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Comment by gumby | Hacker News Reader

I used to feel the same way, but had an opposite experience: bought a buggy cable and, since I could find no other way to contact customer service, left a negative (not insulting) review. Cust svc contacted me and sent me a replacement...which was a much more expensive cable which wasn't even yet advertised on their site. They then asked me to change my review. So I amended my review saying the new product which they'd sent me for free was OK but I had no idea if the old one worked.

Also their Type C chargers didn't work with a MacBook + accessory adaptor, which was only described in the reviews.

It's not like one bad experience has soured me on the whole company, but now I try to spread my purchases between them and Aukey (who has also had some Type C duds -- check Benson Leung's reviews before purchasing!)

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I cannot help but think that sounds like they are doing A/B testing on which strategy is more effective at making users change their reviews. Nothing wrong with that, btw.

Why would you think they are doing A/B testing from those two examples? One was a 1 star review (very detrimental to their overall score) and one was a 4 star review (very little overall effect). If they were both 2 star reviews or something I would agree with your idea.

In Amazon terms a 4,5 is positive, a 3 is neutral and a 1,2 is negative. Anything other than positive is bad so essentially it means 4,5 and good and 1,2,3 are bad.

I would argue that there IS something wrong with asking users to change their reviews.

If you're advertising & selling version 1 of a product, the reviews should be for that version. Enticing users with a newer or superior version shouldn't make them change the review for the version 1 item.

If a user does update their review, it should state that a replacement was sent that is better, yet different, and possibly provide a link to the better or updated item.

I had a mixed experience as well. An order of six micro USB cables went faulty in no time. The small springs holding the cables' micro usb plug in place tend to easily lose all tension. After that has happened the cable sits loose, slips out easily and the plug heats up due to increased contact resistance.

After having left a review on Amazon, i was contacted by Anker and got an apology and 6 new replacement cables. Alas, they were of the same bad quality :-(

Given how many people had similar experiences, I wonder why they don't fix the products before they sell them? I mean, it's nice that they replace the faulty products, but do I really need to contact them at all? I guess making reliable product at scale for acceptable price is not so easy after all.

I was annoyed that they replaced the buggy product with a different product but then wanted me to leave a favorable review on the bad one. I asked if this is really what they wanted and customer support said yes. This is a shame.

In such cases I usually change my negative review to more neutral (3/4 stars) and add a disclaimer that refund/replacement has been received.

No other way? Was https://www.anker.com/login?back=support/refund-exchange not available at the time when you needed help?

I had a faulty cable that was ordered through Amazon, and was able to receive a replacement in about two days, through their site.

Type C, and USB3 cables in general seem pretty hit or miss. Same goes for some of the "fast" chargers, depending on phone, compatibility seems to hit or miss as well.

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