Does Amazon, Home Depot, & others remove negative review for certain companies?
 

Does Amazon, Home Depot, and other websites remove negative reviews on behalf of certain companies under some kind of special agreement?

I purchased a several Husky shelving units from home Depot, all of which had major issues and flaws in their product. They claim that their shelving units will hold 10,0000 lbs. but that is not possible. All of the units I purchased were not welded together properly so they were all warped and couldn't even be put together. Other parts didn't have the pre drilled hole slots that they were supposed to have to put the shelves together. I had to take the units back and there was the same issue with the other ones. There is a note in the box that if there is an issue to call the 1800 number and they will replace the parts. Called them and after a month and multiple calls still never received the replacement parts.

I attempted to leave a one star review on the product but home Depot removed it saying it did not conform to community standards. I rewrote the review and they removed it again. I rewrote it again but was very brief so they couldn't make up another reason to remove it, but yet again they removed it for an invalid reason. basically if you gave it one star, it would be removed.

I was suspicious that they intentionally removed any bad reviews for this company, so I decided to test out giving the same product a one star review on Amazon to see what they would do and they removed it as well. It seems like this manufacturer has some kind of special agreement to remove negative reviews on their product.

Here is the review that that they claim violates their standards:

Not welded together properly and they won't send you replacement parts
Bought multiple sets of these and there was something wrong with every one of them. The main support bracket on two of them weren't welded together and came all bent up in the box. Several of the other crossbeams didn't have the holes predrilled into them like they...

This is the reason for the removal: 'Your review should focus on specific features of the product and your experience with it. Feedback on the seller or your shipment experience should be provided at Amazon/Feedback."

I would think that the main support beams not being welded together properly is a valid part of the product feature and shouldn't be a reason for the removal of a review. I even resubmitted the review but removed the part they bolded and they removed the review again with the same generic response but this time they just highlighted "Bought multiple sets" as the reason for the removal.

It seems like it would be very hard to trust the feedback score on products from some companies that have more positive reviews if they are intentional removing negative reviews. They are basically swaying purchases on specific brands by removing negative reviews for one manufacturer but not removing negatives and possible removing positives from other companies that don't have a special agreement with the seller.

Re: Does Amazon, Home Depot, & others remove negative review for certain companies?
 

I wonder what would happen if you wrote same review but gave it 2 stars?

Re: Does Amazon, Home Depot, & others remove negative review for certain companies?
 

I tried that on Home Depot's website and it still got a rejection. No matter how brief or how long a review I left, they all resulted in a rejection.

Re: Does Amazon, Home Depot, & others remove negative review for certain companies?
 

Damn, so much for that theory.

Re: Does Amazon, Home Depot, & others remove negative review for certain companies?
 

Curious … are you talking about their welded garage shelves? They look like mini pallet racking? If so, I have a crazy amount of experience with them.

Re: Does Amazon, Home Depot, & others remove negative review for certain companies?
 

Amazon definitely removes reviews, all the time. No idea about Home Depot but I can imagine some agreement with the manufacturer to delete anything deemed very critical.

Re: Does Amazon, Home Depot, & others remove negative review for certain companies?
 

Yeah, it's these here:

Husky Black 5-Tier Heavy Duty Industrial Welded Steel Garage Shelving Unit (90 in. W x 90 in. H x 24 in. D)-HBR902490W5 - The Home Depot

This is how mine came in the boxes. Had to return them several times to different Home Depots. They all had the same or similar issues. They have a toll free number that you can call and they say to email at this address with a picture of your receipt of your receipt and they'll send the replacement pieces to you within five business days. I'm still waiting to receive them 6-7 weeks later. I have since returned them to Home Depot until I could finally find one that wasn't defective. Home Depot finally let me open the boxes in the store until I could find enough pieces that I needed until I got enough pieces that weren't defective to complete two shelving sets. I had to go through over ten boxes in order to have enough parts to make the two sets.

https://cimg5.ibsrv.net/gimg/dvdtalk...1689eaabde.jpg
https://cimg7.ibsrv.net/gimg/dvdtalk...0a61ad14a5.jpg

Re: Does Amazon, Home Depot, & others remove negative review for certain companies?
 

Ha. The XL models. I set up my whole shop using this type of shelving. I buy them from store return vendors.

The bad welds are common on these bigger ones. I have a few I never re welded but I put a banding strap around one spot to get them together. And I have multiple in rows so it works out. On the smaller ones I never saw a bad weld.

On your claim about them being bent or warped … you have to make sure everything is sitting square or they’re a real bitch to assemble. Ive assembled about 70 of them and never had serious problem with assembly. If they aren’t going together right, it’s usually because I need to kick out a foot or something to square them. I have a lot of experience with large pallet racking and it works about the same.

The 10k lb rating is a farce. I’d trust about 500 lbs per shelf. Unless you’re storing dense liquids or dies/tooling/iron, I can’t think of how you could load 10k lbs on one.

There is really no good equivalent to these. If you don’t like them, you could look up used shelving shops in your area and maybe get a deal there.

To answer your question: probably. I don’t trust reviews anywhere. NYT had an article about 3rd party sellers manipulating millions of reviews. Amazon says they purged thousands or tens of thousands of sellers because of it recently.

I was blocked from making reviews on amazon after I left a bad review for some curtains a few years ago. There are companies out there who you can pay to harass places like amazon until they remove your bad reviews.

Re: Does Amazon, Home Depot, & others remove negative review for certain companies?
 

