[TowerTalk] Poor eHam reviews of the AV 480

Thu Apr 10 00:37:32 EDT 2014

We sell lots of stuff on eBay and we offer a 14 day money back guarantee 
on everything.  A buyer can ding us without even bothering to contact us 
about a problem.  A buyer can say great seller, and give a great written 
comment and then ding the seller on the starts which the seller cannot 
address.  Reviews from anywhere can be useful but should not be relied 
on completely.  At least eBay requires you to buy something to leave 
feedback.  Leaving a review on a product you don't own is pretty low.

Mike W0MU

On 4/9/2014 10:12 PM, David Gilbert wrote:
>
> A couple of years ago I scanned through roughly 2,000 eHam reviews on 
> a wide variety of products to see how people came up with their 
> score.  What I found was surprising:
>
> *  reviewers gave scores of 4 or 5 if either a product performed well  
> .... or .... if the manufacturer was earnest in addressing poor 
> performance, even if the effort fell short.
>
> *  many products were given a 4 or a 5 without the slightest 
> quantitative judgement.  If the product merely functioned it got a 
> good score.
>
> *  by far, the majority of 0's and 1's were given for poor customer 
> service (unanswered phone calls, ignored emails, perceived lack of 
> sympathy, etc).   Relatively good performing products often ended up 
> with middle of the road average numerical ratings due to bad service.
>
> The net result is that as a product performance rating the eHam 
> reviews are virtually useless.  The best I can say about the reviews 
> is that if you take the trouble to read each review carefully you 
> might ...  might ...  come across one that was well considered.
>
> 73,
> Dave   AB7E
>
>
>
> On 4/9/2014 8:47 PM, EZ Rhino wrote:
>> I've always thought the implementation of reviews on eHam could stand 
>> a revision.
>>
>> First of all, "reviews" by people who admit they do not own the 
>> product in question have no place being there and should be removed 
>> (I have actually read some by people who admit they don't own the 
>> product in question!  Don't you have anything better to do?).  The 
>> same for anonymous reviews.
>>
>> Next, I would like to see a way for the manufacturers to respond to 
>> reviews.  This should be limited in length and not allowed to become 
>> an argument or personal attacks.  This can do one of two things:  
>> Either it will allow the manufacturer to shine in the way they handle 
>> the situation, or it will make them look worse, all in the way it is 
>> handled.  (The phrase "give enough rope to hang yourself" comes to 
>> mind).
>>
>> Last, I wonder if the 1-5 score could be broken down a bit, like 
>> adding a score for customer service, product quality, and 
>> performance, for instance.
>>
>> This requires some input from someone to manage, which I imagine is 
>> one reason why nothing is done over there.  I am certain there are 
>> plenty of people who would volunteer to watch categories of products 
>> and do the managing, though.
>>
>> Chris
>> KF7P
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> On Apr 9, 2014, at 18:19 , Joe Subich, W4TV wrote:
>>
>>
>>> How do we over ride the poor reviews from hams who probably have no
>>> idea of how to set up a vertical?
>> With only three reviews, the AV-680 suffers because of one bad review
>> for an issue (MFJ/Hy-Gain quality control) that has no bearing on the
>> antenna's performance.
>>
>> I'd suggest looking at the reviews for the AV-640, AV-620, CushCraft
>> R9, R8, R7, R5, R6000 and R7000 all of which are essentially the same
>> antenna with different frequency coverage.  While this class of OCF
>> verticals is not going to outperform a small beam at 40 or 50 feet on
>> the higher bands or a full size vertical with a mile of wire in the
>> ground on 80 and 40, it is a well though out design that does make
>> contacts ... an old beat-up R5 that I dragged around the country for
>> 20 years is responsible for a large part of making DXCC honor roll
>> and hitting 2500 on DXCC Challenge.  In all that time I've never had
>> an amplifier or antennas other than the R5 (or R7 and R6000) and a
>> low (40' in the trees) 160/80/40 trapped inverted V.
>>
>> 73,
>>
>>    ... Joe, W4TV
>>
>>
>> On 4/9/2014 7:19 PM, David Thompson wrote:
>>> I tried to convince Ray W5EW to replace his 6BTV vertical with a 
>>> Hy-Gain
>>> AV-480 but the reviews on eHam were so bad he has decided not to spend
>>> the money.  The 6BTV has 30 radials and does well in the RTTY Contests
>>> he enters running low power.
>>>
>>> How do we over ride the poor reviews from hams who probably have no 
>>> idea
>>> of how to set up a vertical?
>>>
>>> 73 Dave K4JRB
>>>
>>> _______________________________________________
>>>
>>>
>>>
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