My very good friend Gena (who should seriously be elevated to the level of sainthood for listening to a number of “why I no longer shop at Amazon” rants over the past year) once asked me why I decided to write so many reviews during my time as one of their customers. Nothing about my resume or my views on commercialism and consumerism would suggest an obvious answer to that.
The answer may not be obvious, but it is built upon the anguish of a mother desperately trying to help and take care of her child. Both of them really, although it was our son’s struggles that necessitated the heavy utilization of on-line shopping. I have not brought to life for you many of the experiences from the early years of Tony’s symptoms because this has been a very stressful several months for me, and stepping into those thoughts, emotions, and memories is fairly painful for me. And I want to make sure that when I do so, I honor the intents of others without maiming them on-line. For right now, let me just say I had a young toddler dramatically unable to handle most store environments while I was simultaneously battling for my own health.
As I was living through those experiences, I didn’t have people capital to help me so I unleashed our spending power to purchase an army of “things” to come in and help animate my problem-solving ideas. And I was discovering quickly that a lot of total junk was being misrepresented as highly rated products, and I was besieged to the extent that I couldn’t begin to deal with refunds, returns, or exchanges at the time. And even if I could, I was a loyal customer of a company that will close your account if you make too many returns. To this day, I still know people who have quietly retained and eaten the cost of products that weren’t working for them because they are afraid their accounts will be closed if they initiate another return. I was learning for myself that far too many of the products, the reviews, the return policies, and lastly the customer service can fail you.
And then in the midst of this frustration I realized that I cannot be alone in my struggles. Even though our son’s diagnosis list may be unique to him, his struggles and some of his symptoms are shared by many. My health challenges were certainly not unduplicated either. I recognized there were people just like me who were depending on these reviews to help them make decisions about purchases, and that their resources may be far more strained than ours. So, I set apart a little bit of my time each day to writing reviews based on my experiences for the products we purchased.
A few months ago, Amazon took the extraordinary step of making public their investigation into employees selling customer information to vendors and deleting negative reviews when paid to do so. For a company that often remains mute on such matters, I would recommend that you read between the lines and think about how widespread the possible corruption to their review system is for them to try and get ahead of a possible negative press ball and release such a statement. There are many ways around that “verified purchase” designation. Some vendors have been issuing pay pal reimbursements, refunds, or commissions to customers who purchase items and will write a review to their specifications.
Now, anybody can look at the entire catalog of my reviews and find something to complain about. At least, the ones that are showing up on Amazon currently. I am not a perfect person and sometimes there were undoubtedly things in those reviews that didn’t need to be there because I can be a bit of a talker. And, I’ve been under insane amounts of pressure, which only makes me even more random and talkative sometimes. All of the things I wrote were true reflections of my experiences and opinions, but probably a few vendors found themselves thinking “who the heck screens these reviews anyway?” An excellent question.
Be that as it may, writing reviews for reimbursement, payment, or compensation was not one of my many review sins and as many of you know, I have rather strong feelings about the way our family’s situation has been repeatedly handled by team Amazon over the past year as other problems have come up with our account since I stopped shopping there. I tend to make my shopping decisions based on the quality of my customer service experiences- I expect perfection from no one, but just an honest attempt to fix whatever problem was created by the business without me having to hop on broomstick and slap on a wart (or act witchy in any way) to get that done.
My point is not to convince you to avoid shopping at Amazon- their shipping game is currently far superior to their competitors, so I can understand why that would be a desired benefit for each of you in your personal circumstances- but rather to encourage you (if you have the time) to help keep the review system wherever you shop from going bankrupt.
Resist the urge to review right away and ignore that e-mail you get sent within the first week. Wait and see if the product really is holding up as should be expected,and post pictures of the flaws if need be. You don’t need to be perfect in the process- I certainly wasn’t. There are people shopping at home the need your help, integrity, honesty, and, if applicable, expertise to help them make shopping choices. Because they have undoubtedly discovered, as I did, that so many of these “things” will fail you.
