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Re:Lady Gaga's $0.99 Album Download Overwhelms Amazon by smackfu on Monday May 23, 2011 @08:28PM (#2578173)
It depends on whether you consider delivery and packaging to be part of the product that Amazon is selling. If you buy something physical twice and it comes broken both times because Amazon is packing it poorly (which has happened to me), is that relevant for a review?
Re:Lady Gaga's $0.99 Album Download Overwhelms Amazon by bgentry on Monday May 23, 2011 @08:53PM (#2578231)
No. If you're reviewing Fry's electronics and they sell you a previously-opened, broken HP computer, it's the review of Fry's that should suffer, not the review of that particular HP machine.

A review of an album should be confined to your opinions on that album.

That being said, most people don't know the difference as I see this kind of thing on Zappos and NewEgg all the time.

Re:Lady Gaga's $0.99 Album Download Overwhelms Amazon by ugh on Monday May 23, 2011 @09:47PM (#2578336)
I think people do know the difference but reviews offer them a very public way to complain.

I don’t think there are easily discoverable and public review sections for the services Amazon and other online retailers provide†. Are there gaps in the selection of products? Are prices appropriate? Is the shipping slow? Is the packaging inappropriate? Are you given inaccurate information about the arrival of you orders? Are songs slow to download? Is the user interface wonky?

There is no place for consumers to publicly review online retailers on their own websites. That sucks. It makes product reviews less useful because they are riddled with all that noise that is in no way related to the actual product. It also doesn’t allow consumers to review online retailers in a way that’s accessible to other consumers. This is a failing of the online retailer, not consumers.

I think online retailers are quite happy that all the talk about their services is spread around in all the product reviews and not in any central place. They can even delete criticism of their service with the justification that the review in question is off-topic.

It’s not even as though this is a hard problem. You would just have to ask the reviewer what he wants to write about (the product or the service).

†Amazon’s review guidelines (http://www.amazon.com/gp/community-help/customer-reviews-gui...), for example, do not even allow users to publicly share information about or criticize Amazon’s service in reviews. You are asked to use the feedback form which is not public. Quote: “What’s not allowed: […] Feedback on the seller, your shipment experience or the packaging (you can do that at www.amazon.com/feedback and www.amazon.com/packaging)”

Re:Lady Gaga's $0.99 Album Download Overwhelms Amazon by Qz on Monday May 23, 2011 @11:38PM (#2578557)
Amazon actually has a system for rating packaging separately from products (at least for non-digital goods), so it looks they are way ahead of you on that one.