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Comment by jrockway | Hacker News Reader

I wouldn't even worry about a subjective review like "this tea tastes like shit". Even if it's the finest quality tea in the world, someone is going to think it tastes like shit.

I would worry about reviews like, "ordered, never received product, called owner and he told me to 'fuck myself with a pointy stick'". That is significantly more damning, since it reads like an account of a factual event, rather than an uninformed opinion.

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thankfully, I've never told anyone to fuck themselves after buying my tea :)

Well that's a huge bonus! Wish you shipped to the US. I'd buy some tea from you!

It will be happening soon! Start of September I'll be able to ship to the US.

One quick idea - add a mailing list for this to your homepage. Mailchimp is free, and voila - come September you can let those interested know they can order, and you'll start the month with a bump of sales :)

You have a good point there, it is impossible to define what is good and what not in flavors. It is like asking what is the best dog bread? And yes, the review about service is more important.

This guy (Brian) at the end admitted that he did what he did just because he was unfollowed in twitter. What a guy!

Absolutely - good and bad is subjective, and I'm happy to accept that. My real anger came from the fact that these people were masquerading as professional tea reviewers, but then don't even have the decency to back up a negative review. If they'd written a long blog post slating my tea after ordering it, trying it fairly etc., then I would have been much more concerned with their opinions...

I'm not sure why some people react in that way when they are unfollowed. But why were they being followed in the first place? I know some companies like to follow every single person they can with the expectation they get followed back and then boost their subscriber numbers, and I think it's a silly game to play.

I once got followed by a new local radio station that was launching in my area (I work in radio and they seemed to be following every radio person in the region). I thought, fair enough, and followed them back.

A few weeks later, after they'd started up and the dust had settled, I had a look at their Twitter page. "Following: 0." The cheeky gits had followed everyone, got a bunch of followers in return, and then deleted us all! That was enough to lose them a significant amount of goodwill from me and I promptly unfollowed them.

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