Does one bad customer review kill a sale?

Nope, not in my experience at least - as long as the product has a good overall reputation and seems to be a good seller I'd say go for it! Can't worry too much about little stuff like that or you'll never get anything done!

If you got quite a few negative ones you are in trouble for sure. People look at them before buying.

I buy lots of stuff from Amazon. It's normal to see a couple bad reviews -- even for a quality product. When I see a negative review for something, I always read it to see why the person ranked it the way they did. I've noticed that sometimes people will give a product a low rank -- even if it works as claimed -- just because they didn't like it like they thought they would. As long as the number of positive reviews out way the negative ones, I go for it.

Joey

I think one doesnt hurt but if its more than one then yea you might have an issue on your hands

We need to see the whole of the reviews.
The use of individual are differences.

One negative review shouldn't stop you from promoting a product. I think most people are aware that some negative reviews are by cranky people that will complain about anything. If there were many negative reviews, I would pass.

Good luck pepper81

No, it won't. You get cynical people like me specifically looking for bad reviews. Every product or service has its limitations. If I can't find a single bad review, particularly of an IM product, then I'm very suspicious that all of the reviews are affiliates only. A bad review can tell you lots about a product, particularly if the negatives are limited, and particularly if the prospect knows of the limitations before seeing the review.

For example, I recommend a hosting company but they're quite expensive, and that's a drawback. I always mention the price issue to anyone who asks me about hosting, but usually I tell them that I have 40+ sites hosted there despite that - because performance and support are awesome. So the negative can be positive, and if they go searching for reviews and find negative reviews that say "great service but too expensive", it actually helps them decide to buy.

I think the copywriting guys call it a "damaging admission".

(Aside: the hosting company don't have an affiliate program, before anyone accuses me of seeding)

The answer is yes it can. It doesn't mean it will but it most certainly can. Humans are fickle. Many people believe what they read as gospel and base their decisions on this.

Thankfully common sense prevails most of the time but for people to say hard and fast that it would never cause a lost sale would be misleading. Ask any company whose had a negative comment made about them that very question, I'd put my mortgage on it that most would agree with my sentiment.

Most probably one (and maybe two) bad reviews won't have any effect BUT if you got more than two, you might be getting in trouble
Most people when they view reviews, start from a premise in their mind (positive or negative) and most of the times, whatever they read on the reviews, won't change that premise. That means if someone was going to buy, they will do it anyways and if someone was not going to buy or they are too doubtful, they're not going to change that.
So <=2 would be good to me.

One bad review definitely can have a negative effect, as people often times tend to think that the negative reviews are "truthful" while the positive ones are "fake" or just "hype."

And if you have enough customers, you will get negative reviews. It's just a fact that you can't please everyone. And often times the horror stories that you read online are over-dramatized by the reviewer. One time I had a lady screaming that we had horrible support because she e-mailed three times without a reply. The truth was that she e-mailed us at 1 am, 2 am, and 7 am -- we replied around 9:30 am that same day and she was already complaining about us by 7:30 am for our non responsive support, and her issue was a really easy fix that she could have done just by watching or reading the instructions.

I think it comes down to the fact that you need to try to respond to the negative reviews if you can to explain your side or resolve it, while making sure that you have plenty of happy customers that will post good reviews about you so reasonable people don't think everyone thinks that of you.

But sooner or later you'll have to deal with this issue. I've even seen a number of competitors trying to do fake bad reviews of others as a way to get more traffic to their own product -- it can be cut throat out there.

- Brian

I always read reviews before buying. One or two bad ones is not gonna hurt, more than 5 or so raises a red flag. cheers

I often select affiliate product at amazon with bad reviews, yet I pay attention to what this review say. Quite often bad review is a review of the vendor not a product itself: didn't deliver on time, packaging, dead on arrival etc. Often products unless it is bad quality will have some negative comments but they are not one star... people will have 2-3 star comments which drive overall rating down.
I suggest if you are concern about negative review on the product pick the product which have total number of review at least in double digits. That way one negative review will not stand out as a sore thumb with products which have just total 2-3 reviews.

If it's only a single bad review and there are tons of good ones, this should not worry you. It is always accepted that all products are not perfect so there will be someone who will find in unacceptable.

What is important is that a lot of people are satisfied with it. You can also address the product complain, if the complain is about the product not the seller, or the review in your content if you are going to write one about the product.

Beside people are going to look for a bad review all the time, and I think it would be a little suspicious if they cannot find even one. They might think that all the good reviews are fakes.

cannot just count how many good review versus bad reviews, me myself always take a look each review carefully,, even it is a good reviews, sometime they didn't give an objective point of view, it looks they just like it, no matter how bad the product..

so in my opinion, don't count the numbers of reviews (bad vs good), but see each reviews as an individual review.. give a weight each objective point and summarize it

You cant know, no one cant know how much clients they lost over bad reviews.
But, what i would do is make sure these clients are taken care of, meaning: that if its possible to contact them and take care of whatever problem there was, refund them or whatever, do it.
Im not saying refund every single costumer for nothing, im sure that you can find a way to resolve such disputes. And of course everyone knows that 100% good reviews is not always possible, and when it is, often looks unbelievable .

If you have a thousand reviews it is not likely that all will be 100% positive. Many Amazon products have thousands of reviews. The main factor is that the mass is possitive. People do not expect everyone to be 100% happy with anything. Some people just like to leave bad comments about everything because they have a bad life and want everyone else to have one too.

Just make sure must or almost all are positive.

As in this world nothing is 100% satisfied. So if you get approx 70% of the positive feedback for any product then it would be considered to be the good.

Well the truth is if you are looking for a product and see the star ratings beside it, you would most likely go to the one with the most positive reviews, but then again once you get to their page you will start looking for the negative reviews and think "what few people thought was too negative about the product". Most of the time the bad reviews are about shipping problems and not about the product itself, this will outweigh the negative side of it. On the other hand the second thing most people will probably look at are products with really low rating because most people are interested in "finding faults" in products to have an actual gauge if the product is worth it. The truth is when you get to see comments that are trend for example "problem with hinges" or "cheap plastic materials" these are alarming reviews which might give a bad effect on your sales, but then again you can also turn negative feedback into positive like clarifying things that the negative review is easily fixed. If the review is about the price then that isn't quite a great impact on your sales. To sum it up people looking for negative feedbacks are going through the content and not with the number of negative feedbacks and honestly people who have this mindset are more likely to actually buy.

I do not own any ecommerce, but as a customer if I see 2-3 bad reviews over 100 then I don't really consider it as bad...
but if see 10+ bad reviews with details of what happened then surely I don't even think of visisting that store again....

There will always be negative reviews on a popular product. I would promote it anyway especially if there are more positive reviews than negative.

Seldom I see products with no negative feedback at all. Especially for products with a lot of reviews. If they are in a good relation to the positive ones I wouldn't mind.

Going to depend on how many good reviews you have to counter-act the bad review. Also whether the bad review was from a reputable person.

You could go around in circles with this issue but the fact is that rating systems are fundamentally flawed. Even with the best will in the world there is never going to be a guarantee that a competitor doesn't construct a fake review.

It would be the same as a positive one, there really is no telling if that's legitimate. You only have to look at posts on here boasting about how people can fake your facebook likes, and twitter follower accounts to demonstrate how fake the world can be.

Never go by a company review either because they are never going to be anything other than subjective. If Znet or some extremely reputable organization did the review it might be another thing but as said, you really can't tell in this wicked world of ours and the honest answer to your question is that it depends on the mindset of the reader of the reviews. If they choose to believe negativity over positivity they won't buy and vice verca.