How Reliable Are Product Ratings?
Some thoughts on a really terrible pair of earbuds
The earbuds were spread out on the table. They were a gift that I would never deliver. The case was thin, flimsy, and lightweight. The top lid came off a bit too easily and so I had to struggle to replace it. And the buds themselves? They worked, but only when they felt like it.
The earbuds had received a rating of 4.5 (out of 5), which was why I purchased them in the first place. I contacted the company to return them for my money back and they agreed to refund our money. But there was a catch. They didn’t want the earbuds back at all. This meant that the product was so cheap that it wasn’t even worth it for the company to pay for the cost of shipping them back. The company’s profit center is essentially the profit gained from the sales to customers who do not return the earbuds to the factory and who also don’t request a refund.
I get it. We’re busy. We don’t like to stay in one place thinking about trivial things. We “don’t sweat the small stuff” — a common American phrase for which other cultures usually require some explanation. There’s a bucket of research that logically promotes this thinking by determining our hourly value. If you earn fifty dollars an hour, why would you waste that precious time on a low-cost return? Plus, the reviews said the…
