Hacker News Reader

Comment by bigbubba | Hacker News Reader

The customer paid not only for the product but also for the service of having that product delivered to them. Asking them to restrict their review to only one aspect of what they paid for does not seem reasonable.

View on HN

I think the comment is more directed at folks who, and I noticed this weird behavior the other day myself, post tirades about the cardboard box being slightly damaged (while the goods and packaging inside are completely fine). These in particular are more akin to saying:

"hey this protective outer barrier did it's job, had a scratch on the shipping label, and successfully protected the contents. The contents were IN PERFECT CONDITION, 1 star review!!! CONSUMER RIGHTS!11!11!!1 REFUND NOW DAMAGED BOX"

The real weird part though; is how the outer packaging regardless of the quality of what is inside the box (their actual goods purchased) dominates their reviews. It's like a whole subculture, or something, I can't even begin to understand. The internet never ceases to to amaze me for the sheer breadth of absurdity one can find.

The behaviour you describe would be considered normal in Japan. There it's not a sub-culture. Pretty much any Japanese buyer would consider the packaging as part-and-parcel. And they'd complain in case of defective packaging, regardless of its functional impact.

As someone who lives in Japan that’s a behavior that a loud minority of unreasonable people exhibit, but most Japanese people I know don’t mind damage from transit like most well-adjusted humans anywhere - the delivery person might point it out when you sign for the package but it’s not a big deal. It’s more important for gifts and stuff though where the presentation is part of the gesture.

I was more thinking about B2B shipments, than consumer. The general presumption upon receipt of product at the loading dock in Japan is that slightly damaged packaging is a quality issue. It is applied to domestic and global suppliers alike. But the latter may sometimes fail to understand and vainly push back.

These are well-adjusted humans too. Just operating under a different set of criteria w.r.t. quality.

So, is it weird to say they expected the literal outer packaging to be pristine as well? I’m just saying, there must a textbook worth of analysis we can do on these people.

The list of these people is totally publicly available too, it would be great to just examine their world view to understand just who is actually wandering around out there.

There’s no way their pathology doesn’t bleed into how they impact life.

Issue here is that any given product on Amazon may be sold by numerous different sellers (and the set of sellers could of course change over time etc.). There is no indication which seller a reviewer purchased from (unless they explicitly state, but I've never seen that), so it's completely possible that they ordered from the one seller that packages the product terribly for shipping & the rest are all fine.

Depends. Oftentimes the shipping problem is the carrier's fault (e.g. UPS or FedEx) and not in control of the shipper at all. Other times they packaged it poorly and it predictably broke, leaked, or melted and it's entirely the carrier's fault. But I do see a plethora of comments that seem to be blaming things like shipping delays on the seller.

And in that case, the company's response is pretty important. There's a world of difference between (a) "it was fine on our end, take it up with the shipper", (b) "we are sorry this happened and are shipping a replacement", and (c) "thank you, and we are looking into other shipping options as a result of the frequent complaints". Some combination of (b) and (c) is acceptable. (a) is not acceptable.

It does if they are on a product page reviewing a product and not, say, reviewing Amazon’s service.

It's about giving proper weight to each aspect. Giving a 1 star review to an otherwise 4 star experience is dishonest if you only have some issue with the shipping (or marketing tactics), just as an example.

Right. Issues about shipping are not what product rating are for.

Of course it is a problem that Amazon does not provide a way to separately report packaging and transport problems.

"Proper weight" is subjective. Disagreeing with dfxm12 doesn't constitute dishonesty.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com