This ought to be interesting. Apparently never having felt the wrath of a dissatisfied buyer with access to the internet, someone over at Verizon has just decided to enable users to leave public reviews on any phone in their catalog. Users can rate their handsets on a scale of 1-5 for ease of use, display, features, and battery life, then manually add their own pros, cons, and comments.
Openness is good. Helping people make educated purchases is good. But this just seems like a bad move.
If I’ve learned anything from gallivanting around the internets in search of cell phone knowledge, it’s this: the majority of people taking the time to talk about their phones hate them. Now, that’s not saying that most people hate their phones – just those willing to take 20 minutes to throw down 300 words about a handset on a forum. It’s good ol’ Silent Majority/Loud Minority; though the vast majority of consumers can be neutral or positive on a product, a quick glance around the internet will make it seem like everyone despises it.
This tends to be less of a problem on e-commerce resale sites, especially those which see lots of return buyers. Sites like Amazon have built entire communities out of the reviewing process, thus enticing folks to return and leave reviews for all products they buy – not just the ones they hate. People connect with the process and leave reviews both good and bad, and others seem to follow by example.
With Verizon, it’s a whole different story. With 2-year contracts as a part of nearly every phone sale, the volume of return sales just isn’t that high. In 10 years, the average soccer mom might buy/trade up through 5-6 phones. That’s 5-6 opportunities to review, across a decade. Are they going to connect with the review process and tell of the good times they’ve had with the handset? Or will the only ones who bother be those looking to unleash their buyers remorse and all of their pent up frustration from spending hours dealing with customer service?
Verizon has put up a safety buffer: they’re manually approving reviews, which may take up to 2 days. But what’s the criteria? Are they simply filtering out the messy, profane garbage, or will they nix reviews they feel are being too harsh? The masses (read: angry consumers on social sites) wouldn’t respond too kindly to the latter.
What do you think – a good move toward openness, or a good way to doom handset sales?
[via PhoneArena]
verizoon sucks..yea bad idea
i agree :)
Shhh don’t let them hear you.
Verizon’s phones are more like hand-me-downs. They honestly haven’t gotten anything significant, at least not in terms of iPhone, or Android… the Blackberry was sort of a dismal fail.
How about a direct link to their site?
this is actually a really good move on their part.
there are so many crap phones out there – either useless to start with, or laden down with operator bloatware that they become useless.
Hopefully a rating/feedback system like this will provide some positive reinforcement for OEMs and Carriers to start to improve their devices and service.
Or I could just be a confused dreamer who shouldn’t expect too much!
Looking forward to see how the Storm gets rated. My guess 1.5 stars
On the contrary, i think its a bad implementation for a good strategy.
1. new users – will now get to see reviews of real users before they get a phone
2. verizon will know which phones are *worth it* and perhaps strike better deals with manufacturers
3. verizon will get first hand feedback about their service too
4. all of us get to *itch!
It is a little risky on the part of Verizon. Although people might appreciate the fact they are being open to criticism.
The problem with one to five scales is that it only draws extremes. Only users who love the product or hate the product vote. The effect is that the potential buyer never garners the real average user experience.
There is similar problem with iPhone app store. Everytime you delete app you get option to leave review. I guess in 95% cases you are deleting because you didn’t like it so your review will be most likely negative. What about all those people who are using the app and not bothering to leave review?
Yep – I feel the same way. That decision still bewilders me.
I think the number of users who will enjoy the option to complain and then not complain is higher than the people who buy expensive gadget based mostly on star scales from the internet.
I wouldn’t put it past Verizon to filter out all of the overly negative stuff. That’s just the kind of two-faced, underhanded, lying company they are.
Can you tell I’m the kind of disgruntled customer that would take the time to drop 300 words on a forum? (http://tinyurl.com/cew5×4)
Yep, I just submitted one and it went into moderation.
Greg – I agree that the comments will likely be mostly negative, but that’s the risk for all comments on business sites. It seems odd that Techcrunch, a vocal champion of the open web, seems to be critical of this move. Are you suddenly going to be like New York Times and only allow carefully vetted comments to appear on your site?
How is this a bad idea? Verizon essentially gets free market research and the reviews will most likely lead to upselling new phone buyers, since the nicer phones will most likely have the best reviews.
How many people are simply going to use it to tell Verizon to offer the iPhone and Palm Pre?
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I think its a good move simply because it gives Verizon a better bargaining chip with the phone OEMS. Verizon really isn’t selling you a phone, they are selling you two years of indentured servitude with unlimited texting and data.
If the reviews are simply about the phones I feel like this could insulate Verizon. A lot of the heat they take is for customer service. Add in the ability to “manually review” and I think they’ll be able to keep it fairly objective.
bad bad bad idea!
