Pearls Before Swine by Stephan Pastis for July 24, 2022

I once gave 1 star to company that didn’t deliver my merchandise in a timely manner. I was soon contacted by them, telling me how I hurt their business. Same company didn’t bother to respond to my previous messages asking them when the item would be delivered.

I don’t rely on Yelp; half their reviews say something is great, and the other half say the same thing stinks. Yelp is for idiots.

Down with Bob. And ratings!

I once received a coupon in the mail for a free bicycle cleaning and oiling and checkup. I took my old dusty bike in and the employee refused to touch it unless I paid to have the handlebars “straightened” for $80. I refused and left and rote this up on Yelp and complained to the BBB. Mine was the very first review. The owner pleaded with me to delete or modify the review, offering to do anything I wanted to the bike for free, but by that time I’d had it cleaned and oiled by another shop (for $). They didn’t see anything wrong with the handlebars. The first shop went out of business within a couple of months. The BBB upheld my complaint. It was pure bait and switch.

listen to yourself, not Bob!

I sense a movie in the making, What about Bob’s Yelp?

Who needs professional reviews when we have Bobs.

What Bob doesn’t realize is that almost no one reads the 1-Star reviews because they are from pathetic idiots like him. My own exception is a genuine review with decent reasons for the bad review. “The Blender Exploded” with pictures is one I’d read.

How does Bob rate (by those he has reviewed and rated)?

I almost always only give nice 4 or 5 star reviews via Google Maps to help businesses that I have good experiences with. The worst grade I have ever given was a 3, and the food in that restaurant genuinely wasn’t good.

Okay now mock the paid reviewers and sock puppets too who leaves 5 star reviews for everything trashy.

Bob, the terror of uber drivers

I only pay attention to the reasons people give for their ratings. Sometimes they are saying things that don’t really matter. Sometimes it’s just a human error that some people will not forgive.

Bob, like so many today, are on the “Whine Train”!

What I find interesting is when people give a 1 star review, then praise something like it’s better than sliced bread

Shortly after moving to a new town couple of years ago, we started our search for a new dentist. As luck would have it, we located one just a half mile away. For reasons already mentioned by many alert citizens above, we rarely put stock in Yelp reviews, but on this occasion I decided to read the comments on this dentist. There were only a few, but one was stunningly glowing. Based on this one review, this person must be the dentists’ dentist, the GOAT of modern dentistry. Towards the bottom of the review, and I am not making this up, read the following: “I know I’m biased because he [the dentist] is my son, but he really is a great dentist.” As we say in the South, “there you go.”

I sometimes read reviews of places I like. One bad review of a dollar store said the place was not neat and tidy. I want stuff cheap, I’m not gonna live there!! One place I didn’t like was a pizza joint that took forever to make a pizza and it tasted like it was a store bought frozen one! Lasted 3 months.

I’ve given bad reviews, but only for extreme incompetence.

people today have opinions on everything. in the old days, a person would have like 5 opinions, and one of them was red is the best color. if a person had 8 opinions you’d think “that person is very opinionated”. now everyone has an opinion on everything

Without others’ reviews, I would’ve bought poor products, eaten at bad restaurants, purchased horrible books, stayed in substandard hotels, and generally wasted a lot of money. I have no problem with Yelp, Google reviews, Trip Advisor, etc. I’m pretty canny in that I can discern between whining and legit complaints.

However, I DO have a problem with dumb reviews. Case in point: someone’s giving an author a 1-star book review on Amazon because the package was late/damaged. As a reader, I ignore those (and all other stupid reviews). As a writer, I want to slap such a reviewer into next week.

Customers are the worst.

Sign Bob up for a spinoff strip!

People who have fine taste, manual dexterity, and creativity become artists. People who think they possess these characteristics — but don’t — become critics.

And here we thought the Dark Ages were a bad time period.

too bad no-one cares for your opinion Bob.

Bob however did give the Enzyte shop 5 stars…

If Rat says it’s harsh, it is!

What about BOB again?

Now Rat knows how Stephan feels when Rat criticizes Stephan’s strips.

And Bob’s your uncle.

