Amazon ratings warning

I had heard a comment about this before concerning the Amazon Fire Phone where the ratings started out on the rough side and later when they were trying to clear out the old stock with a sale, they cleared the star ratings and basically started over in an attempt to get a better star rating.  I saw this but wondered if it had anything to do with the phone being pulled from the market for a period before giving it one more effort.  They brought it out with a much better price and threw in a year of Amazon Prime for less than half the original introductory price.

If this was merely a second attempt to market the phone and/or a version 2.0 of the phone, then it would make sense to make this the equivalent of a new product and deserving of a new star rating but if it was not, and the fact that they were still listing a rather large number of total reviews given just days after the reset, then they were playing games.

I have read others mention that this was happening and for items other than just the Fire Phone but didn't take a lot of heed.  I couldn't believe, or didn't want to believe that Amazon would do this.  Besides this seemed like a numbers game that others might play but not our tried and true Amazon.

Then I got an e-mail that talks about saving big on Xfinity Internet.  Always looking for a deal I clicked to see and was met with the opening visual:

At first glance it doesn't look too bad other than the price is kind of high for a measly 25 Mbps and excluding equipment, install, taxes and fees.  Go faster and it gets worse.  Still it looks like 916 customers have given it an average of 4 stars.  Pretty good by normal ratings standards.  Remember that on a scale of 1 to 5 the median is 3 and not half of 5 or 2.5.

Now after the first impression, you being the savvy shopper you are, you look down the screen to see what some of those reviews actually say and then com across this:

Initially it is still looking good.  Sure 3.8 is not the full 4 stars that it shows being filled in but 3.8 is still a good way to the higher side of middle ground.  But wait a minute.  86% of the 916 reviewers gave it a one star.  If you have read many reviews you will know that the only reason for some to give a one star review is because they have no way to give them a zero star review.

So let's do some math.  Don't worry, I will keep it simple.
916 * 86% = 788 then times 1 equals 788
916 * 2%  = 18 then times 2 equals 36
916 * 2% = 18 then times 3 equals 54
916 * 2% = 18 then times 4 equals 72
916 * 8% = 73 then times 5 equals 365

Double check 788+18+18+18+73 = 915  within one is better than government.
Now add 788+36+54+72+365= 1,315 for total stars given

so that means if we take the total stars and divide by the number of reviews we should get the real star rating of 1,315/916 = 1.435589519650655 or rounded out to 1.4 stars.  By the way, even if I throw in the extra person to make it a full 916 and give the benefit of the doubt that the missing count would have given a full 5 stars the number still rounds to 1.4 (1.441048034934498 to be exact).

Wait a minute, they calculated it to be 3.8 and rounded it to 4 when filling out the stars to display.  What gives Amazon?  Real math doesn't even come up to half that amount.

Is this just really bad math, somebody falling asleep at the wheel, or are you playing games because you have a deal going with Xfinity that is paying you to push their product on your web site and through you customer's via their e-mails.  If the later, then this is major league bogus, deceptive and fraudulent and should be beneath you or any business that desires to deal from a place of integrity.  If this is an innocent mistake then you have got other problems that need to be addressed and corrected quickly.

I understand that stuff can happen, typos occur and sometimes mistakes are just that.  If it starts to happen often or you start to hear examples coming from more than a few minor sources, it may indicate a trend or a change in policy that may negatively impact the relationship between a company and its customers.  I am not ready to make the call just yet because I have had a pretty good relationship with Amazon myself but this is worth watching to see where it goes form here.  If I were an investor looking at the company, I would definitely want to know more.

This is Ed Nef with a view from the Farrwest.