Fuck Amazon Vine
thingamagig.comNot a very convincing post. I do not think the first review violates the highlighted policy, and I feel very uneasy with the disclosure of the songs played by the second, non-anonymized reviewer. Are you sure this person consented to you sharing her logs? Or is it fair game, because she had the audacity not to like your product after 8 minutes? Will you also challenge requests for refunds by pointing out that your customers did not try hard enough to like it?
Vine might have been a bad choice for you, but I am not sure I dislike it from an Amazon-customer perspective, and your post does not make me want to try your product (will you share my musical preferences if I do?).
Is "susie" not anonymized enough for you? I blacked out her email address. There's no picture.
No? Susie has written 598 reviews. I think it is quite possible that
1) people within the "Amazon reviewing community" know her (by her online identity, and maybe also her offline identity)
2) friends/family recognize her profile, maybe because she has sent links to articles she reviewed, or because she shared an Amazon wishlist ...
3) it is possible to get her personal identity from information disclosed in her almost 600 reviews (maybe including pictures?).
Of course you did not share super critical information, and of course you did not write the billing address next to it. But it worries me that you choose to disclose any personal information at all for no good reason. Feels like a violation of trust.
You seem to be blaming other people for things, maybe learn to swallow your ego and take criticism better. Certainly with this comment and your blogpost you are not taking feedback well, instead blaming the people giving it. Stewart Lee as a joke often blames his audience for not understanding the genius of his comedy, this seems similar except it’s not funny.
I have made dozens of improvements to Thingamagig based on valid user feedback.
On the first, am I supposed to improve based on something the user's kids said without trying the product?
On the second, what exactly did she complain about aside from "hardware improvements"? I'll make the changes. But what are they, exactly?
Building startups and finding product market fit is really hard, I suggest that if you’re this annoyed at such a small issue you’re going become very annoyed at all the failures you need to have to make something people want. I would love to know about what you are building though...
Early reviews are critical to a product's trajectory. Of course I'm going to get upset about Vine giving my free guitar product to non-guitarists who turn around and leave poor reviews. It's absurd.
What do you want to know about the product? This is the best primer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9haR4CCeh9o
Wow that’s so cool, I was thinking about something similar for piano midi, seems pretty sad that the best piano sounds are reserved for more expensive pianos. I agree about initial reviews being difficult to deal with. Maybe this is the wrong route and you need to work with the biggest electric guitar YouTubers first? If you get them onside you’re golden I’d say. Good luck!
I see that OP is the creator of the product. This post comes across as defensive.
Seems like you got some valuable feedback--you may not agree with it, but then take it with a grain of salt.
The 2nd reviewer self identifies as being your target customer, and provides her feedback, which is discounted because she's asking for more physical inputs, and an improved Alexa app.
As a creator, you let yourself be vulnerable releasing something for others to use and criticize. It's not easy to hear that criticism, but it's part of the process.
"This entire “review” is lazy,.." "A thinner, less meaty review is hard to imagine."
What the hell are you talking about, that review was everything but lazy, she wrote 3 entire paragraphs of genuine, constructive feedback.
She couldn't figure out how to use the product -> Listen -> Make the product easier to use.
For what it is worth, the second screenshotted review did a better job explaining what the product was than the blog post itself.
Up until that point I assumed it was some sort of educational toy based on the first reviewer giving it to her kids, and the childish product name.
This blog post was about Amazon Vine. Not Thingamagig.
It is also the most free eyeballs your product is ever going to get. Start off with an intro paragraph like "Our new widget, available now on Amazon, is the easiest way to toast bread in the morning without starting a kitchen fire! If you like toast..."
Also helps to put the rest of your rant in context. I know nothing about guitars, so I immediately think someone's kid who knows how to play is more qualified than I am to say your product sucks. Why not?
I agree with this 100%. I don't really play guitar and it took me a while to figure what the heck I was reading about. Would also add that this blogpost would be greatly improved by having a link to the homepage.
While I think you're correct, I find it funny that you are in effect complaining that a Hacker News article is NOT an advertisement poorly disguised as an information article or an opinion piece.
I really don't think having a small summary blurb saying what the heck you're talking about counts as advertising.
I had never heard of Amazon Vine before, but am willing to assume that there are a ton of problems with it; but this post doesn't clearly articulate them. It seizes on problems with two reviews, and seems premised on the idea that "I know my product is flawless, so the problem for any reviews that are less than 5 stars must be with the reviewer."