There’s a new extortion scam going around now though, there was an article in the NYPost about scammers leaving horrible reviews for restaurants especially, on Google and Yelp and then contacting the company and telling them, for a thousand dollars or so, they’ll remove the review because after all, a thousand will feed their family in the third world country they live in for a couple months at least. How stupid is that? If I was the restaurant, I’d post that scam email under their review and move on but apparently, there are restaurants that have paid only to find out, the review stands. smh… One more reason I don’t read reviews like that.

Bob need a good smack upside the head with Rat’s Louisville Slugger…and, by the way, WHO GIVES A FLYING FARK WHAT SOMEONE ELSE THINKS OF A RESTAURANT, OR A BOOK, OR A MOVIE, OR WHATEVER?

Bob thinks he is a big man.Bob has no friends.Bob has been banned from several establishments. Bob can’t get a date.Bob thinks he is the expert on perfection. Everyone hates Bob.Don’t be a Bob.

This message brought to you by Rob, because i refuse to go by Bob.

I give everyone 5 stars no matter what to compensate for The Bob Effect

Bob is everywhere.

Rat knows how to deal with Bob’s harshness. He has a handy baseball bat. That strip would not be dumb and we’d cheer Rat on.

Everyone’s A Critic!!

Reading Yelp reviews takes discernment, but I find them helpful.

So now we all have UNLIMITED POWAAAAAAAAAA!

I give that last panel a 4.

My name IS Bob, and I award this strip >0 stars

Ooh, karma just bit you in the butt, Rat!

I’m afraid of Bob, very afraid.

Answer to all these problems is simple. Eliminate Bob…..

I find reviews very helpful. I’ve been to places with negative reviews and found trends seem to be correct, and alway have a satisfactory experience when I use a place of business with good reviews. I do evaluate the reviews because some seem extremely petty and I disregard those.

Several years ago we were on vacation and our exhaust had rusted through somewhere making our van sound horrible! We prayed to find a reputable repair shop to help us. My husband made a few calls and only one place could get us in. They fixed the problem with minimal cost and said they understood being on vacation with the family and needing car repairs. Super nice family owned business! Wish I could remember their name. Not all places are bad.

“Opinions are like…”

I read reviews on Amazon, then try to shop local. A camera I wanted had one review on Amazon, one star. Because the UPS guy left it on the doorstep in the rain. At my last job we got bonuses based on reviews. We just missed the bonus threshold because someone left a review of our location, angry that a location closest to the reviewer was closed. Another mechanic and I went to see the president in his office, we closed the door and argued for a while until he admitted he was wrong. I told him I didn’t even want the bonus, it was like $50, I just didn’t want to be graded poorly because of random nonsense.

On Amazon, I’m always suspicious of a product that has nothing but four and five-star reviews. I always feel that many of them may be fake. I want to hear about the good and the bad, and then make up my mind whether or not to go ahead and buy something.

For every Bob, there is an Alice who rates everything at 5 stars.

My favorite Yelp review item is, “They failed to greet me at the door.”

In the last reshown Get Fuzzy strips, Bucky Katt demands to be called Steve. Knowing his ego and temperament, I bet that if he reads today’s Pearls Before Swine, heʼll want to be known as Bob Katt!

There is a downside to the empowered consumer.

This reminds me of some guy named Bob, who had a TV service business decades ago. Ubiquitous newspaper ads, offering something like a tuneup service for portable sets brought into the shop. Somehow, there was always some additional service required. Proving that advertisements don’t halt investigative reporting, the newspaper in which he advertised the most decided to run a sting, and learned that Bob would inflict damage on those sets where the owner decided against additional service work. Bob got some free ink out of it, since the newspaper put their investigation report on the front page.

So many businesses hound you about providing a review after a purchase or contact. I usually only leave a review if the service is exceptionally or consistently good or if there was a significant, preventable problem (not counting things like slow service when the business is swamped)

Recently, I purchased a mattress from an online business. After four requests for a review, I finally capitulated, and gave a review- three out of five stars. Neither the mattress nor the service was outstanding in any way. The company was evidently disappointed, and my review cannot be found on their website.

I leave reviews a lot, mostly on Google. Almost all my reviews are 5-star, because I live a positive life and enjoy experiencing it in others. I leave the very-rare 1-star if the experience was truly abysmal. But I don’t habitually review every routine experience where feedback accomplishes little or nothing, hence my lack of middling ratings. Mostly praise with the occasional warning.

I’m surprised that rat didn’t make bob see stars.

