Last month, Lulu Addict noticed that some of the reviews on the Lululemon website sounded like shill reviews. Here is her post about Shill Product Reviews On The Website. I’ve had many readers comment over the past couple of months that their reviews have not been posted, or they’ve been deleted off the lululemon website if they aren’t stellar. I hadn’t really delved too much into this until the Wunder Speed Tights in Mixed Marble print came up and I had posted my review on this website. A lot of you agreed that the pants where sheer, but some of you hadn’t experienced that issue, which is absolutely valid. I had a lot of lashback about that post and so I felt a bit like I was second guessing my review (although I firmly stand behind it, I feel bad for those that hadn’t experienced the sheerness), because of this I’ve been paying very close attention to the reviews of this particular product on the Lululemon website. Daily I’ve been looking at the reviews, reading them, making mental note of the number of reviews and the star rating. Yesterday, a one star review was deleted and a five star review was left in it’s place, bumping up the overall star rating from 2.0 to 3.0. I just checked again and yet another review has been deleted and the overall rating is now up to 3.2. A few days ago there where 12 reviews and today there are 10. Removing the negative reviews and allowing the few positive reviews artificially inflates the rating.
Logically, I realize that the review feature on a retailers website is nothing more than a marketing tool and that they have every right to edit and conform the reviews and ratings to fit their marketing message. As a customer however, I am astounded at the lack of integrity being shown here. They’ve already eliminated the Hey Lululemon website (and eliminated five employee positions as a result), and the fact that they are now heavily editing reviews to invalidate negative customer reviews is infuriating. A review feature on a website is not a standard feature on retailers e-commerce sites, but they include it because it is a marketing advantage. If the negative reviews they are receiving on a particular product outweighs the advantage of having this marketing feature then they could correct the issue with the product itself, or eliminate the review feature altogether. Instead they are choosing to artificially inflate ratings by removing negative reviews from customers that took the time to engage in their website and provide feedback. Lululemon, your customers left you feedback which you are choosing to invalidate and ignore. Where will this lead you in the long run?
