Shame on You: Helpful and Unhelpful One Star Reviews

This is a continuation of this post where I highlighted a lousy one star review. Many of our readers and passers-by helped send a message to the reviewer in question. Due to the success of the campaign, I thought I would do it again. This time, though, I won't just highlight a lousy one star review, because I actually found another one star review by the same reviewer that I think is actually helpful.


In the meantime, though, here's a one star review from the same reviewer that is just as unhelpful as the other one we pounced on.

Give a look - about half of the 5-star reviews are from people who have reviewed only one item: this book. Some legit reviews, but why all that padding?

What message are we trying to send? Well, the sole comment on this review at the moment sums it up quite nicely.

Nothing, it seems to me, is more fake than a 1 star review that never talks about the book.

So, if you agree with me and with this comment, tell Amazon the above review is unhelpful. Send another message to the reviewer.

I found the above lousy review because I was browsing through all of the reviewer's reviews. Many are well written, thought out, and so forth. He's just on a campaign to bring fake reviews to the limelight. In general I'm OK with that, but it's his method that I disagree with so strongly. So, it was actually fortunate that I found another one star review where he is accusing the author of padding the 5 star reviews, but this time the one star review is actually helpful.

The plot is highly derivative. Pure Grisham goes to Wall Street. Plucky, young "outsider" talks his way into Wall Street firm and befriends billionaire (that's the first ten pages) and uncovers evildoers at the firm in company of well-bred beauty with tragic life...blah, blah, blah. Former investment banker (first time I have ever rooted for one of them to go back to fleecing the public) who spouts WS jargon (versus Grisham's legal jargon). Very formulaic. Author has a fetish for hands - clenched and unclenched - that seems to be his only metaphor for anxiety or anger. I have read one Grisham novel; will read one Lender novel. Go ahead but don't say I didn't warn you.

And now I understand how Wall Street works - only the 4- and 5-star reviews appear to be "helpful." In other words, his colleagues and family jumped on the review trolley and pumped the stats, and, lo and behold, those helpful reviews have no doubt sold more books. This thing is a piece of dreck!

At least two five-star reviews (Rednel and Kapur) have only three reviews each - all of Lender's books!

WOW! There's information about the book. Who would have thunk?!?

Whether you choose to pounce on the lousy one star review above is up to you. Hopefully we'll get a few so we'll send another message, but I'm voting this second one as helpful simply because the reviewer attempted to read the book and included actual opinions about the book in the review. If you agree, tell Amazon (and this reviewer) it was helpful.

If you've got an unhelpful one star review that you would like me to spotlight, send me an email. If I agree with you that the review doesn't help, I just may blog about it.

msl_007@live.com