EggXpert

    The user review section is not a flaw. User reviews are just that. They are opinions and experiences. If you don't like someones review, then ignore it. Don't get upset because someone disagrees with you, or because they don't know what they are talking about. Many people don't & there really isn't any point in getting all worked up about it .As I have stated before, ( this has to be at least the third thread on this subject), People may have experience with a product, through work or school, that they have no control over where it is bought. Their insights can be very helpful. The reviews are not meant to be professional reviews. They are user experiences and opinions. The biggest flaw would be to censor people based on someones interpretation of what the facts are. No one can tell if the person bought the item or not so use your head when reading the reviews and give them the proper weight. Some are very good & helpful and others are pointless and or wrong. Just like real life.

    If you want good professional reviews, buy a magazine or use a web site.

I agree completely there.  People who don't actually own the item shouldn't care what other's are writing, its the proper place to argue fact and fiction.  I've read plenty of reviews for cpus, video cards and other items and saw "reviews" that had nothing to do with the item at hand.  They also need to remove the technical rating, we all know people greatly exagerate their know-how and its obvious from reading their reviews.

What i love is when people say it was DOA when they tried it.  Specially the motherboards.  How do they know it was doa (other than it doesn't work), could be a cable isn't connected right, the psu may be inadequate.  With other stuff, it may really be dead, but with as many reviews as i see where m/b's are DOA, i just have to laugh because i know most of the time they aren't.  But on the rare occassion, a company does mess up and ship out bad boards, DFI did it to me several years ago, i bought 5 boards and 5 were bad, thankfully i had a good relationship with the store i bought them from and they new about the problem, so they replaced all of them and let me install them at the shop to make sure no more were bad (apparently they had a batch of 10 that were bad)

Even if they didn't buy it from here, they still should be allowed to review it, provided thats its the same product and not something similar.  Doesn't really matter where they bought it from as long as the review is relavent

But for the topic at hand, they need to do what sears does and moderate their reviews. Yes i know it would take some extra man power to do given the amount of items they have, but the end result is great.  you don't have reviews that are just bogus.  Don't just say it sucks and nothing else, in your other box, say why it sucks.  does it suck or does it not live up to your idea of what it should be doing.  you may just have higher expectations and were let down when you actually got it.

One thing people need to stop doing is placing their system specs in the reviews.  No one cares about what you have for a system and doesn't influence our decision.  Its one thing to say it goes great with my mother board (.....), but the rest we don't care about.

Just read the reviews for yourself, and make determination what is hot air, and what observations are worthy of additional research.  I think it would be silly for Newegg to spend money to determine what reviews should stay and what should go.  Just get rid of the outright bot spam that gets posted to sites sometimes.

  As far as purchases being required to be from newegg in order to make a review goes, I think such a requirement would be silly.  What happens when you get fed up with some Product "A" that your had for awhile, and come here  to buy a replacement product "B". Which review would be more valuable, the review of the junk part that you just trashed ("A'), which you might have gotten as part of a system, or acquired a long time ago from somewhere else, or the part you just bought from Newegg, but hasn't stood the test of time yet ("B")?

 

richei:

One thing people need to stop doing is placing their system specs in the reviews.  No one cares about what you have for a system and doesn't influence our decision.  Its one thing to say it goes great with my mother board (.....), but the rest we don't care about.

I disagree with you on this one. Listing your system is a great way to let others know what items work with each other.  Like that my case has plenty of room for my CPU fan and that my board works with the certain RAM I am using. Yes, you can say that this belongs in the review for the named product only. I do agree with that. Really, what harm is it causing? It only takes up a small amount of space and some people like to see what kind of system others are running. Like me, I like to see what different combinations of parts people throw together. It adds a uniqueness to the reviewer to see that they aren't running the same system as 165416841545 other people. For some, system specs are not so much bragging(mine is surely not) but more of a signature to identify them among the hundreds of thousands; dare I say...millions?, of people using newegg.com. IMO this makes it feel more like a community.

Besides, I do not think you have the right to speak for everyone who uses the site. It is your opinion; others may agree, others may disagree. It is up to everyone to try and make the review system a better thing.

I actually use the review system in reverse sometimes. I look at items that have bad ratings, just to see if the users reviewing have any bit of sense. Like this one about not working well in a NORMAL "PC" case:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16835114036

 You can tell they had no idea what they were buying, but at least they did not put the tech. level on above average. There are reviews like this on almost all the 1U server HSF. If people would learn to read the description before tossing it in their cart, good products would not have bad reviews. Like the BE CPUs. The main con I see is no HSF, the description CLEARLY states it does not have one. These are for OCing, so if you had even average technical understanding you would know this. I know very few people who OC with stock cooling. So coming with no HSF is actually a pro. Why include something most people will not use with the product anyway?
 

