how Amazon blurs this line, so the confusion is understandable.

That said, I hate it too, and it’s Amazon’s fault.

> Burger was good, but it was 100 degrees out and windy! I can't enjoy a meal in that kind of weather.

I'm sure the manager stepped up their weather control after getting that scathing critique.

If I'm being charitable, I suppose that would be useful for an out-of-towner who was unaware that the area is hot and often windy. But to mark it 1 star as a result is useless.

Because reviews are sometimes fake, and often from people who don't know much or have a lot to compare to, the most useful thing is to filter for when people complain about what you don't care about.

And helpfully when filtering by language, Tripadvisor will show the spread of reviews for that language making it easy.

On the other hand, I did ask a question on Amazon just yesterday and have received 5 answers in under a day, so it their system does work to some extent.

As an aside, favorite negative review I have heard of is one for the Taj Mahal complaining that it is too far from the airport.

Story time: I once read a one star review on a restaurant in Boston which boiled down to "waiter was black". I flagged the review and yelp got back to me that "they tried to include all relevant opinions." This was about a decade ago, but the experience has always left me with the opinion that review sites could do more to keep reviews topical by promoting ratings of the separate parts of an item. Also, they should allow you to flag racism.

Everyone on earth knows that it might rain during your dinner, just like everyone on earth knows that packages get lost sometimes or the UPS driver might drop your TV. It's not useful or fair to the product's company or restaurant to leave these kind of reviews.

No, it's not.

> that packages get lost sometimes or the UPS driver might drop your TV.

I would never leave a bad review for those types of things, since they're not in the sellers control. I'd knock a star off if delivery was delayed because it didn't ship on time though, which has happened on more than one occasion.

That's the point! You don't knock a star off a product because they didn't ship the product in time. You knock stars off the SELLER. There's literally a whole system in place to review the seller.

And if the seller is Amazon, it's even worse. Why would I care about whether or not Amazon was able to ship your product in time 3 months ago?

> Why would I care about

As I said, the world (Amazon, manufacturer, potential buyers, etc.) is lucky that I took the time to provide them with the opportunity to consider my opinion in the first place, so I'm certainly not going to take additional time out of my day to leave a secondary review, and I'm certainly not going to concern myself with what others care about my honest reviews.

Because Amazon doesn't give you the option to rate the delivery experience separately from the product?

For instance, a sender can “create a shipping label”, and suddenly it has a tracking number and looks ready to ship soon. In reality, it may literally not even be in a box yet, much less anywhere near a shipping warehouse! Things can stay in these limbo states for weeks and claim to be “shipping” or whatever else. Not to name names but ReserveBar did this to me and I’m still bitter about it (ended up cancelling an order after being lied to about its true state of shipment for over a month).

I recently went to work for a drop ship company and ups and fedex labels still have a preship phase. This company we had labels printed while we waited for merch to arrive 3 weeks later!

I recently did two orders where this type of thing happens. One (an ebay order) the company sent me a notice a few hours latter that my product was damaged and no more stock would arrive for a month could they cancel the order. The other (new egg third party) there was no communication for a week despite a shipping label, so I contacted newegg and demanded a refund. I might order from the first company again, the second put a bad taste in my mouth and I probably won't use newegg at all anymore just because they are not policing their sellers.

Also ups does not notify you so don’t expect communication from them they will tell you to call your shipper. If the shipper doesn’t respond to you well... that has nothing to do with the UPS shipping process now does it.

I just realized the drop ship company printed labels early so it didn’t look like they were the slow ones. The idea is someone looks at the label sees “shipping something received” and then hounds ups for status updates and not the seller.

Granted, this can be a little fuzzy, since it might not even be clear which parts of the experience are controlled by Amazon, the product manufacturer, and other third parties. Receiving a counterfeit SanDisk SD card from Amazon is almost certainly not the fault of SanDisk, yet a lot of people might leave negative reviews on an Amazon listing if they receive a counterfeit product. That's understandable despite it not exactly being "fair" to SanDisk.

Is this a serious question? If a seller fails to get my package to me then of course I'm going to leave a bad review - that's literally what I'm paying for! If they have problems with their shipping vendor it's their problem, not mine.

You're more than welcome to review the seller shipping experience (which shows up on the seller detail page that probably gets little traffic), but anything you post about a seller-specific incident on the general product review set isn't helping anyone.

Say you buy a product listed as "Cool WebCam HD". You might deal with "xXCoolSellerXx" while I would deal with "GadgetSeller51". By leaving a bad review unrelated to the item, you are drowning the actual bad reviews and hurting quality sellers.

