No Neutrality on Steepster? Positive bias?

As faculty I definitely am influenced by the grading scale since it’s such a part of my life. Maybe I should just change my rating categories into “grades”! In my heart, a 90-100 tea is an “A” (exceptional work), 80-89 a “B” (good job), 70-79 a “C” (average/mediocre performance), and 69 and below “D-F” (failing, because I teach in a med school and you have to get a C to pass the class). Even on that scale, I feel like I am too nice to many teas and give B’s when I should give C’s.

I definitely have a problem using the entire scale, and yes, especially with small companies that have a presence on Steepster. Like you, I use my numerical ratings to keep track of what I loved and what I didn’t, so I use them but feel bad rating teas lowly especially if other people love them and it seems that it is more my taste in teas than the tea itself. I stopped rating most of them that fit that category (such as puerhs). Every once in a while I try to go through my ratings and shift things lower because I notice my scores creeping up, but it never lasts long. In reality, my “grading curve” probably looks like a normal distribution around 85; a little too high (side note: wouldn’t it be awesome to actually be able to look at that data? I’ve rated 881 teas, certainly enough for some nice stats).

The default rating on the scale is 77. To me that means average. Since much of what I have tried strikes me better than average I gave a lot of 80’s and 90’s. That made sense to me but seemed to annoy the ones who are more inclined to use the whole scale. So I stopped giving a number most of the time.

As for bad reviews – I have done it. Very rarely but I’ve done it. Normally someone from the company will thank me as they can’t improve if no one tells them. I am very careful to make multiple cups with different parameters than the directions before declaring I don’t like it or it didn’t perform well. I am also careful not to inject my personal taste into a review without acknowledging my bias – as example, I don’t like hibiscus. Others do. I will say this is not to my personal tastes but that doesn’t mean its bad. Fortunately, it doesn’t occur often for me. The only guilt I feel is did I do everything possible to make sure it was the tea and not me.

I don’t think you should be scared of the tea companies. What are they gonna do, not buy your tea? Oh wait, that’s right. YOU’RE the one buying the tea. lol. Anyway, that’s the way I look at it. If I really feel that I may have messed up the timing or temperature, I won’t leave a number rating, but I’ll still describe the taste of the tea and how I prepared it.

I’ll leak out something – I was at a Tea blogger meet up and the topic came up about having to write about bad teas. Many stated they will not review a tea they do not like. Makes sense as writing about teas (review or personal experience), you want to write about something you’d recommend and like.

Often, tea bloggers have contacted the company in private and told them the tea was bad and a good tea company does like the feedback to help them improve, which will help their sales in the long run.

Personally on Oolong Owl and Steepster I have reviewed teas I don’t like. There’s a side I can appreciate that I know someone out there will like this – it’s good, decent quality, priced well, but its something I wouldn’t buy a zillion oz of – but I’m there to describe the tea. If the tea is just flat out poor quality I’ve done as stated above – most of the time storage or bad shipping packaging is the problem

Steepster rankings, if I really dislike it on personal taste, I don’t number rate it. Should see me with ginseng oolongs, bbblbleeeeccckkk!

I always found that the actual text of the reviews of a tea are way more important than the number rating, which is so very subjective. I have written reviews here for teas I don’t like. And if a tea company gets abusive about it (which has not happened to me yet) then they deserve the bad publicity they get for it. And they WILL get bad publicity on this site.

Bad reviews are just as useful if not more so than good ones if the criticism is constructive and detailed, in my opinion. Is the base tea poor quality? Is it super finicky? Good for the other drinkers of the tea and for the company itself to improve.

Ooooh, this is an interesting topic. I hope I don’t offend anyone by commenting, but I think a vendor’s perspective might be needed here.

I try REALLY hard not to be defensive about low ratings on our teas. A lot of times I follow the maxim, ‘if you don’t have anything nice to say…’ Occasionally I do offer steeping suggestions and if customers seem to be more inquiring why it didn’t work for them than they are just stating it wasn’t a tea for them, I will try to give some ideas why it might not have worked for them.

I’m very conscious of the fact that this site wasn’t really designed with me in mind and I don’t ever want a customer to feel like they have to love all of our teas because I read the reviews. In point of fact, I monitor the reviews closely and try to improve our teas based on the feedback I get there. I try to be as invisible as possible and have found myself commenting on fewer and fewer reviews over time specifically because I don’t want anyone to hold back their true feelings about any of our blends.

If I can be permitted a brief aside, I will say publicly (but not directly to any user or on any specific review) that one of my biggest pet peeves with reviews is “I really don’t like [coconut/mango/apples/honeybush/green tea], but I decided to try this [coconut/mango/apples/honeybush/green tea] blend anyway, and surprise!—I HATE it. I give it 1 out of 100.” Those are really the only reviews that I find myself getting actually frustrated with and having to bite my tongue about.

Apart from that, I realize that everyone’s tastes are different and none of our teas are going to earn universal love. (Though that won’t stop me from trying.)

In summary, I can’t speak for the other tea vendors here, but I personally love to read both good and bad reviews (with the exceptions noted above). If I didn’t have any negative reviews, I wouldn’t know what to improve on.

I still struggle with this at times. I’ve had people get their underoos kind of bunched when I wrote honestly.

When I was very new, I just wanted to figure out what I liked, and Steepster is a great place for that. I didn’t know anyone, so there weren’t any honesty issues. Then once I figured out my preferences, I transitioned to feeling bad about being honest because some of the vendors here are just really nice people and I hate hurting feelings. I still kind of feel that way, but I’m getting over it. When I find myself thinking that I don’t want to write a less than stellar review, I remind myself that I have a swiss cheese brain and need to make a note so I know what not to buy in the future. I admit to not always adding a numerical rating.

I also dislike the rating scale. It’s way too broad and without a consistent agreement on what the numbers mean, it’s really hard to be accurate. So rather than look at ratings, I instead get suggestions from people whose opinions I trust and/or who I know have similar tastes. Works great!

Nope I say it pretty well like it is. I have gotten away fromthe numerical ratings as what I think is low could be someone else s higher number.
I really don’t think any of our vendors will push or harass us on here but it is nice when they make a suggestion that can sometimes assist us and maybe make the experience better.
I think we all develop and progress and something that was outstanding a year ago may only be ok at the moment, or vice versa. We may have hated it tried it later and now enjoy it. That was the way I was with puerh. Albeit I have progressed beyond that now.

I don’t have any problems leaving negative reviews. And from the vendors perspective, well, maybe they are trying to do damage control which is not uncommon on social media. The only times I’m not sure if I want to leave a bad numerical rating is if I might have brewed it incorrectly, or as Frank stated, I had a feeling I would hate it anyway before I even tried it. That doesn’t exactly seem fair to the vendor.

I know what you mean about the EBay vendor blocking you. I was blocked by an EBay vendor whom I gave excellent positive feedback too after I opened a case for an item that did not show up on tracking for 35 days and didn’t arrive until 60 days when it was supposed to arrive in 15 days. As to the issue of reviews here I agree it can be difficult to post a truly horrible review. Unless I think that the tea itself is bad quality I will probably try to put it in a good light while saying I didn’t like it. I will be receiving some teas from Angel at Teavivre for review and she said she wanted my honest opinion. However, she let me pick my teas and I picked teas I am likely to like, but not guaranteed to like. I plan to be honest but I don’t think I would on the other hand be terrible either if I don’t like something. I already believe I will receive a quality product, the question is will I like it?