I have been using Newegg for years on and off for both personal use and with professional clients.  I will admit that I never really paid that much attention to the customer reviews, but I had always ASSUMED that you could only write a review if you were an actual Newegg customer!  Letting people who are not Newegg users write reviews doesn't make much sense to me...  I guess I need to pay more attention.  Thanks for the heads up! :)

I just think there should be an option to view the specs or not.  To me, its just taking up valuable space.  If they really want to be that unique, then just be honest in the review.  people don't care that you have a quad core, quad gpu system with the latest and greatest gadgets.  All that tells me is that you just have way to much money and you have to gloat about it every time you make a review.  My system isn't the same as what you may have, telling me that you can play games on the highest settings doesn't tell me anything about the video card, just that you can play games on the highest settings.  Just tell me what i need to know, did the card work as described, are the clock speeds listed accurate, etc.

The only time i ever really watch reviews are for harddrives and stuff like that.  Its good to put that it doesn't like raid, that kind of info is good to know.  As for stuff like cases, i go by what's in the pictures.  lol, reviews like that first one give me a good laugh.  tells me they probably put it on wrong.  But yea, if you can weed out the bs and the wannabe techs, you can normally get a decent picture of the item you're looking at.

Never listen to the reviews that say it was doa, unless there's like 5 or 6 of them in a row, specially with things like psus, ram and cpu's.  those are easiest things to mess up.  I've seen reviews where people have said that it was doa because the pc didn't turn on.  Lots of things that can cause a pc not to turn on.  A big problem with new techs is that they aren't taught how to troubleshoot computers.  They're taught what each thing does, how to install them and that's about it.  Is the power connected, if there's a switch, is it on, are the necessary cables plugged into the board?  So unless there's a lot of people saying its doa, don't always listen to it.

What i do like about the review system here is that the manufacturer is allowed to answer back.  While its usually the standard, we're sorry about that, go here for our support forums, blah, blah blah...., its good to know that they are at least reading the review, even if the reviewer doesn't know what heck he's talking about.

"I believe a consumer who purchases the product should be able to review it twice.  One review after owning the product for a week.  Another review after one month of ownership.  Now I know this would effect the website drastically but overall I think it would improve it more then anything else could.  It would be a bit tricky at first to implement but it would be so worth it.  They would have to implement a purchase feature that unlocks the ability to review the product after one week of ownership.  This would eliminate every bogus review found on the entire site.  I honestly think every review for every product should be deleted and start over again or keep all the new reviews from 2008 and up.  Hopefully the "Big Wigs" are reading these forums and hopefully they like the idea. "

That makes sense, but instead of 2 reviews, just not allow people to review until after 2 weeks or so.  I saw that because, specially these new builders, don't properly break in their system.  They just turn it on and hit the heavy stuff.  So then after a day or so, something fails and their like, blah blah, this item is c**p, it failed after only a couple of days...  Makes me want to slap them.  To get rid of the bogus reviews, dont' allow people who didn't purchase the item through newegg to review it.

Just proves that i was right.  all that craap and nothing relavent to the card's performance.

What they really need is a report abuse button or something.  you're not supposed to mention competitors in the review..

Partially agree.

I believe the option to show reviews that are only from people who purchased the item from Newegg is adequate, and anything absolute is unworkable and unfair.

I disagree because what happens if - for example - I almost always exclusively shop Newegg, but a critical item is out-of-stock for an extended period (not so uncommon on CPU's), so I purchase the item from another retailer?  Is my experience with the product less valid?  Am I less technically qualified to comment on a product because I could not or chose not to wait for an item to be re-stocked?

I agree because there are shills who are paid to rate a product and run-up ratings for items that do not deserve high ratings... and since I sort Newegg's product lists by "Best Rating", the shill factor always concerns me.

Perhaps it would be possible to allow people who purchased an item elsewhere to add their comments, but to not include their rating stars in the items overall rating.

System Specifications in Reviews:  I usually ignore these, but recently found them helpful when trying to match RAM to a newly released motherboard - it helped.  The manufacturer's compatibility list was for single 512K or 1Gb sticks, by part number, most of which Newegg did not stock, and I found the reviewr's system information helpful.

DOA:  I really dislike people who rate a product 1 star because the item arrived DOA.  Nonesense.  As mentioned, they may have pooped-up the install, but -- and this has been my expereince living in the Southwest -- often it's a shipping issue.  I don't order "perishable" parts - RAM, CPU's or hard drives, for example - when the temperature is 110 in the non-existent shade because after sitting in a brown truck for 8-hours, they come off the van at more than 200-degrees.  That's neither the manufacturer's fault nor Newegg's fault, so why rate an item one star DOA?

