My Beef with Amazon.com

I had a trial Amazon Prime account once. It lasted 5 months. During the course of this trial, I probably bought more items from Amazon.com than in all the months before or after it combined. Truthfully, however, this has absolutely nothing to do with my forthcoming rant. Simply put, I just thought it'd be a nice introduction.

I review things. I do it over at Cale is the Balls!!! It's a pretty nice hobby.

For the most part, the majority of my reviews also appear over on Amazon.com where they are voted for based on their helpfulness. Here is where my problem occurs. You see, Amazon.com is not necessarily an internet community filled with people who I would consider to have valid opinions. Typically, this is just fine by me, but occasionally my reviews will be given an unhelpful review, not because it's unhelpful, but because it differs from their opinion.

For example, in a review I wrote for Yeah Yeah Yeahs' "Show Your bones," only two people voted my review as being helpful. And why not? I used objective reasoning, I said the first half of the album is great, but here's where I went wrong:

"The songs "The Sweets" "Warrior" and "Turn Into" are back to back to back near clones of each other. Like a bad Linkin Park song, they all follow the same formula: start of with soft acoustics, end the song in blazing electric and insane drums. And while it works once, it is excused when done twice, and garbage the third time through, especially when done in sequential order."

The sad reality is that my review, for the most part, is entirely helpful. It is an opinion, like all reviews, and it is written fairly well. So why then was my review met with such a harsh reaction?

Fanboys.

Fanboys are those pricks that think your opinion is worthless if you don't agree with theirs, especially when it concerns their favorite music, movies, or video games. Here, let's do a little survey, shall we?

This is my review of "Show Your Bones" which received 2 helpful votes.

The following is similar review which is "spotlighted" by Amazon for receiving multiple helpful votes.

Show Your Bones is the second album from this New York based group fronted by Karen O, the girl with the distinctive and powerful lead vocals (and screams), admirably backed by the drums, guitars and keyboard (and occasional car alarms and other sounds) of Brian Chase, Nick Zinner and Imaad Wasif. Most of the tracks have catchy choruses and driving beats, and although it’s difficult to interpret what each song is about, you can use your imagination to fill in the blanks. Sample lyrics from the first single “Gold Lion” are as follows: Outside, Inside, This is the moon without a tide, We'll build a fire in your eyes, We'll build a fire when the cover's getting brighter, Cold as I, makes the moon without a tide Other picks are “Way Out”; “Phenomena”; “Honeybear” (great chorus); “Cheated Hearts” and “Turn Into”. This is one of those albums best played with the volume button set to “maximum disturbance.”

Now. Somebody please tell me which is better. Where as my review received 2 helpful votes, the other review featured a whopping 19! It hardly seems fair or accurate, and in reality, it definitely makes things less helpful for Amazon.com customers. If Amazon is only going to spotlight reviews that rant and rave about items like they were hot turkey, then a customer is not going to get both sides of the coin. They will only read about how great the item is, and how blah blah blargh and yada yada yada it is.

What is my suggestion? Amazon.com is a huge business. I mean huge! I don't have any statistics to back it up, but I'd be fairly surprised if it weren't the #1 Retailer on the internet. It is, literally, the Wal-Mart of the world wide web. Clearly, they have some cash floating around. Take that cash and invest in new positions at the company. Hire people to actually read, or skim through, all the new reviews that come in and choose the ones that are actually helpful. The whole customer review feature on Amazon.com is worthless if it is just overrun by a bunch of fanboys treating every new Taking Back Sunday album like it was hot sh!t just because its their favorite band.

Why does this matter to me? Because I try to take this as seriously as I can. Amazon.com ranks reviewers based on these helpful votes and the higher my ranking is, the more exposure I get. I've only been doing this since April and I've already gotten several offers to write for different websites, but I haven't really committed to anything. If my ranking goes higher, then I get more exposure, and therefore more opportunities to do this professionally.

But alas, this will probably never actually happen. Why?

Fanboys.