I got a customer-targeted email from Wal-Mart with the subject heading: Customer Ratings And Reviews Are Here. Ooo, I thought, I wonder how the balance is coming? Well, you won’t find out by looking at the page linked by Wal-Mart.

All you’ll find there are 23 Top-Rated Products. Including this one.

Only 23 products out of what, 12 gazillion Wal-Mart products so far have received a top rating?

I decided to see how long it would take me to actually find a product that wasn’t Top-Rated. I found one in about five minutes.

Next I went in search of the digital camera I rated one-star back on 19 July. I found it, but guess what? My review wasn’t included. And it wasn’t because my review was an early one; the earliest review was dated nine days before my own attempt.

Also, interestingly enough, I didn’t have access to the earlier reviews when I was writing mine. Wal-Mart wouldn’t want me to prejudiced (even though it could work both ways) by what someone else might have written, would it?

I did find other one- and two-star reviews, which were interestingly almost exactly balanced by four- and five-star reviews.

Far be it for me to suggest a conspiracy of any sort. It could be that Wal-Mart really doesn’t sell any cheap plastic crap. Couldn’t it?

Jeff Hess: Have Coffee Will Write.

This entry was posted on Friday, August 31st, 2007 at 1049 by Jeff Hess and is filed under Customer Satisfaction, Technology. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.