why would they remove my review?

I recently brewed a beer from a kit that I ordered from a company who I won't mention the name of, but I wasn't that impressed and left a mediocre rating..which they removed.
There was no foul language or anything of that nature.
They did contact me by email AFTER the review was pulled and will make things right, but why would they pull the review before even contacting me?
I want honest opinions on the beer, not some slanted biased opinion.

That is something that you might want to have a respectful conversation with the mod about.
Without reading the post or having any more information than was given I couldn't even begin to guess.
I want an honest opinion also! It costs money to brew and if something is good or bad, I would like to know.

Aside from why it was pulled, taking time to contact the person who posted requires the post to remain up, despite the fact that for some reason the moderator felt it couldn't remain on the board.

Contacting people and waiting for a reply is not practical if a thread needs removed for some reason.

this was on the vendors website

How do they plan on making it right? If they're going to put your review back up, it may well have just been a mistake. What did they have to say about it?

how will they "make things right"? sounds shady to me...

sending me a replacement kit.

I've had a lot of reviews removed/filtered.

My gf was car shopping and we were told by a rep at this dealership in Jersey City (which is a little bit of a hike especially with traffic) that if she left a deposit it would be refunded to her card if she called. Needless to say that wasn't the case and to get her money back without driving there (good bye 2 hours out of the day) she had to fax her debit card. How asinine is that? Anyway I posted a review on their site where I was very level headed and I basically said unless you can get to the dealership easily, don't leave a deposit or they'll have you fax sensitive information to them. I posted that on Cars.com or something like that and it was deleted from there.

Also every review I've written on Yelp has been filtered out.

well that's nice of them. it's not cool of them to sensor their reviews, but a beer/kit/recipe is a pretty subjective thing.

bmeyer46 said:

this was on the vendors website

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That's different, and not honest unless they think that you were a 1 in 100 person who's order was defective and they wanted you to have a good kit, then post whatever you wanted.

I'm pretty sure that's not it.
This is why I'm a little leery of reviews on the companies website.
You have no idea of if there is culling of the posts or not.
If I don't see any bad reviews, I'm suspicious.


One that I've seen that I think is pretty straight forward is Sears.
When I was shopping for a big compressor a few years ago, the postings on their website convinced me that I didn't want their compressor!

The ironic part is that I found a used Craftsman compressor that was cheap, bought it and it's been great.

Tried, tested, and proven kits are usually something that comes out "bad" from human error.
Im sure it was just a mistake in one of your brewing practices that made the kit taste bad, not the kit itself. Thus your review is not typical of most completed kits.

If i sold something that 100 people left 5 stars on and 1 person left a 1 star review because of self-error i would be pissed. It does not represent the brand well.
Just because the kit didnt meet your expectations mean you should leave a bad review.

Great company to send you another kit to fix your mistake next batch though!!

it's like "we value your opinion...as long as it's what we want to hear."

no, I actually film all my brew days and I followed the instructions to a T...this ain't my first rodeo.

I went back to review my brew day to see if I HAD messed up, and if so, I was going to change my review...that's how I found out it was gone.
I wanted to see exactly what I had said about it, and wala..not there.

bmeyer46 said:

no, I actually film all my brew days and I followed the instructions to a T...this ain't my first rodeo.

I went back to review my brew day to see if I HAD messed up, and if so, I was going to change my review...that's how I found out it was gone.
I wanted to see exactly what I had said about it, and wala..not there.

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You film your brew day??
Not knocking you but why?

It would be more entertaining to film the drinking of the beer.

Youtube i film that to!!! Lol

A company that deletes unflattering comments of it's products whether truthful or due to errors is a sham. The point of the reviews is a fair assessment of the product by the buyer. Just tell us who it was otherwise they will keep pulling the same crap.

Sometimes its a good thing i video it. I made a really good porter once with leftover grains i had and didn't film....then i couldn't find the recipe!! Ggrrr

bmeyer46 said:

Youtube i film that to!!! Lol

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I can tell you are a bit younger than me.

There is a generational change due to technology. People of my age, generally wouldn't be posting all, if any of their brewing or much of anything without a very good reason.

However, I am glad for some of what gets posted on youtube.
When I went all grain, I checked out quite a few videos before I built my tun and started brewing.

Put a link up of a brew day, I need to see this!

You definitely don't need to disclose what company censored your review, but I am going to have to ask you to tell us what the company's name rhymes with before our torches burn out completely.

Honestly, I'm not surprised that a company would do this. Call me skeptical, but I would trust the criticism on a third party review website or personal blog to that of a company's own website.

Nb lol

I should have watched your video first. Was it shmorthern shmooer?

Edit: I'm a little slow today

Mmmmmmaaayyyybbbbeeeee!

Nice video! So when its done, do you bottle or keg? I have never done one gallon batches before.

