Hello Eddie,
It’s obvious to me now that I have failed my own articulation test, causing more controversy with my words than being any kind of help with my post.
Just as I did with Mudgel, I apologize to you for leading you and other readers down the wrong road. My intention is to help others if I can, not to hinder them.
The title of Sharke’s post is, “Does Waves fabricate their customer reviews?” That caught my attention and I read everyone’s reply.
Buying products via the internet is a huge business today and only growing bigger. Online stores see user reviews as a great way to encourage more business, i.e. “See all of the satisfied customers we have”. But there are some online businesses that prohibit negative reviews. The quote from Consumer Reports is just one example of a company’s retaliation of a user’s negative review. We all need to be aware that reading some sites’ reviews are only showing one side of the story. I have never looked at Waves’ terms and conditions for leaving reviews but I would doubt if they fall into that category. I don’t think Waves has anything to hide. Apparently they have very competitive products. To be honest, I am new to what Waves offers, but I heard so many people talking about their products that I wanted to check them out.
Earlier this year when I went on the Waves site to look for a specific product, I wanted to see what others had to say about it. What I found were short generalizations which didn’t help me as much as I was hoping for. My first impression was that Waves does not want lengthy reviews. So from my point of view everyone was doing what everyone else was doing, leaving quick, to-the-point reviews. Is that a Waves’ requirement? I don’t know. Like I said, I have never read their terms and conditions for posting. Is there a word count limitation? When someone goes to write a review, they see that all the other reviews were short so they write a short review too. That’s why it appears to me that one person wrote them all.
Before making a purchase, I needed to do more research so I looked up the same product on the Sweetwater site. What I found there were a large variety of reviews. Some were just like the ones I had read on the Waves’ site, short generalizations. But many went into great detail which is what I wanted. Now I felt I could make a decision to buy because I had enough information.
Maybe I’m different than most buyers, but I don’t want to know if you like the product, I want to know why you like the product. That’s what I found was lacking in the Waves’ reviews and why I said they all had a sameness about them. They were too general for my needs. So I combined the reviews from Sweetwater with the reviews from Waves to make a decision to buy. If you like a Ford Taurus, that’s great but I’m not going to buy one just because you like it. Tell me why you like it. Convince me to buy one. No, I’m not trying to turn you into a salesman. I want to know your honest opinion. What do you like about the car? The more you can tell me, the more I’ll be convinced.
The Zig Ziglar quote is simply a good piece of advice I wanted to pass along. Quite a few years ago I made an online purchase from a NYC photography store that wasn’t completely upfront about the sale. Obviously, they were trying to be deceptive. Well, based on that Ziglar quote, I have never purchased from them again. If they can’t be trusted, then there are plenty of other photography stores to buy from. As long as there is a product to sell, there will be dishonest sales of that product. I believe that is the minority. Most companies want to increase their sales with integrity, not deception.
Eddie, I’m not sure if I addressed all of your concerns completely, but there is one thing I have learned from you and Mudgel, the next time I decide to leave a reply on this forum, I’ll put aside what I wrote for a while before posting it. That’s actually the same concept in mixing. Take a break, rest the ears, come back to it. Does it still sound right? Good advice.