Amazon reviews- it's a simple concept: you buy a product, then if you so wish, leave a review on it for the benefit of potential future buyers.
What you'll often find though, especially when trawling the one-star reviews, is that even this most basic of concepts is lost on some people, whereupon the review ceases to be a product review and becomes a review of buyer competency.
You'll often see the one-star review citing "never arrived". This doesn't constitute a product review and it's not helpful- but it's not that entertaining either. You've got to dig deeper to find the real idiots.
Recent finds include the person who commented that a pneumatic nail gun was too expensive, and that he found a cordless screwdriver to be just as effective and cheaper. Now I'm quite handy, so forgive my knowledge on such matters. But this is the first time I have ever heard of someone trying to use a cordless screwdriver to knock in nails.
Call me crazy, but if you want a cheaper alternative to a pneumatic nail gun to put nails in something, wouldn't you automatically think "hammer"? But no, not this genius. He's bypassed that £3 product- one of the oldest tools known to man- in favour of using the fat end of his £20 cordless screwdriver to bray them in with.
Speaking of pneumatic nail guns, another customer decided to buy one before purchasing the compressor required to power it, then couldn't find a compressor within her budget, so instead of returning it she threw it in a drawer, unused, and took straight to Amazon to give it the obligatory one-star. Upon what basis I still can't fathom.
Another fellow bought a drill guide (a little jig to help you drill a straight hole), then complained that the holes in it were slightly larger than his drill bits, forgetting of course that if they had been the same size the drill bit would have got stuck in the hole rendering both parts useless- though in his defence if he needed a drill guide in the first place he probably should be getting someone else in to do the job, so perhaps we'll let him off.
It's fair to say then that in the main you can discount the one-star reviews. Sadly Amazon don't, so these moronic comments sit there dragging the overall product rating down, thereby you have to read through them to ascertain whether the product really is sh*t, or whether the cast of the muppet show have been allowed near a keyboard again.
I've saved my favourite until last; One lady gave the DVD of the classic fantasy film The Labyrinth one-star because she thought she was buying a book by an author called Kate Mosse, and that she didn't even like David Bowie....though apparantly her kids loved the film. Idiotic on so many levels.