Upon purchasing a product on Amazon you will receive a link to review the seller. That is where you are to put your review about the way the seller dealt with you.

You’re doing the equivalent of leaving DoorDash a bad review on the App Store because you didn’t like the takeout you ordered.

I mean it’s on DoorDash and you’re charged by DoorDash. As far as you’re concerned DoorDash is responsible for your McNuggets.

Perhaps Amazon should let sellers brand their product pages. I just looked at DoorDash Android app and the restaurant name is prominently displayed on each listing in the search results and even includes their logo when I click in.

Amazon is doing their best to hide from me who I'm buying from so I can only assume they want me to think it's them.

Then either you weren't trying very hard or you need to put your glasses on. It's in the same place on every listing that has Add to cart/Buy buttons: under those buttons, after the "Secure transaction" link.

If I can't find it, and I'm actively looking for it, there' something wrong with the page. It is not obvious like DoorDash is obvious. I don't think you can argue that in good faith.

> Dispatched from and sold by <seller>. / Sold by <seller> and Fulfilled by Amazon.

It's also listed at the checkout screen for each item:

> Items dispatched from (Amazon EU Sàrl or <seller>) / Sold by:(Amazon EU S.a.r.L. or <seller)

Exactly, leave a bad review. But leave it at the right place so that this review will have an impact.

Say you buy a new car at Honda and the salesperson scams you. You would not go on a car review website and review the Civic with "1 star, the salesperson was corrupt". You would call the dealership and tell them "this salesperson is crap" or you would call Honda headquarter and tell them "this dealership is ruining your name".

Why would this be different on Amazon? When a marketplace gives you a bad experience, you review the marketplace itself or the seller. Not the product, the company who makes the product has no control over the marketplace.

My money goes to Amazon, in exchange for the working product in my household. Anything goes wrong, goes to Amazon. They could always pay somebody to read the reviews and talk to their resellers if they don't adhere to shipment standards.

If I hurt quality sellers, I'm terribly sorry - maybe they shouldn't sell on a disreputable platform.

If it was a item specific shipping problem, like Amazon packed it in such a way that it arrived broken and could be expected to arrive broken, that's somewhat useful, although it probably applies to the whole product category (btw, don't buy hard drives from amazon if you don't want them to be packed in a big box with like 3 air pillows and banging back and forth for the whole drive).

If a fork lift smashed into the package at the warehouse, that's just bad luck, not a product issue; contact customer service.

Exactly, which is why you should review your seller negatively so that Amazon can take steps in removing that seller from the marketplace. Amazon reads the reviews you put on a seller and take almost immediate action. When you review the item, they don't. So not only are you wasting your own time, you are wasting everyone else's.

I'm choosing between pictures, descriptions, and reviews of products on Amazon. In that context, the individual seller (and there might be a dozen for an individual product, though typically only one marked Prime) has nothing to do with the delivery, and it's a question of the quality of the actual product.

For what it's worth, I have Prime, live on the end of a private cul-de-sac and have zero problems with package theft, typically filter by Prime-eligible products, and have bought thousands of dollars of stuff on Amazon. I can think of two instances where the products didn't get to me, and one of those was an exception to my Prime-eligible filter. The other time, I waited a week for my 2-day shipping, contacted Amazon, and they shipped a second unit. A couple days after the second unit arrived, the original also made its way to me at the end of a long, tortured journey through the wrong state, no idea what happened there (I contacted Amazon when it arrived and they said I could keep it...good service!)

I think Amazon considers these issues with the vendor, not issues with the product proper. So they would want you to report those things in a vendor review rather than in a product review.

I've definitely submitted negative product reviews and had them go live. And obviously there are lots of negative reviews out there on lots of products.

When it's mostly mixed inventory, and one of the vendors is inserting garbage into the mix, why wouldn't a future buyer want to know that the whole mix is corrupt?

It sucks that it happens, but it's not specific to the product. Same with damaged to a certain degree. "It was damaged" isn't useful, but "it comes woefully under packaged", for example, is useful if the item is fragile.

Something that Amazon is at fault for and can happen to any item, so while it is an issue, it's not really on any particular seller or item

Fwiw I've never had a negative review removed after hundreds of reviews. But I'm very strict about framing issues in terms of them item.

For example, I recently got a shattered ceramic cup.Amazon had padded the contents of the outer box, but the inner box the actual cup came in had no padding whatsoever... paper thin with no clearances.

There was never a hope that thing would ever have reached me in one piece, regardless of what Amazon did to package it and so I framed the negative review like that.

It's something that a prototypical instance of the item would share as a shortcoming. Amazon can't fix it, only the manufacturer boxing it can