Bottle...i don't have room in my fridge for kegs...besides,I'm about the only one who will drink it! More for me

I enjoy watching your videos bmeyer, along with the other youtubers and homebrew wednesday people. I am disappointed to hear that...a certain site...has censored your review. Even if they sent you a replacement, I feel that they should have let you re-brew the beer and change the review on your own. I once wrote a less than favorable review on Midwest's website, along with many other homebrewers who faced similar issues. they let the reviews stand, and ended up pulling the product! Nobody wants a bad product...buyer or seller. Reviews are meant to be just that...reviews, good or bad.

bmeyer46 said:

Sometimes its a good thing i video it. I made a really good porter once with leftover grains i had and didn't film....then i couldn't find the recipe!! Ggrrr

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I liked your video a lot. Nicely done. I made a similar one years ago, and posted to YouTube. I look back on it now and can't believe it's how I used to brew. Jeepers.

Thanks Teromous and passedpawn for the kind words!


I mostly do all grain BIAB brewing, but needed something quick, so I ordered the kit.
I've got 4 other one gallon kits to brew, and I'll review those as well.
I was just disappointed with all the other favorable reviews that it got, I thought " wow, I'm gonna try this since everyone said how good it was." Maybe everyone DIDN'T say that...but how would we know if they were pulled just like mine.
I think perhaps it would have been good if it had some DME with it, but the body was thin, and the taste rather one dimensional, which is exactly what I said in my review.
oh well, I'll brew the other kits and see what I think
That was the only mediocre kit I've gotten from them, as I like the Irish Red and a couple others I've brewed.
With the shipping charges changed now, I'll probably do most of my shopping at Austin Homebrew now anyway.

bmeyer46 said:

I recently brewed a beer from a kit that I ordered from a company who I won't mention the name of, but I wasn't that impressed and left a mediocre rating..which they removed.
There was no foul language or anything of that nature.
They did contact me by email AFTER the review was pulled and will make things right, but why would they pull the review before even contacting me?
I want honest opinions on the beer, not some slanted biased opinion.

Click to expand...

There's a company review forum here on HBT, in the homebrewing community section https://www.homebrewtalk.com/f173/ There's about three pages of reviews, look through it and find the company and add your review to the thread. If there hasn't been a previous review on the company, start a new thread.

It's unbelievable. As a consumer, I trust reviews of others before buying ANYTHING. I don't know how many times I've been about to pull the trigger on something, and then read some reviews only to change my mind. Proof is in the pudding, not the fluff.

I also read reviews before almost any online purchase. But you have to learn to filter the bad ones for things like incompetence and personal grudges and fan boys. One bad review means nothing overall and if it only has a few reviews either way it's the same as no review to me.

Sounds like they didn't want the negative press so they removed it. If someone is honestly dissatisfied and aren't being unreasonable or an idiot, they should have the right to say it and not have the review removed.

Sorry to say but the thread is useless. If you want to promote your brewing technique then you are doing an excellent job. I gave you a thumbs up/ like for your video but i can't honestly tell what you are complaining about.

Honest, non-bias reviews are huge to a smart consumer. Last year I was shopping for a sounder/gps. I was set on one brand, and after reading many many reviews, I went with another brand. I couldn't be happier with the unit. Had bass-pro among other outlets removed the negative reviews, i'd be bummin'. To remove a customer's review is unbelievable. Let the consumer take what they want from the review, good or bad.

iaefebs said:

Sorry to say but the thread is useless. If you want to promote your brewing technique then you are doing an excellent job. I gave you a thumbs up/ like for your video but i can't honestly tell what you are complaining about.

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did you not read the very first post I made or did you just skip right to the video?

I think that it is fair for the company to respond to the negative review. I have seen this a lot on Trip Advisor where the companies that get a less than favorable review acknowledge the issue and say what they did to correct or remedy it. In this case, the vendor could have used the opportunity to publicly state what they had done to fix the issue. Removing the review unless it is profane or ridiculous is sketch.

Did you contact the vendor before posting a negative review? I'm just curious if there was an issue with the kit. If you didn't like the beer, I find it strange that you and the vendor both feel a replacement kit is making it right.

bmeyer46 said:

did you not read the very first post I made or did you just skip right to the video?

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Yes I did read the first post. A couple of times. You say it was a mediocre kit. Why was it mediocre?

iaefebs said:

Yes I did read the first post. A couple of times. You say it was a mediocre kit. Why was it mediocre?

Click to expand...

bmeyer46 said:

I was just disappointed with all the other favorable reviews that it got, I thought " wow, I'm gonna try this since everyone said how good it was." Maybe everyone DIDN'T say that...but how would we know if they were pulled just like mine.
I think perhaps it would have been good if it had some DME with it, but the body was thin, and the taste rather one dimensional, which is exactly what I said in my review.

Click to expand...

Like this

Ahh, I'll have to admit that I read the entire thread 3 or 4 times, Trying to figure out the complaint. I missed that comment every single time. So many times people will post a negative review about a product and you have no clue about their process. The OP seems to have a good process and I was looking for a more detailed feedback of what might have gone wrong. My comment about the useless thread was because I had spent so much time reading it. But as for the original thread as to why negative posts are deleted, I wonder if they also delete positive feedback also.? How many reviews do they get and if after a time how many posts are so redundant that they just post the ones that capture the spirit of the good and bad.