System Specifications in Reviews:  I usually ignore these, but recently found them helpful when trying to match RAM to a newly released motherboard - it helped.  The manufacturer's compatibility list was for single 512K or 1Gb sticks, by part number, most of which Newegg did not stock, and I found the reviewr's system information helpful.

DOA:  I really dislike people who rate a product 1 star because the item arrived DOA.  Nonesense.  As mentioned, they may have pooped-up the install, but -- and this has been my expereince living in the Southwest -- often it's a shipping issue.  I don't order "perishable" parts - RAM, CPU's or hard drives, for example - when the temperature is 110 in the non-existent shade because after sitting in a brown truck for 8-hours, they come off the van at more than 200-degrees.  That's neither the manufacturer's fault nor Newegg's fault, so why rate an item one star DOA?

I always ignore the ones that say it was DOA, unless there's a lot of them.  there's just a lot of reasons.  The majority of the time, i doubt it was doa, people just don't have the troubleshooting skills needed to know if its really DOA or if something isn't on right.  I don't think i've ever seen warnings of thermal shock (going from extreme hot to cold), which is what the guy above me was trying to describe.  I always let the item just sit for 20-30 minutes to let it adjust to room temperature.  Lots of things can make a motherboard to look like its dead, from an inadequate psu (from upgrading everything but the psu), to power cables not being plugged. 

If something is DOA, you contact the manufacturer and get a replacement, like guy above me said, you don't rate the product based on that.  Its got nothing to do with newegg, unless maybe if the item wasn't packed securely (not to likely though since newegg tends to over pack stuff.).  Any idea how many times that box goes down a conveyor belt and tossed around.  Marking the box fragile doesn't really do much.  I've gotten boxes that really made me wonder if the stuff inside was still intact :D

You don't need system specific reviews to determine if memory will be compatible.  thats why they list the bus speed in the specifications and how much ram the board can support, plus newegg also has a memory configuration thing on the left.

/signed

I get fed up with those replies too.  I do think that implementing such a system will be hard to do and time consuming since a database has to be put together that would verify your purchase in relation to your account.  

I have absolutely no problem with reviews from people who didn't get it at newegg.  After all, why should the experiences of someone who got it at best buy or frys be any different than someone who got it here when it comes to the end-hardware. 

I think a better solution would be to enable the flagging of reviews for  abuse or inaccuracy, like if someone reviews the wrong product or makes a completely moronic comment like expecting OEM items to come with things they shouldn't.  Then the flagged reviews could be moderated and it would take much less effort than someone going over all of them (many retail sites already follow that formula)

Alfador:

I have absolutely no problem with reviews from people who didn't get it at newegg.  After all, why should the experiences of someone who got it at best buy or frys be any different than someone who got it here when it comes to the end-hardware. 

I think a better solution would be to enable the flagging of reviews for  abuse or inaccuracy, like if someone reviews the wrong product or makes a completely moronic comment like expecting OEM items to come with things they shouldn't.  Then the flagged reviews could be moderated and it would take much less effort than someone going over all of them (many retail sites already follow that formula)

I SECOND THIS. WE DEMAND FLAGS NEWEGG!!!  lol

Yeah，strongly support your idea!!! Customer review will influence a lot to other customers who want to buy this item, especially to some newbie. But always the review are really useless or misleading. As Newegg won’t give technical support, compatibility and recommendation suggestions, I hope the reviews can relate more about these contents.

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jerry42:

The user review section is not a flaw. User reviews are just that. They are opinions and experiences. If you don't like someones review, then ignore it. Don't get upset because someone disagrees with you, or because they don't know what they are talking about. Many people don't & there really isn't any point in getting all worked up about it .As I have stated before, ( this has to be at least the third thread on this subject), People may have experience with a product, through work or school, that they have no control over where it is bought. Their insights can be very helpful. The reviews are not meant to be professional reviews. They are user experiences and opinions. The biggest flaw would be to censor people based on someones interpretation of what the facts are. No one can tell if the person bought the item or not so use your head when reading the reviews and give them the proper weight. Some are very good & helpful and others are pointless and or wrong. Just like real life.

    If you want good professional reviews, buy a magazine or use a web site.

What good is a review when all it says is that it sucked because it was DOA? I would venture to say that 99% of the i****s doing those reviews didn't bother to call tech support or check the manufacturer's website for possible fixes.  They need to make a thing where if it sees DOA, then you to specify if you did everything you could instead of putting it in the case without connecting all the power cables, then decided since it didn't work that it must be dead.  LEARN BASIC TROUBLESHOOTING SKILLS!!!!

Whoever it was that said to have them moderated hit it on the head.  The reviews might actually be usefull then.