worst is...
David Weaver
...long ownership items where a retailer or manufacturer eggs people on to go make a review a week after they purchased something.
I bought tires a couple of weeks ago, and the reviews were almost unintelligible for actual information. Last couple of sets have fallen way short of mileage ratings (understandable, but more like half of the mileage rating or just a little more).
Sure would've liked to have seen some people commenting about wear, but all of them had comments like:
"Just got these tires last week!"
Awesome. When I'm trying to find out if a 60k mile tire typically has issues after 20k or 50k, you're here as a reviewer to tell me how things have gone for 150 miles. When you have sidewall tread split in three years, come back and tell me time and mileage please, and what the manufacturer did about it.
There are times where there's useful information hidden in the piles of crap. We're stuck getting a new fridge. Salesman always come up with "they don't last as long as they used to now", which may be true, but may also be to butter you up for an extended warranty.
you can search for words like "compressor" and find accounts of people who have had problems and then their account of how long it took to get the problems solved. People with trouble tend to come back to their reviews because they think "i'm sure not going to leave that good review up if I can help it".
there's income to be made here somewhere for someone who can meaningfully estimate data based on comment mining. If there are three dozen comments from people who have broken compressors and can't get parts because it's systemic, then the mining could tell me that.
