Jules Heartly | May 11th 2021

I am sitting on the porch of the farm hotel house I am staying in for a few days, listening to the sound of the ducks, roosters, , goats  and some occasional  rolling thunder. A signal of more May showers on their way. 

I am not worried about this weather change during my holiday get away.  Rainy days are always welcome, they bring a special solitude feeling that enables my writing. 

The owner of the place, a  mid-age strong lady, with braided silver hair, blue eyes, and a friendly smile had asked me to write a review of her place but with total honesty. 

Not the “Facebook paid reviews” she said, but the ones from somebody that had arrived at our place and has found likes and dislikes. “I can only improve from constructive criticism and grow my business even more with honest reviews.” She said.

As I sit down to do so, the echo of her words rumbled in my mind.  “Honests Reviews reviews reviews”  

Right then, a  couple of birds with a mysterious sound screech in the close distance. I look for signs of their movement through the screen as the breeze picks up… I get my binoculars to locate them.  I pause.  The echo is still there even when pushed by these nature sounds.

Binoculars on, I am no longer looking at the birds, my mind has another scene in mind.  I am back in the afternoon a few days ago when the post office mail arrived and a bright-colored postcard captured my attention.  I read it.  And then I decided I should write a blog about it. The one I am sharing with you today.  

You see a few days back,  as many of you do, I had bought an item on Amazon. It had taken me a few days to decide whether to buy it or not, I was not familiar with the product and although I had read good reviews, I wasn’t totally convinced the product was worth investing in. Less than a week after I had bought it, I was asked via email to rate the product.  

Since I hadn’t used it much, I paid not much attention to the request, but I did pencil it in my mind to write a review later on when I had had the opportunity to use it.

After a few days,  I got the post office mailed postcard, the one with bright colors that intrigued me enough to read it.  “Write a  review in Amazon and you could get up to $30 back”.   It was a solicited review, but I didn’t think much of it. I took the card and put it away. 

I had been busy balancing creative work, caring for myself and others after a rough autumn and a not-so-great winter. The blending of the seasons felt like a tumultuous river rushing its emotions to the insensitive salted ocean water.  Did I really have time to care about writing a review?  Was it meaningful to do so? I didn’t think so.

A few days later, cleaning a pile of papers, on their way to the shredder, I bumped into the post-card.  But this time writing a short review of the item,  felt like a good excuse to stop the boring chores.

I wrote the review for the sake of doing it, with the intention of sharing with others what my assessment was of the item in question. Not until I finished posting it, I read the instructions that came in the postcard indicating what to do to claim the money price for doing it so. That is when this whole thing really began intriguing me.

I started reading more recent people reviews and some of the updates of previous ones. It turned out some of the updates, would say something like”  I wrote the review because they offered me a gift card or $payment …has anyone received anything so far?”

Other reviews have posted photos, which were clearly taken from a magazine or so, and posted them as proof of their reviews. Why?  Because the fine print in the postcard inviting you to write a review, stipulated that to increase your payment a picture or a video upload was necessary.                                                                                               

I continued doubting even more of all the reviews I have read before about that product.

You see, I have heard about the “review wars”, of how companies hire people to write bad reviews on other competitive products so their own product stands out.

I had also read about some people getting free products on exchange for reviews, but somehow being in the middle of it,  participating while being also a bystander felt different.

What followed made the thing even worst.

I was bombarded with emails and post office mails, asking  me to provide reviews for products I haven’t even heard of nor have I ever bought. 

But that was not the main issue.  The concern was they spelled out how to do so in a way to beat the system.  How they would send me the “gift card” or the money to cover the expense I would incur when buying it, as long as I wrote a GOOD review of it. 

I was a cat scratching the surface of a scratching toy,  and at that point I wanted to better be drilling the wood and getting the screws out of this issue.

I did research on the phenomena, on how Amazon and other competitors have played and lost the review game, and I ended up being contacted by a Facebook group who offered me to join them as a paid-reviewer.  

A lot of merchants solicit glowing reviews on their Amazon merchandise, typically in exchange for a free product, cash or other incentives and  the FB reviewers is just a ramification from this practice.

This poses a threat to people’s confidence. It makes them more cautious online shoppers. Now, the fact that a person could provide a review for an item just bought not having enough time to test or assess the item well enough to post a rating, makes the issue even more complex.

  Some reviews give 4 or 5 stars to a product and the comment is something like “I received the item on time” or as non-related as “I placed my order without any problems.”

Having lived the inappropriate review experience so closely, I found myself in a big dilemma when I was willing to make a more significant buy:  a pair of binoculars.

Could I trust any review at all? And how to determine when a review was posted by a person who as I did  ,wanted to share their take on a product vs. a paid-reviewer?

With the help of the tech reviewer (Wirecutter)of the NYTimes , to narrow down my options and feel comfortable about my ultimate choice, I resourced to do, what has worked best and what we used to do before this whole “fake reviews” pollination started:   I got a 101 read on the expected functionality of the product , then I asked a real person, a friend or a friend of a friend who has either owned one or who at least was familiar with the items. And based on their actual experience, I made my decision, I bought the binoculars and I later formed my own opinion.

All lead to prove that the best recommendation, the best #marketing tool continues to be the #word-of-mouth.  It is heart-felt in either direction and overall is meaningful.

It is a proliferation of a practice around the theme of #Trust! That something on the verge of being flushed out from our daily lives.

And as I  finish writing my true experience about the place where I am staying, I share this blog with  you, and  I invite you to read my books and do the meaningful thing of posting a review 😉

Even more now that my second book on the #Mornin the SuperBird series is ready for pre-order.

You knew at some point I was going to say that, didn’t you?

Thank you for reading my blog and please share with me and the other readers your product reviews and marketing stories.

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