CUSTOMER REVIEW STATISTICS - JAN '10

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Overclockers UK customers have been able to submit "Customer Reviews" via our online store for sometime. There is often speculation regarding the non-publication of critical reviews. With this in mind I thought it would be useful to give you some facts.

Around 30% of reviews are declined. The biggest reason by far for decline is bad language. This explains why a surprising number of 5 star reviews are declined. Some reviews are declined because they are abusive and a small quantity are declined because they are factually incorrect.

Here are the received and published statistics for last month - January 2010.

Total Received Reviews - 576
Of which
417 *****
56 ****
46 ***
21 **
36 *


Total Declined Reviews - 169
Of which
57 *****
22 ****
36 ***
19 **
35 *

Total Accepted Reviews - 407
Of which
360 *****
34 ****
10 ***
2 **
1 *

Here are the 1 to 3 star reviews published in January.

1 star reviews:
http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=HS-035-AR&tool=3

2 star reviews:
http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=CM-013-GE&tool=3
http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=BB-001-NQ&tool=3

3 star reviews:
http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=CA-185-CM&tool=3
http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=CA-181-CM&tool=3
http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=KB-010-ST&tool=3
http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=MO-107-SA&tool=3
http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=FG-021-SY&tool=3
http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=KB-008-ST&tool=3
http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=FG-003-SH&tool=3
http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=FG-008-NC&tool=3
http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=CA-157-LL&tool=3

Customers are welcome to submit positive or negative reviews of products we sell. The best advice I can give those who wish to submit a negative review is not to use bad language as this is a major reason for the rejection of many 1 and 2 star reviews. Fortunately as the figures above indicate the vast majority of received reviews - whether accepted or declined - are positive, which supports our selective product procurement process.

I trust this will reassure our customers that we do not only publish good reviews.
 
Interesting info. I just went to post a review to see what the system was like and I couldn't see any guidelines/policy regarding reviews on the page or linked to from the page. Maybe it would help to have a few so people know what won't be accepted before posting?

What's your policy on including purchase prices in a review? eg. "I bought 'such-and-such' for £** on this date....blah blah" to give perspective on value when possibly purchased in a sale or something?
 
If im allowed to honest here one of the reasons i dont buy from the store if any more after spending £1,000's in the past is i have lost confidence in the brand (ouck) and this is was one of the reasons ...now you have produced this it has changed my view a bit. letting people have a constructive rant is important in my view. Keep it up good communication with customers is key i feel :D
 
UberTiger said:
What's your policy on including purchase prices in a review? eg. "I bought 'such-and-such' for £** on this date....blah blah" to give perspective on value when possibly purchased in a sale or something?
Click to expand...
That's fine and would add weight to any review.
 
BigBruiserAl said:
If im allowed to honest here one of the reasons i dont buy from the store if any more after spending £1,000's in the past is i have lost confidence in the brand (ouck) and this is was one of the reasons ...now you have produced this it has changed my view a bit. letting people have a constructive rant is important in my view. Keep it up good communication with customers is key i feel :D
Click to expand...
Thank you for this. If there's enough interest I'll post monthly stats.
 
Nice to see the store being open with customers :) Kind of reminds me of the expenses scandal lol Not that this is in the same league but still :) it serves the principle of taking on accusations made by outsiders :)
 
Any chance of posting a rejected 1/2 star review. Which was rejected other than bad language. With an explanation why.
Might help others to right a better negative review.
 
What is 'not factually correct' to a company may be very useful to a buyer. If you really want trust, why not just allow them to be posted anyway, and let people decide? (Bad language excepted or removed).

An example: company claims there is no problem with the design of a product. Maybe the manufacturers haven't informed them. Why would they admit it? Yet online hundreds of people are having problems with particular issues. Posting a review mentioning this might (and in my case, I imagine, did) get rejected, perhaps as 'there is no issue with the product', 'there's always a insignificant minority who have problems' etc. 'Not factually correct' by your book can be very useful to a buyer.

I've had products that on buying I've had problems with, and found long threads with many people having similar issues. Knowing this before I could've changed product, or at least checked to see if there might be a compatibility problem with my system. But a review with this mentioned on OcUK wouldn't be allowed. Until the censorship is laxed, I'm afraid the reviews are still useless to me.
 
KPeh said:
An example: company claims there is no problem with the design of a product. e.
Click to expand...

Like this one, which was allowed.

http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=BB-001-NQ&tool=3
The reason why i put 3 stars is because i have 6 fans in my computer and 5 of them are 4pin molex well i pluged them in and the fan controller does nothing with the 4pins so i have one fan one this fan controller with a 3pin works fine so if your buying this with 4pin molex not recomended only recomended using 3 pins
Click to expand...

Although can't your office bods clean the language up a bit.
 
fordypaul said:
In light of a deleted board discussion over the weekend, I too welcome this post! :)
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Yep there was a bit of a riot on the weekend .. Liking the posted stats, sharing is good, monthly it would be good as well and as another has said a decline non-factually correct review would be good to see, because it seems like a get out claus to me.
 
It is shocking how many reviews get posted along the lines of "does this have 3 SATA ports" or "how many fans does the case have?" Any reviews asking questions also get rejected.

We have the forum/webnotes/telephone for product enquiry questions.
 
I think it is important that reviews are kept clean from abusive or offensive language. Also not accepting reviews that are simply wrong is fair in my eyes.

Thanks for publishing these numbers, very interesting they are.

But the reviews as such are often only very limited in their use. 2/3 of all seem to be rather generic and "OMG WHAT I JUST BOUGHT IS AWESOME CAUSE I BOUGHT IT".

Yet there are useful one's amongst them, for the rest there is the forum!
 
I always prefer a store where all reviews are published (bad language obviously excepted) purely for the openness. Even when someone has rated a SATA hard drive as 1 star because it wouldn't connect to their IDE cable are useful as it just shows the complete transparancy of the stores review system and 99% of people will know the review is complete rubbish and to ignore it anyway.

Sites where every product is rated 4 or 5 star always look dodgy to me and the first thought is always review filtering, that or an exceptionally sycophantic customer base, as I don't believe any store carries a range of infallible perfect products only and nothing else.
 
I've had stuff rejected in the past which didn't fall foul of the rules posted in the op, there was no notification / reason why either... I feel it would be nice for the user to get a response as to whether their review was accepted or not, and if not, a reason why.

If all goes to plan, you should see the number of reviews increase.
 
Lakeland said:
I've had stuff rejected in the past which didn't fall foul of the rules posted in the op, there was no notification / reason why either... I feel it would be nice for the user to get a response as to whether their review was accepted or not, and if not, a reason why.

If all goes to plan, you should see the number of reviews increase.
Click to expand...

I like this Idea I will run it by the boss.
 
Very interesting to see this and it does help to reassure customers, because when i was first introduced to this site by a mate, i, as always, am wary of buying online with websites i've never used before, and when i was looking through the reviews i thought that the reviews were being filtered because most were 4/5*. Obviously now i know that it's a very reliable company, and it's pretty much 95% where i buy from, but to newcomers i think it's a good idea if monthly stats were published. :)
 
I too have been confused as to the cause behind rejecting some of my reviews. I always re-read them and kept them sensible.

Has made me reluctant to review anymore.
 
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