I don't submit reviews. If a company wants to poll me with a customer satisfaction inquiry - most being a short series of questions with ratings - that's different. If my experience was negative or less positive than I hoped, I make the response neutral.

In my eye, it's a passive-aggressive act to make a public condemnation following a disappointing experience. A better response is to learn from it and not patronize the business or facility again.

I appreciate seeing reviews, both good and bad, so I try to take a moment to leave them when something significantly exceeds or fails to meet expectations.

That said, on the company’s own site I’d approach reviews with extra caution. Lucillle, if you do decide to read the terms and conditions on Gregory’s site, you’ll see they reserve the right to modify or not publish reviews. 🤨

Food, I'm not going to do the review and I appreciate your input. The review would have been resoundingly positive. I do think that large companies should be able to not publish reviews under certain conditions (such as the review having nothing to do with the product, or that it is pornographic when the subject matter refiewed is not porn or otherwise uses nasty or demeaning language) but not to alter a bona fide review otherwise especially on relevant content . And I too like to leave reviews as you do when a product exceeds or falls short of expectations. Those reviews have been very helpful to me in the past.

I never had to agree with terms/conditions but I do review some Amazon items that I buy and also many resturant reviews. Usually with some room for improvement suggestions, nyuk.

I used to leave reviews but I have become jaded. I have had honest, factual, polite reviews not post in 2 different companies, just like what Lucille is running into. They only would post positive ones. So why bother?

Nicole

I once wrote a review for a HORRIBLE hotel. Trip Advisor wrote me an email saying they'd changed my review... "because" we'd stayed the night....hadn't left. The place was terribly run down. Smelled of dog pee, I asked for another room, after a little "fight" they agreed, but said there was only one key, the other one had been lost...and if we lost the existing key we'd have to pay $150 for a new one. I also asked for extra bath towels to put on the carpet, as I wouldn't walk on it. There was no coffee pot in the room OR in the lobby? No microwave? No alarm clock? But....GREAT location. It was the 4th of July in Estes Park....no other rooms available. I would NEVER lie about my review...so I posted ANOTHER review saying Trip Advisor had lied...and .....they posted it! :0) weird...

I write honest reviews. They are usually for clothing companies such as Loft and Gap, or Wayfair.

On those sites, they seem to post all reviews.

When you agree to terms, sometimes it means your email will be passed along. Often I will see random emails from insurance companie. No harm done, I just block them from future contact.

Since most of my clothing shopping has to be done online, I do read reviews and at least get an idea about sizing.

Nicole, what happened you is horrendous.

Judipup, there are still ways to get paid for your opinions, but sadly seniors are not the popular demographic and we age out of the mainstream.

My willingness to review is hit or miss. Depends on the store, the product and my experience. I might be more likely to post about poor customer service to warn others who may have problems and want to engage customer service. I do read reviews, so I sometimes feel obligated to pass along that benefit to others.

I, too, have become jaded. Had a couple experiences where I was told they would do X for me if I posted a 5-star review or gave them a high survey rating. One example was a car dealership, where I had a very frustrating purchasing experience and was very upset about something that happened with the car that shouldn't have. In order to make the problem go away, they told me they would only do it if I gave them a full 5 stars when the company sent a survey. So I did, because getting the situation rectified was important. But do I now trust car dealership surveys? What do you think... This is only one example of this type of thing that's happened to me where a review has been used as a bargaining chip.

Before the prevalent use of bots, I would scour reviews for makeup and skin care products on the makeup boards. Not anymore. Why bother? Sites are over-run by bots. Don't trust blogs to have hones reviews, either -- why would a blogger post anything negative when she is being remunerated in money or product bu the company she is reviewing. Ulta and Sephora reviews I'll still read, they seem reasonably balanced so I do put some stock in reviews on those sites.

Funny, I just wrote a review for some kitchen chair pads from A. I'd have appreciated knowing that the 'yellow' is more 'gold', and someone else might want to know that. I also said they're brand new, and time would tell how they hold up. I have high hopes because I've never found any with a dense foam bottom for support. Not looking for 'cute' as much as support!

Thirty years ago VRBO was a great concept-- an organized 'classified ad'. Then it became a money-grabbing management business.

I just had an Amazon review rejected, and they referred me to Community Guidelines. They say, " We couldn't post your review because it doesn't meet our guidelines for one or more of these reasons:

• Profanity
• Harassment
• Hate speech
• Sexual content
• Illegal activity
• Private information"

It's a review for a childrens book. There was none of that in my review. I'm baffled.

There used to be good reviews in the world. Those that helped.

Now they're paid. Or endorsed. Or AI. I don't want any of that stuff. I just want to know what happens when people have the actual product or go to the actual places from their experiences. Do people actually bother reading reviews anymore?

I think the day that my eyes were opened was when I went to look up a review for a particular product, and all four or five reviews were the same on four or five different sites??? That's not a possibility, unless they do it on purpose. Which means none of the reviews were real.

Yes I read reviews. I think I’m reasobably adelt at figuring out which ones apply to what matters to me, because whenI go against my gut i’m often disappointed.

“I think the day that my eyes were opened was when I went to look up a review for a particular product, and all four or five reviews were the same on four or five different sites???”

I’ve seen this, too, and just assumed they were shared. Not quite. This is what I just found:

Review aggregation tools:

While reviews aren't directly shared, businesses can use third-party tools to collect and display reviews from multiple platforms on their website, providing a consolidated view.