500 lb. gorilla boasts thousands of dissatisfied customers!

Some of those Amazon customer ratings tell
an interesting story. What amazes me is the
way certain 500 pound gorillas using that
distinguished bookselling service treat
many customers like dirt and still apparently
still get new sales all the time. (I am not
faulting Amazon at all. I am blaming people
who order books without giving the slightest
thought to the customer ratings which
Amazon so helpfully posts on its website.)

I won't mention their names, because anyone
who uses Amazon can find them easily
enough. (Sensible people don''t go around
tackling 500 pound gorillas anyway.)

One especially egregious case I noted
involves an operation claiming over
300,000 ratings for the plast twelve months
alone. That many ratings sounds very
impressive. Except for one very telling
detail, that is: This 500 pound gorilla
only had 91 percent favorable ratings!

One does not need to be a professional
numbers-cruncher to understand those
figures clearly indicate that over the
past twelve months many thousands
of customers were less than satisfied
with this seller's products, service or
perhaps both'

So, I ask you, why would anyone want
to order a book from someone with
thousands of unhappy customers?

As for me, give me the smaller seller
with perhaps upwards of one-hundred
customer ratings, enough to prove the
seller is for real and not a fly-by-night,
and customer satisfaction ratings of one-
hundred percent (or at least something
close to one-hundred percent; even the
most responsible seller may run into a
habitually-complaining crank with
unreasonable expectations now and
then).

But buy from someone who has sold
hundreds of thousands of books
over the past twelve months and
left NINE PERCENT of the customers
feeling cheated, ill-used or simply
unhappy? No way. (Well,
I could close this by cynically/
resignedly oting P. T.Barnum,
but since we all remember
the wise words attributed to him,
I won't bother...Cheers.

wrote:


One especially egregious case I noted
involves an operation claiming over
300,000 ratings for the plast twelve months
alone. That many ratings sounds very
impressive. Except for one very telling
detail, that is: This 500 pound gorilla
only had 91 percent favorable ratings!

I cant agree with this posting. 91% as an Amazon rating is actually
quite good and it doesnt mean that 9% of customers were unhappy at
all!

The five star rating system used by Amazon with four stars being a
"good" service means that many customers leave a four star feedback for
a seller which is actually only an 80% rating. Consequently, a steady
flow of 4 stars automatically drags down a sellers rating from 5 stars.


In addition, if you are a large seller, you will always get a few
neutral or negative feedbacks from buyers who are generally difficult
to please and in many instances they have failed to go through the
Amazon recommended procedure of trying to resolve any problems before
leaving feedback.

There are many mega listers and dropshippers who's overall rating which
is much lower than 91%!

I've about given up buying used books from Amazon sellers. I've had
three softcover books sent to me even tho they should have been HCs.
In all cases I got my money back but it was a hassle. Two ignored my
query as to why; the third blamed it on faulty ISBN matching by
Amazon.

Now, no matter how juicy a deal looks, if the seller does not indicate
that is an HC, and give a good description of condition and
description, I pass.

Denton

On 10 Nov 2005 21:33:07 -0800, wrote:

Some of those Amazon customer ratings tell
an interesting story. What amazes me is the
way certain 500 pound gorillas using that
distinguished bookselling service treat
many customers like dirt and still apparently
still get new sales all the time. (I am not
faulting Amazon at all. I am blaming people
who order books without giving the slightest
thought to the customer ratings which
Amazon so helpfully posts on its website.)

sez:
I cant agree with this posting. 91% as an Amazon rating is actually quite good and it doesnt mean that 9% of customers were unhappy at all!

The five star rating system used by Amazon with four stars being a "good" service means that many customers leave a four star feedback for a seller which is actually only an 80% rating. Consequently, a steady flow of 4 stars automatically drags down a sellers rating from 5 stars.

91% would be the number of people who left a positive (4 or 5 star)
rating.
That means 9% left a 3 star (fair) or worse rating.
I ignore the star ratings on Amazon and look at the rating number.
I, for one, don't buy from anyone with less than a 95% positive rating.
It's very easy to check on the sellers ratings numbers by just clicking
on the seller name, which brings you to a table where you can see the
total positive/neutral/negative comment #s and %s.
.................................................. ..
Bob Finnan
The Hardy Boys Unofficial Home Page
http://hardyboys.bobfinnan.com
New & Out Of Print Books, Tapes, DVD's, CD-ROMs and More For Sale
http://hardyboys.bobfinnan.com/amazon.htm
.................................................. ..

wrote:
wrote:


One especially egregious case I noted
involves an operation claiming over
300,000 ratings for the plast twelve months
alone. That many ratings sounds very
impressive. Except for one very telling
detail, that is: This 500 pound gorilla
only had 91 percent favorable ratings!

I cant agree with this posting. 91% as an Amazon rating is actually
quite good and it doesnt mean that 9% of customers were unhappy at
all!

The five star rating system used by Amazon with four stars being a
"good" service means that many customers leave a four star feedback for
a seller which is actually only an 80% rating. Consequently, a steady
flow of 4 stars automatically drags down a sellers rating from 5 stars.


In addition, if you are a large seller, you will always get a few
neutral or negative feedbacks from buyers who are generally difficult
to please and in many instances they have failed to go through the
Amazon recommended procedure of trying to resolve any problems before
leaving feedback.

There are many mega listers and dropshippers who's overall rating which
is much lower than 91%!

On the other hand, I have found plenty of
sellers with hundreds of ratings for the past
twelve months with 99 and 100 percent
positive ratings. It seems to be that if
a) a book is sent in a timely fashion --
using Amazon standards "timely" means
sent within 48 hours from the time the
order is received, unless the post
office is closed, of course -- and
b) if the book arrives in the condition it
was listed as, then reasonable buyers
will give the seller the highest possible
rating, because how can you get any
better than meeting the two requirements
I have just mentioned? I appreciate your
thoughtful response, but it still seems to
me that the "500 pound gorilla" is either
tardy about shipping or disingenuous
about his listing descriptions, or both.