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Comment by edent | Hacker News Reader

Ultimately, you shipped a broken product.

That points to a lack of QA on your part and, I think, it is fair for a reviewer to point out.

Even if you have an exemplary warranty process and easy instructions, that's still a hassle. Not everyone has the confidence or the time to repair simple things.

As for the objective/subjective nature of reviews. Are your customers buying air monitors for their 100% precision or for "entertainment" purposes / lifestyle factors?

I have a cheap Awair air monitor. I have no idea if it is accurate - but it charges by USB-C and has an inconspicuous display. That's what I wanted it for.

It is perfectly fair for a reviewer to point out their personal preferences on something like this. They aren't a government testing lab.

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If you sell a physical thing, some percentage of them will have defects. That's just a fact of manufacturing.

It seems unfair to move to "not recommended" due to a single instance of a hardware failure, especially if the manufacturer made it right. And repair-ability is one of their core values!

At most this should've triggered a "this happened to me, keep an eye out if this seems to be a thing." note in the review instead of moving to not recommended.

If you got food poisoning from a restaurant, would you recommend it to your friends? After all, food-borne pathogens and poor hygiene are just a fact of life.

How about if they gave you a voucher for a free drink to say sorry?

Reviewing products is like interviewing people. You have to go by what you see on the day. Your can't review (or interview) based in what could have happened; only on what did.

Yes, if it happened once. If I get food poisoning every time, probably not. Perfection is impossible, I am reasonable and mindful of the challenges of consistency.

Hardware device arrives damaged or non functional? I’m just going to call and ask for another one. If it’s a critical need (I cannot wait for a return and delivery cycle), I’m buying more than one upfront. Spares go in inventory.

> If you got food poisoning from a restaurant, would you recommend it to your friends? After all, food-borne pathogens and poor hygiene are just a fact of life.

There are standard practices that avoid the vast majority of food poisoning. Poor hygiene is not a fact of life, it's a failure of process in a restaurant.

There are no known standard practices to avoid all faulty electronics at anything like a reasonable price. From the sounds of it, this unit worked initially but failed over time. That's what warranties are for, this is why they exist. As a society we've decided that it's kind of okay if _some_ products fail early, as long as the companies make it right when they do. Which it doesn't sound like the company had any lack of intention in doing that here.

There is no corresponding societal understanding for your analogy.

Did the product result in physical harm? No. A better analogy would be ordering a med-rare steak, but it coming out overdone.

If that happens once and the restaurant makes good on the mistake, I wouldn't hold it against them.

Sending something back to the kitchen is a way better product analogy than food poisoning.

> Ultimately, you shipped a broken product.

They shipped a working product that failed after several months, was covered under warranty and also repairavle at home (which the review doesn't even mention.)

> It is perfectly fair for a reviewer to point out their personal preferences on something like this.

But that isn't what happened. The product was included as "not recommended" not just "this wasn't my favorite due to X but would be good for this type of person".

They make up a category to list every other unit as "best for" but decided that nobody should want to buy this one because the Author got annoyed.

The review is poorly written and doesn't do a good job of actually comparing units. It is the kind of review article that mostly fluff with very few details about actual differences revealed during testing that I have learned to ignore when looking for information about what to buy.

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