I agree that not all rave reviews are fake. But I’m especially careful when I read rave reviews that come out when a product is very new. Last year, Amazon shut down 3,000 of its sellers who were all owned by a large group of Chinese companies that paid for thousands of fake rave reviews. About a week ago, there was an article in the Chicago Tribune about Amazon trying to get Facebook pages shut down that offer to sell Amazon reviews (I can’t find the Trib reference, but I did find this: https://techcrunch.com/2022/07/18/amazon-lawsuit-fake-reviews-facebook/). It says that Amazon has over the last several years found 10,000 Facebook groups offering to sell reviews.

I think the main thing is to look for specifics. Why exactly did the person like or dislike the product. Not just “it’s great” or “it’s garbage.”

Also, on Amazon, you can click on a reviewer’s name and see other reviews they’ve written. That will give you a good idea of where they are coming from.

Turns out Crazy Amy may not have been so crazy complaining about the Yelpers.

A lot of reviewers are little tin Gods. About the only reviews of any kind I listen to are the public’s reviews of movies on Rotten Tomatoes. 9 times out of 10 you’ll have a movie that the critics hated, but the viewers loved. And when I see the movie, I usually totally agree with the public. And that works in reverse also. Restaurants I tend to believe in word of mouth, not some anonymous poster.

The owner of the Botto Bistro in the San Francisco Bay area decided the YELP was a bunch of Bullsh!t and decided to try to become the worst rated restaurant on the site. He started giving at 25% discount if you left a one-star review. The restaurant has over 1,000 one-star reviews. He gained so much publicity over this that he had to hire 5 additional staffers just to keep up with the increased business.

Please do not cancel Pearl and Swine, I need its lackluster humor.

I saw a NY state “inspection” in the early 90s. the mechanic scanned the vin into the machine and hit the “yes” button a set number of times. the “no” button a few times, followed by more yeses. He had a car in the shop that provided a good exhaust to pass the emissions test. He never lifted the hood on the “inspected” car. It was a joke even when I was a kid. The local mechanic that normally worked on your car at the filling station just slapped a sticker on. And if you had a buddy who worked at a station, you just give him the info and he gave you a sticker!

Let’s see how Bob will be reviewed by Stephan when Bob creates a strip about him.

Umfortunately most rev iews are jokes at best. And the ones I “really” love are the folks who give a product a bad rating based solely on on delivery. “I really loved this product, but it took two weeks to get delivered. Unacceptable, 1 star.” IT’S A PRODUCT REVIEW FOLKS, NOT A SHIPPING REVIEW!!! If you liked the product, rate it based on itself, not the delivery.

The tyranny of Yelp. I don’t bother with it; reviews are purely subjective and one person can rave about the same place the next person tears apart. Who to believe? Go and make up your own mind.

But accurate.

And yet Bob hasn’t figured out that the staff in all of those places spit in his food.

Must be an acronym for “Big Obnoxious Buyer.”

I never read reviews online so I miss all these “tantrums.”

I’m rating Bob by ignoring him.

Bob’s a bad representation of my name. Zero stars Bo0b.

Have you met Bob’s wife, Karen?

That’s the brilliant thing with social media and reviews. We gave people a chance to give their opinion. And then we tera out that most people are stupid, have no taste and are mean when they get a little chance to show some power. We bound ourselves to the decision of the masses, forgetting that all great evolutions in arts, or basically every domain, was often rejected at first by the masses. Music, painting, cinema, cuisine, litterature, egineering, science… History is filled with geniuses who, at first, were rejected by the public but eventually changed the world. Now, we have put ourselves in a situation where the public can have enough power to have an influence on creation and those who finance it. If Social media and yelp reviews existed centuries ago, we would still believe that the sun revolves around a flat earth, we wouldn’t have polyphonic music, painting would be figurative only… Fill up the rest.

It seems The Age of Bob was written by Rat without the prior approval or participation of Bob himself.

Besides, Bob is a discerning critic….

It appears poor ‘Bob’ is the male equivalent of today’s ‘Karen’….

Oh we all need to review Bob. Do you have a friend who is a Bob? Tell them he is a bad person and you give him one star and can’t be friends with him anymore.

Bob sounds like yo mama

Meanwhile I get surveys all the time that I don’t want to fill out