So there’s a specific Costco item my son said he wanted for Christmas. What rational person would not order this item, which is seasonal — NOT this season, though — from Costco Online?
Probably one more rational than moi… Naturally, I went over to the Costco website and found it. Very nice. While exploring, I found a competing device with a more interesting design and lots more space to do things with. So…I decided to order that instead of the one he specifically said he wanted.
But…I ordered too soon.
Shortly, in one of my many idle moments, I cruised over to Amazon. There I discovered…
a) The item I’d ordered is ROUNDLY panned by Amazon reviewers. It’s not just disliked. It is passionately hated. Takes four hours to assemble. Falls apart forthwith. Junk, trash, and debris!
b) The specific item M’hito craves — brand name, size, model number and all — is available at Amazon for FIFTEEN BUCKS less than Costco was asking. And it gets 4.5 out of 5 stars from reviewers.
Naturally, I now order the doodad that he wants from Amazon. Then I go over to Costco and try to cancel the thing I’ve ordered there.
Discover I can’t. I mean, I can, but it ain’t workin’. Takes a day and a half before a response comes from Costco, which is basically “sorreeeee.” Wait till it shows up and then drive it down to Costco to return it.
The Amazon item showed up, via the U.S. Postal Service, the next day after I ordered it. The Costco thing just showed this afternoon, a full week later.
So, in another half an hour or so, I’m going to schlep this damn thing down to Costco. Good riddance to it.
In the convenience department, then: Costco has got one HECKUVA lot to learn from Amazon.
And in the consumerist department: I’m brought back to the feeling that one of the best things about Amazon is those consumer reviews.
If I hadn’t gone over to Amazon and glanced at the consumer ratings, then read the reviews, I would never have tumbled to the fact that what looked like a better product than the one my son had asked for was really a piece of junk. There were one or two reviews for each product at Costco; at Amazon, both of them had a lot of reviews.
And when there are a lot of reviews, that’s when you start to get good information. Just a few really good reviews usually indicates the seller is putting friends or employees up to posting raves; a few really bad ones suggest the competition is trying to trash the seller. But a whole lot of reviews, with plenty in the 3- and 4-star categories, usually will tell you what you need to know about a product.
That makes Amazon a valuable resource, IMHO. With Consumer Reports not very useful anymore — many of their reviews appear to be driven by various agendas, and often their top-rated items are junk — Amazon’s customer reviews are probably about as close to real consumer experience as you’re gonna get.
Costco is in our doghouse right now as well. They usually have great coupons on a lot of different food items in their December coupon book. This year they decided to pretty much move completely away from it. We also are going to downgrade our membership from the Executive back to the Basic. Our renewal comes up this month so I had called them to try to get the downgrade done when it processes (since it does it automatically when you have their credit card) but was told that it was already in ‘processing’ and that I’d have to call after the charge went through.
We looked at the Sam’s Club coupon book and guess what? Most of the items that we would get have coupons.
So when we call back it might not be just downgrading the membership, but might entail cancelling the whole thing altogether. It will depend on my mood that day.
The unrelenting efforts to upsell customers to the more expensive membership … that’s another irritant. I did discover, however, that you can get them to mark your records to indicate that you don’t want to hear any more sales pitches for the fancy membership.
I have always had a business membership for the S-corp and for myself. That apparently isn’t pricey enough for them…but they haven’t hassled me to upgrade for awhile.
Costco underprices local gas stations so definitively that if you do a fair amount of driving, the gas savings may pay for the membership. And there are other benefits: the no-questions-asked returns, the readiness to let you bring back electronics that you’re unhappy with, the cheap booze.
Dunno. It’s tricky to shop there because sometimes prices are no lower than the going rate in other stores — sometimes they’re higher because Costco may be selling a super-double-whammy model of a brand whose plain-vanilla version would cost less somewhere else. But..it is possible to figure out how to shop economically there. Takes some figuring, though… 😉
Amazon reviews are lately becoming awfully full of 5 star reviews as more and more companies are giving out free and super low cost items in exchange for “paid” reviews. To the point where Amazon is now cracking down on these types of reviews – which until now the “rule” was that you had to identify in your review that you had received the item at a discounted price – now those reviews are being flagged. So people who are getting the discounted items, are being subtly encouraged to write their reviews, but *not* disclose that they received the item at a discount – precisely the opposite of helpful!
True that! I don’t even look at the five-star reviews anymore.
These days I go first to the 1-star reviews. If it looks like most of those are cranks or people who never read the instructions, I’ll move on to the two- and three-star comments. Among the two-stars, you’ll usually find people with legitimate issues. Some three-star reviews are actually very positive — possibly for the reasons you describe, some reviewers don’t do five-star reviews at all.
I’ve found the three- and four-star reviews, taken together, seem to give a pretty clear picture of the consumer experience with any given product.
I’ve seen those reviews that say “I got a freebie to give my HONEST opinion” and just discount them as obvious shills. And I’m sure a lot of five-star reviews are paid for.
Really…if you go on Fiverr and hire someone to post a review, who’s to know? You could pay them to buy the product, and then hire them to post a review you wrote yourself after they forward a copy of their receipt. With books, in particular, since Amazon will allow you to discount or even give away the item, it would be easy to run a discount for a day or two, long enough to have the reviewer buy the book, and then raise the price back up by the time the reviews go online.