They aren't bad if they aren't defective when you get them. They're fairly easy to set up if you have a second person with you to get the bottom part started. The main issue is the lack of quality control with them. They are clearly defective when they were placed in the box and weren't damaged as a result of them being transported. It's pretty bad when over 50% of the shelving units have defects and need to be returned. The other issue is customer support. If they tell you not to return them to the store but call their customer support line to get defective parts replaced, then they need to actually send the replacement parts to the customer and not ignore the phone calls and emails.

I use mine to store books and paper collectibles. On a fully loaded shelf, I'll get nowhere 2,000 pounds. I'll maybe be at 500-700 pounds. I wouldn't want to test them at 2K pounds each, especially if they had defects that I just bended back in place. That would be too risky for me because if they failed, they could potentially kill or severely hurt someone.

The biggest hassle with having to return them is the size and weight of the units. The large support beams are 7.5 feet long and these boxed up weight at least 200lbs. They just don't fit easily in the average vehicle or SUV. I had to borrow a truck to first pick them up and then borrow it again to return them and get new ones. Then I had to borrow it again since the new ones were defective as well. Home Depot offers delivery for $79. I'd be pissed to get defective ones and then have to pay the $79 over and over until I got ones that weren't defective. It's also a hassle if you have to wait for a four hour delivery for delivery and redeliveries.

I purchased these based on the reviews. Had a read reviews about the number of defective issues or quality control, I may have thought twice about getting them or at least opened them up at the store to check for defects before leaving the store so I wouldn't have to make multiple trips back and fourth. It was just too time consuming and I could have saved a lot of time had I known about the issues before hand. Unfortunately, the fact that these kind of reviews are removed makes it hard to make good decisions about which products to purchase. Since Home Depot is intentionally blocking legitimate reviews, I will intentionally now purchase from Lowes instead.

Re: Does Amazon, Home Depot, & others remove negative review for certain companies?
 

Looking the shelves, they're going to tend to wobble/warp/twist because there doesn't appear to be any kind of back brace; it's basically just an open frame. Definitely want to load from the bottom up, and not keep them top heavy.

The bad welds aren't surprising. Most of the stuff manufactured today is a bunch of crap thrown together as quickly and cheaply as possible in a foreign country by workers with sub-poverty wages. And, of course, we're charged premium prices for it.

Considering the weight and types of materials these shelves are designed to carry, a bad weld could be extremely dangerous. One of these collapsing on your arms while taking stuff off of the shelves or putting it on could break the bones in your arms. Or if they're in your garage, they could collapse and dump a thousand pounds on a child near them. -eek-

Re: Does Amazon, Home Depot, & others remove negative review for certain companies?
 

These ones are a little better than the type that I had bought previously. These ones have three support beams per shelf going under each shelf which would keep one shelf from collapsing on the one below it. The faulty welding would cause the main support beam to fail with enough weight on it. That would cause everything on the unit above and on the size of the bad weld to fall forward and then the rest of the unit all the way up to the other end could start to fall forward.

The other shelving units I have don't have any support going across the shelves. All they have is a little steel pin that is hooked on both ends. One end of the pin hooks into a hole on the crossbeam. The other end hooks onto the wire shelves. These one are always failing even if only one quarter of the maximum weight is on the shelf and they have the potential to bring every shelf below it don with it. I don't really trust these units anymore but I've got so much money invested in them that I can't afford to upgrade them all yet.

Re: Does Amazon, Home Depot, & others remove negative review for certain companies?
 

Oh, I can tell you for a fact that Amazon manipulates their reviews. I lost track a long time ago exactly how many of mine they've rejected. It's a lot. I'm surprised they haven't banned me. I do have 632 reviews posted at the moment, and am ranked about #6000. The ONLY reviews of mine they don't like are the negative ones. And I follow their "guidelines," so as not to offend them. Some get kind of "mean," but nowhere does it say you can't be. They're at a point now where they don't even notify me it's been rejected. It just vanishes. (I've gotten into the habit of copying everything I write now). And it is 100% impossible to get them to tell you WHY it was rejected (believe me, I've tried). My review count will occasionally go down, along with any associated helpful votes. I have no way of knowing what they've removed, or why. I mean it could be the item is no longer available, but it could also be that they didn't like something about it. Their customer service has gone completely down the toilet, so I don't even try contacting them anymore about any of this.

Re: Does Amazon, Home Depot, & others remove negative review for certain companies?
 

That's interesting because they keep a ton of crappy reviews, so I wonder if it's just a vendor complaining that gets them removed? It certainly doesn't seem to be any type of actual quality control.

Re: Does Amazon, Home Depot, & others remove negative review for certain companies?
 

No, their reviews are generally (with certain exception, of course) overwhelmingly positive, no matter how crappy the product. They do leave up negative reviews, but they're almost always in the minority. I do think they have an axe to grind with me, though, as I often disagree with popular opinion. I can tell you I've had a shit-ton of negativity never see the light.

Re: Does Amazon, Home Depot, & others remove negative review for certain companies?
 

Apologies, I didn't mean crappy as in negative, I meant crappy as in not providing any value and sometimes not even making any sense.

Re: Does Amazon, Home Depot, & others remove negative review for certain companies?
 

They leave up all the fake 5-star reviews that just say "nice" or "excellent."

Re: Does Amazon, Home Depot, & others remove negative review for certain companies?
 

Sorry for misunderstanding! Yeah, there's certainly no quality control in that regard.