You can say that again. I recently bought a kitchen knife with Amazon Prime that had ~100 reviews, an average of 5 stars. It cost £33, so wasn't particularly cheap. Just after I bought it the seller sent me one of those nagging emails asking for a review which I ignored. A week after they sent me another email, a copy of the first one. By the time I've already used the knife and found out it wasn't very sharp (my >5 year old knife of a different brand was still sharper), so I thought "be careful what you ask for, 'cause you may get it" and gave them an honest 3 star review. Not even 2 hours later I get an email from their rep apologizing for a "faulty item" and offering either send me another one or issue a refund and I can keep the knife in both cases. I realized what was the catch, but opted for a refund and removed my review when they asked me on the next email (obviously). So now this knife is still sold on Amazon, with 100 reviews and counting, only one 4 star review and the rest of them 5 stars.
I am not intending to emit a moral judgement, just to point out that he was sufficiently outraged to complain about it and to use such strong vocabulary as "fraud", and yet he acquiesced.
Helping (a little bit) to fix the problem wouldn't have been that much of an inconvenience, and if we customers were more like that this kind of behaviour wouldn't be possible, or at least harder.
At least ~30%+ of Amazon's products are cheap Chinese garbage resold from Albiaba under 10+ different "brands." (private label) There's are also tons of very obvious fake and counterfeit products that could be spotted with a simple human review of new listings.
The point of the fraud is to make money. He denied them that money.
Yet you feel jaded by the other reviewers. You don't owe me anything, but I would encourage you to go back and leave a negative review if the product isn't worth the price. I'm in the market for a cooking knife and would appreciate good reviews. Thanks.
Don't use it on frozen stuff.
If money is no object get a global along with the global specific ceramic roller sharpener.
Yes there are better things out there but for the cost Ikea is very good.
I don't agree with your actions, but I definitely agree with your statement. It's like judging people for paying less taxes via loopholes, yet it's perfectly legal. We focus on judging the action, rather than fixing the problem.
In this case, judging you for using a broken system, akin to tax loopholes, may not be "good" - but it's certainly not the root of the problem. Judging you would, at best, just cause one more "victim" (for lack of a better word), and completely ignore the root cause.
We as a nation need to - at the very least - focus equally on the root cause as much as those doing something we don't like. In this case, the company and/or Amazon are far more meaningful and fruitful subjects to lay blame on. Forcing one person to keep an item is not going to fix anything but ensure they have a wasted money, and have 1 bad review in a likely sea of reviews. A possibly insignificant digit. Yet, if the company is accurately called out, if Amazon are accurately called out, we may see real change.
I assume we blame you because it's easy. "Don't dodge taxes!" we scream. Yet, it's our laziness that enables tax dodgers due to ultimately ignoring and not fixing the root problems.
Wouldn't the greed of man be the true root of the problem? It just so happens that we can't actually fix it in a practical manner so the next best thing we can do is to be make it so it's difficult to take advantage of others.
We are a society built on good will. The kindness of others has given me everything I value in life. It is my responsibility to pay into it.
Sometimes we cannot afford to. That is fine. A lifetime of good deeds covers moments of necessary selfishness. If this was one such moment for you, don't feel bad about it. But if you could afford to take the time and wealth to make the world better, do.
Some people have not given up on having a moral society and believe that there is great benefit in debating the issues. Because you are not open to debate doesn't mean the debate has no value, but I appreciate your perspective.
Knives are meant to me sharpened. The cheapest knife can be sharpened to razor blade sharpness. Sometimes new knives come sharpened somewhat, but in my experience all mass-produced knives need sharpening when new, even $250 knives.
I genuinely can't comprehend the complaint. What next, buy a new car and complain it didn't come with the tank full?
Yes. You should complain if you buy a new car and it doesn't come with a full tank of gas, or needs new tires, or needs an oil change right from the dealership. Those are things you expect from a new car, and they're the reasons you buy a new car.
If I bought a used knife, I'd expect to sharpen it. If I buy a brand new knife, I expect it to be sharp right from the factory. If it's not, I could have saved money and just bought a steel rod and made my own knife out of it. A knife has one purpose: to be sharp. If it's not, it's not a knife. It's a cheap hunk of thin steel that they told you was a knife.
There is zero reason a brand new product needs immediate maintenance before it can be used.
Those are thing you expect from a new car, and they most certainly are not the reason I would buy a new car.
> If I buy a brand new knife, I expect it to be sharp right from the factory.
You might expect that, but the practical reality is that knives don't really come truly pre-sharpened, and there are many reasons for that. People don't realise that this is the case, because most people, in general, have really, really dull knives, so even a mediocre edge will seem comparatively sharp. But it isn't, it's just mediocre and once you have used a really sharp knife the difference becomes very apparent.
There isn't one way to sharpen a knife. Some people prefer an asymmetric edge, some people hate asymmetric edges. Some people prefer shallow angles, some people prefer steep angles. Some people prefer knives sharped for slashing, some people prefer knives sharpened for slicing. There is no right way to sharpen a knife, it is something extremely user-specific and personal and there cannot be a way to pre-sharpen them that would satisfy all people.
Because it is such a personal issue, I fully expect that I need to sharpen a new knife the way I want it, just as I fully expect I need to installs the apps I want and configure a new phone before I can use it.
> I could have saved money and just bought a steel rod and made my own knife out of it.
This is just hyperbole.
> There is zero reason a brand new product needs immediate maintenance before it can be used.
And yet many products are like that. For example DSLR cameras come without SD/CF cards. The user has to buy them and put them in the camera before he can use it.
Not that I doubt your assessment of the knife but..
As far as kitchen knives go this is cheap, although you can still get very good and sharp knives for this price like the Tojiro DP Gyuto or Victorinox Fibrox.
Usually people don't judge a knife by it's out of box sharpness but the sharpness after sharpening, ease of sharpening, edge retention, balance, and overall craftsmanship.
Maybe knife connoisseurs don't, but normal people certainly do. I don't know the names of any knives, those names you mentioned might as well be brands of washing machines. But if I buy a knife and it's not sharp, what's the point? Why can the factory not sharpen it before selling it to me?
Using knives makes them not sharp, so the ability to sharpen is the definition of the knife not being junk. A dull knife is not a garbage knife that needs replacement, it is just a knife that needs sharpening.
I use a Lansky sharpener [1] and it is the cat's meow. Just takes a couple of minutes to put a great edge on.
[1]: http://lansky.com/index.php/products/dlx-5-stone-system/
And to be fair, at scale, given that most people are idiots and don't know astroturf reviews exist, it might never be for them.
But they are definitely in danger of losing the people who told everyone else about "that Amazon thing."
Amazon doesn't benefit financially from negative or average reviews, but they do benefit from the positive reviews, regardless of their legitimacy, as the parent poster demonstrated.
A good review system translates to trust, which enables sales.