(The case doesn't seem very clearly made—despite the highlighted policy—for why it should be inappropriate for someone to write about their observations of someone else's experience with the product, only why it would be inappropriate to write "I hear lots of people don't like this" or similar. Also, the complaint about reviewers leaping to judgements is surely accurate, but more a problem with (at least non-expert) reviewing in general than with this particular program.)
I disagree with this sentiment. They seem to fully recognize that plenty of people won't like their product, but the issue here is getting negative reviews from people who likely would have never spent actual $ purchasing it and therefor aren't in the same frame of mind as an actual customer."I know my product is flawless, so the problem for any reviews that are less than 5 stars must be with the reviewer."Ok, but that has nothing to do with implementation and everything to do with concept, which should be obvious to anyone who is thinking about participating in Vine before they do so.
Agreed, but that also doesn't change the fact that Vine appears to have serious flaws in its reviewer selection process
> "We signed up to send our niche product to random strangers, and then were surprised that nobody was adequately qualified to review it! Also we expected 5 star reviews only and this is Amazon's fault"
The example is about a woman who gave a review based on her child's experience and the article is complaining the woman didn't use the product herself, which is against the Vine rules.
How are people supposed to review children toys then?!
I got some bad news about all the pet toy reviews..
I thought about this and it's a good point. Maybe there is a carve-out for folks who can't review on their own - like elder care products or kids toys. But this is not that.
Why isn't this that? It definitely looks like that
Industry rules preventing beers, bands, and actors from having the same name seem sort-of strange, until you get into technology.
Which is weird bc we all fret about "namespace pollution" but see no problem with calling something Vine after the last thing called Vine is still in the zeigeist enough that people say "I miss Vine" from time to time.
> Which is weird bc we all fret about "namespace pollution" but see no problem with calling something Vine after the last thing called Vine is still in the zeigeist enough that people say "I miss Vine" from time to time.
Well, who's going to do anything about it if we do have a problem? No one's in a position to rein Amazon in on its clearly abusive behavior in important domains; who both wants to and is able to regulate what it calls its services?
Also, people maintaining websites don't care about updating their description. I got quite confused for a while.
Screenshot taken less than a minute ago:
Hardly strange territory for Amazon - they got into an argument about domain names with the actual river they're named after.
So we should namespace our product name usage? make sure you refer to Amazon: Vine and not Vine: Vine or even Grape: Vine.
I think that whoever wrote this post (and from what it seems like a bunch of comments here) needs to do some serious self-reflecting about whether they're really owning the unflattering market reception of their product launch.
I would advise a more customer centric approach and attitude. The hostility and defensiveness is poison in the well. If you alienate the customers who are supposed to be the lifeblood of your company, you can risk quickly gaining a bad reputation that becomes terminal. Then your company dies.
This is a common failure mode for companies.
"non-guitarist Mom of skeptical daughter who didn't want or ask for Thingamagig but 'hey it's free'" is not our market, though. Thus, it is not a valid read on "market reception".
Actual market reception is positive: https://www.amazon.com/gp/customer-reviews/R14HJYCSIBF2R8
The whole point of my post is that Vine is pushing units onto the wrong people and for the wrong reasons and that others in my shoes should avoid it. I.e. I'm admitting an error using Vine at all.
The customer persona of "Mom getting something to support her daughter to be musical" is valid though, particularly considering teaching is one of the use cases.
I guess that raises a question -- if there was a better version of Amazon Vine, how much would you pay to use it?
On the first point, Amazon should strictly prohibit gifting free Vine items to others. It is inherently antithetical.
On the second point, no. I don't think it's possible to give free items to people and get honest reviews. The free-ness will often induce either charity or laziness in reviewers. The only way to get an accurate review on a product at its price point is to sell the item at its price point in the wild.
You may want to chalk this up as a lesson about positioning and price anchoring well learned. But with that said, it doesn't change the fact that your response as a brand to what is honestly a very minor setback was alarmingly disproportional and customer hostile. What would you do if you get hypothetically successful and Behringer rips you? What if you tore into the wrong reviewer and they put you on blast to their 80k twitter followers to get you de-platformed? There are a million ways your product can get torn to shreds even if people /like/ it. Is this really the hill you want to die on?