Bad move! I always keep a copy of comments. If they try to “manually review” comments and do away with negative feedbacks, it wonn’t work.
copy & scrape …oops I meant paste..LOL
AT&T has been doing handset reviews on their consumer website for over a year now. How is this concept new?
Good article, Greg. Thorough and rational analysis.
No doubt dude bad move indeed!
RT
http://www.privacy.pro.tc
In ~15 years, Verizon has been an excellent service to me! However, the phones … Audiovox – some bad, some excellent; LG – mostly excellent; BB Storm – god awful! Whatever you do, do not carry it in your pocket!!! Body capacitance seems to overwhelm the touch-sensitive display. It takes several minutes on a table top for it to “recover”. And if your finger ever touches a “button” while talking … call is lost and the phone goes nuts. Recovery – power-off, remove battery, reassemble, power-on. This device seriously needs a software slam!!! There seems to be no way out! I must live through the contract!!! — GAASP!!
Update your code. There’s no way that’s to be expected. h8r
I think it’s a great way for them to find out what people really think, regardless of whether they “edit” the posts or not. I’ve been with Sprint & Nextel before they merged to make one bad company, Alltell, & T-Mobile. I think Verizon sucks the least.
Hahaha for the provider with pretty much the worst phones what a great idea! We already know which phones are good and if you are just browsing the verizon website to see youre not in the market for a good phone enjoy your razr.
Bad move for them, good move for us. They should know how crappy their service/phones are.
“Most reliable network”… …IN CITIES ONLY. Seriously, don’t get Verizon if you’re from anywhere but cities and suburbs. Everyone pays the same amount, but only SOME actually get the service they pay for.
False^
Seriously false. I’ve got Verizon and have had great connectivity. In fact, I’ve gotten such good service with them that I wouldn’t consider another provider at all at this point.
Great move!!!!
Verizon will get free feedback about it’s products, it’s like a huge survey.
Only angry costumers will post?
Well that’s a good thing cause they’ll hear about ALL the bad features they have, and they can fix, this of course if they actually read and pay attention to what the crowed has to say.
Good luck to Verizon.
Kate.
ATT also offers consumer product reviews, and frankly, I’m pleased to have more information from end users about functionality- reduces my surf/ click time as I don’t have to go to a separate retail site to get reviews on hardware.
AT&T has offered this for over a year and it hasn’t seemed to hurt them any. Phones have both good and bad reviews, and shoppers are able to make more informed decisions
I don’t care what anyone says I love Verizon and will never leave them.. They’re customer service and coverage is way better than AT&T.. Screw the Iphone i am an adult i don’t want a toy in my hands!!!
I agree, way bad idea. Few people that I talk to are happy with the choices Verizon offers. When you add the fact that they lock their phones down so much, that adds fuel to the fire. They must have hired a new marketing person to deal with Social Media. No way in hell that Verizon is ready to play that game…
I submitted a review of my phone, we’ll see if it makes it on there. I could be wrong in my assessment, maybe this will let Verizon management see how agitated the customer base is. You’d think Howard Forums would be enough, but mgmt probably never wanders over there…
I hate Verizon, we have NO bars and they refuse to let us out of the contract, result I have a phonebill and two phones I can use for absolutely nothing.
Can’t wait to get out of my verizon contract, greedy bastards.
Hey Headline writer: Verizon isn’t a person. It’s a thing!
Wrong: “Verizon opens their catalog to user reviews, probably a bad move”
Right: “Verizon opens its catalog to user reviews, probably a bad move”
You people have got to get a life!!!!!!!!
verizon sucks there phones suck and there prices are ridiculous trust me i know i was a verizon customer and canceled my plan due to those reasons
How is this different than any other site that offers user reviews – and why is it a bad thing? It sounds like most people here just have a bone to pick with Verizon.
My verizon phone works wherever the heck I go to. It’s the best service.. all I care about is if the friggin thing works whenever I need it to.
Verizon’s site layout and navigation is already horrendous, why would they add more clutter :(
They may have decided that adding reviews at the point of sale may actually convert more people to buy. In theory I think this is a smart move.
When I was researching mobile phones with verizon oh so many years ago (iPhone ftw since launch for me), I went to a number of different review sites and forums trying to decide whether or not a particular handset was a good choice. Bringing that data on-site and tying it directly to verizon customer experiences seems smart to me because network is a big factor in what comes preloaded on a phone and how good the reception is. I know I was disappointed to discover that all the games had been stripped off my phone (because that’s just what verizon does) in combination with the fact that game downloads through their own service (BuyItNow at the time) weren’t supported on the phone I ended up with. All of this could have been avoided with some on-site reviews and I wouldn’t have started my verizon contract with a proverbial bad taste in my mouth.
Why do verizon always have crappy phones?