What's going on with electric bike reviews? Nothing adds up.
I was led to a review by Google. Google often prompts you to make a review of something when it knows you've bought an item or service. I think that's a good idea as it prompts regular people to make honest reviews, however, it hasn't had much affect on electric bikes, as I could only find a few and they all looked highly suspicious.
This got me thinking, so I decided to check what's on Trustpilot. The results were a complete surprise. Most people would never notice, but this is why I was surprised.
1. Popular long-established brand Batribike - zero reviews. Not so well-known Volt bikes - 300 reviews. I would have said that a Brand like Oxygen would be similar to Volt, but they also have zero reviews.
2. There's no general incentive for people to leave reviews on Trustpilot. I guess some people just want to enlighten the world, so would make a habit of leaving reviews on Trustpilot. Others would want to warn others about a bad company, and occasionally someone would be so pleased with a particular product that they would feel motivated to tell everyone else about it. When you look at the reviews, the majority only ever did one review.
3. My thinking says that if someone wants to make the effort to tell the world about their experience with a product or service, they'd want to get their money's worth by telling a bit of a story. Why would anybody go to the effort of making an account, logging on then leaving a one liner, like, "Great staff and great bike" then never ever leave a review about anything else?
So, applying my thinking, the only reviews worth looking at are the ones from people that made say 5 or more reviews of different products, or ones where people wrote a sizeable page, though you have to think about their motives when they never left any other reviews. Considering everything, I'd only feel happy trusting about 1% of the good reviews. You then have to try and filter the bad ones into categories of where the reviewer misunderstood something, was just a bad customer or where random circumstances caused all the problems mentioned, which does happen.
It's similar with magazine and newspaper reviews. The same obscure brands seem to get mentioned again and again, while as well known good brands never get a word.
Even on this forum, many people buy their first electric bike. They never rode any others or they tried a very limited number, so they have no basis to evaluate from. In most cases, in their ignorance of viable alternative bikes, they make a post extolling the virtues of their new machine on the day after they bought it. They very rarely follow up with a long-term report, probably because all the bad points emerge after they've done some miles. I'm in a fortunate position that I know quite a few dealers and I've had inside information about bikes from people that have posted regularly on this forum saying how great and reliable their bikes are, conveniently failing to mention some fairly serious warranty problems they had.
All in all, it paints a pretty poor picture for those that need something to inform their choice of bike. Even trying a bike can give completely the wrong impression unless you get to try it on one of your typical journeys.
Most elctric bikes are good, so in spite of everything, most people are going to be happy with their choice however they got there.
I was led to a review by Google. Google often prompts you to make a review of something when it knows you've bought an item or service. I think that's a good idea as it prompts regular people to make honest reviews, however, it hasn't had much affect on electric bikes, as I could only find a few and they all looked highly suspicious.
This got me thinking, so I decided to check what's on Trustpilot. The results were a complete surprise. Most people would never notice, but this is why I was surprised.
1. Popular long-established brand Batribike - zero reviews. Not so well-known Volt bikes - 300 reviews. I would have said that a Brand like Oxygen would be similar to Volt, but they also have zero reviews.
2. There's no general incentive for people to leave reviews on Trustpilot. I guess some people just want to enlighten the world, so would make a habit of leaving reviews on Trustpilot. Others would want to warn others about a bad company, and occasionally someone would be so pleased with a particular product that they would feel motivated to tell everyone else about it. When you look at the reviews, the majority only ever did one review.
3. My thinking says that if someone wants to make the effort to tell the world about their experience with a product or service, they'd want to get their money's worth by telling a bit of a story. Why would anybody go to the effort of making an account, logging on then leaving a one liner, like, "Great staff and great bike" then never ever leave a review about anything else?
So, applying my thinking, the only reviews worth looking at are the ones from people that made say 5 or more reviews of different products, or ones where people wrote a sizeable page, though you have to think about their motives when they never left any other reviews. Considering everything, I'd only feel happy trusting about 1% of the good reviews. You then have to try and filter the bad ones into categories of where the reviewer misunderstood something, was just a bad customer or where random circumstances caused all the problems mentioned, which does happen.
It's similar with magazine and newspaper reviews. The same obscure brands seem to get mentioned again and again, while as well known good brands never get a word.
Even on this forum, many people buy their first electric bike. They never rode any others or they tried a very limited number, so they have no basis to evaluate from. In most cases, in their ignorance of viable alternative bikes, they make a post extolling the virtues of their new machine on the day after they bought it. They very rarely follow up with a long-term report, probably because all the bad points emerge after they've done some miles. I'm in a fortunate position that I know quite a few dealers and I've had inside information about bikes from people that have posted regularly on this forum saying how great and reliable their bikes are, conveniently failing to mention some fairly serious warranty problems they had.
All in all, it paints a pretty poor picture for those that need something to inform their choice of bike. Even trying a bike can give completely the wrong impression unless you get to try it on one of your typical journeys.
Most elctric bikes are good, so in spite of everything, most people are going to be happy with their choice however they got there.
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