The Top-Rated Amazon Answer: A Case Study in Confusion

For some reason, this particular answer has been rated as the top response on Amazon. It's difficult to understand why, but we'll take a closer look at what might be causing the confusion.

Here, we have an example of why you probably shouldn't be asking questions on Amazon answers if you're looking for expertise in a specific area. If I ask about an AIO (All-In-One) and request expert installation, will they use the AIO that's mounted for an AMD CPU or will they always go for the stock cooler and then...

Dino responds with: "What is AIO?" Why respond if you don't know what it is? Like what just ditto why why why so let's see what kind of questions people have. An AIO on Amazon because I feel like you, as that previous answer suggested, not everybody knows what an AIO is.

So this person asks: "Can you put coolant instead of water in this?" And then Jazz goes into a lot of detail about how water actually cools better than antifreeze, which is an additive used to prevent the coolant from freezing. My understanding is that the bigger issue is that bacteria and fungus could be present in any additive, but with a sealed system like this you shouldn't have any problem.

The person didn't ask about antifreeze; they just wanted to know if you could change the coolant. This is an interesting response, but it doesn't actually answer the question. David responds with: "Water is a coolant. Thank you David you really cleared it up there buddy thank you so much." Wow, that came out more Canadian maybe I'm starting to assimilate.

We've got another example of this kind of confusion. This person is using a sealed unit, overclocked to an extreme amount, and it works fine. Oh yeah, that's a weird flex there. This is a sealed unit, all-in-one, and in this person is also flexing here with their Extreme Edition Intel CPU.

At least someone gets to the answer eventually. Here's a pretty straightforward question: which cooler will fit in this case? And then Dan responds with: "It takes a special computer case with more room at the top." I'm guessing I have dual fan 240 and I can tell you this much, forget the stock fans it comes with, get the Thermaltake slim low-profile fans.

In order for the fans to not get in the way of the motherboard and memory slots exclamation mark! The dual fan radiator keeps my CPU ice-cold seriously, I have cold air coming out of the back of my computer due to the 240 millimeter dual radiator. After all of that, he says: "To answer your question you may have to go with a full tower for extra head." I would hate to see you take out your DVD slot bracket to make it fit in.

What the hell man? Like I don't even really know how to respond to a statement like that. Let's see if somebody else, yes sees that was what the person was looking for. Either yes or no, not this entire spiel that ends up with: "I would hate for you to take out your DVD slot bracket to make it fit."

In conclusion, I clearly cherry-picked some pretty ridiculous responses to some fairly ridiculous questions, but I think it illustrates my point quite effectively now. My point is that if you're the type of person who asks tech-related questions on product pages on Amazon chances are you won't really be able to tell the difference between a useful response which there is a lot of on Amazon; it's not all ridiculous.

But you won't be able to tell the difference between a useful response and something that's just a complete waste of your time. So I think if you do have tech-related questions about products either google it or ask on a forum or a related subreddit, any place where there's a community of people that know what they're talking about that'll be able to point you in the correct direction.

I think that's definitely a better bet than asking around on Amazon. Anyway, thank you very much for watching this video if you enjoyed it subscribe to the channel like the video share it with your friends follow me on whatever social media I've got it all linked in the description below and yeah until the next video bye.

WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enif you've ever bought anything on Amazon you've probably gotten one of those emails where Amazon very politely asks you to answer some questions about the product that you have for people who potentially want to buy it so what we're gonna see today is if all those questions and answers are just a festering dumpster fire or if there's actually some useful information there and maybe we'll be able to determine whether or not you should even bother asking questions on a product page on Amazon today we're gonna be focusing almost entirely on tech related products and it's gonna be mostly focused on PC gaming hardware now I think a really good place to start with this is actually with pre-built systems now here is the top sponsored product it's by CyberPower it's called the gamer extreme vr gaming VZ but the next one is actually are their expansion slots available on the motherboard if so what ones it isn't visible in the photo and cyber power actually kind of responded to this so it's good that they're that they're checking that out so they're saying thank you for reaching out there will be two slots available you know it's very useful information they even give you a phone number at the poll it's very nice of them and someone says there are no extra SATA ports on the motherboard so you won't be able to add any hard drives why would it not have SATA ports available like I'm pretty sure that that answer is incorrect yeah okay that's not a good start now here someone asks can I use two GPU very to-the-point very succinct and then CyberPower responded to this one as well and they said thank you for reaching out unfortunately the motherboard may not support dual graphics if you want to use dual graphics cards you'll need a motherboard that supports these features they're not giving you a direct answer that it specifically won't but they're saying it most likely won't and then someone else responds that yes the as Zork b 360 m motherboard that it uses supports crossfire so cyber power support and manual are that they're giving competing arguments here yeah I don't actually know it doesn't specifically say what the motherboard is so I don't know who's right someone asked does it really work which I guess is an interesting question to ask because you know I don't know if cyber power is the best reputation what what's the name of the RAM company and then tech cyber power reaches out and says well we don't know it varies from product to product so so they don't seem to know what Ram they use so here if someone says I need this PC but I want faster delivery and then mike responds with prime capitalized p or prime without a capitalized it kind of looks more like he's asking how do you spell prime as opposed to giving a suggestion I hope to get faster delivery but yeah anyway thank you Mike it's it's the thought that counts I guess so here we have a prebuilt by ibuypower so let's see if i by power is as helpful as cyber power and sky tech when it comes to responding to customers questions obviously the first one with 19 uploads is does this run fortnight and according to iBUYPOWER yes it does you should be able to run it no problem I mean you really should be able to what what system is this oh this is that terrible GT 710 system and then someone asks how many FPS will you get an in Rachel responds with my toaster oven can run fortnight which is very helpful Rachel but I think junior-junior really captures the imagination with his response which is just fortnight sucks and then yeah someone's like at all I have the same question but yeah thank you Junior thank you for giving us your opinion on on the game ok so it seems that as far as pre-built systems go you mostly get decent information if you ask questions so let's go to something like a CPU let's try the AMD 3700 X this is a CPU that I have so I feel fairly qualified to answer questions about it and see whether or not people's responses are are worth anything why is it a hundred and thirty dollars over MSRP which is a very very worthwhile question and in the first answer is capitalism they will restock in a week or so and then it'll be at MSRP so now we're actually sitting with it at below MSRP so at least capitalism is now working the way that it's supposed to I guess so everybody is just complaining about how expensive it is and then there's a surprising amount of questions of will this work on a specific motherboard so your answer here to the should you use it on a prime a 320m motherboard the correct answer to that one is probably no it could work it would work but it's it's not recommended now here is a pretty good example of what kind of question you shouldn't be asking on on the Amazon product page and there's a perfect response to it as well someone says how is this compared to its predecessor the rise in 720 700 X what are the differences in terms of performance and whatever and then TT responds with mate just write and search 3,700 X versus 2700 X on google or youtube and watch videos perfect response because like what do you want do you want somebody to give you all of the benchmarks on the Amazon product page like that's a really weird question to ask so it's starting to get a bit more interesting as you get further down the comment section because here someone asks which CPU is better this or an i-5 7600 which is a bit of a weird kind of it's it's a bit of a weird comparison but anyway Alan tries his best to reply he says better depends upon the comparison criteria which okay yeah that's fair enough this link sums up some benchmarks rather nicely and then he compares the 3700 X to a different CPU which you know it's it's an interesting it's an interesting move here although I've used Intel processors for 20 years of my build I've moved over to AMD because it was not clear if Intel has fixed their specter and melton vulnerabilities adequately most likely whichever CPUs you choose wear it whichever CPU you choose you are unlikely to know to some major difference ok Alan I don't really know where you came up with that information because these 9600 K and the 7600 are very different CPUs and you can't really say that he's not gonna experience a difference but let's see if somebody corrects Alan further down keith says this by a large margin the cpu outperforms an i-9 and some benchmarks and then the 3700 x by farm so for some reason this is the top rated one I don't quite understand why but anyway here we have ok here we have a very good example of why you probably shouldn't be asking questions on Amazon answers if I have an a IO and ask for an expert installation will they use the a IO that is that is mounted for an AMD CPU CPU or will they always go for the stock cooler and then Dino responds with what is in a IO why respond why respond if you don't know what it is like what just ditto why why why so let's see what kind of questions people have a iOS on Amazon because I feel like you know as that previous answer suggested not everybody knows what an AI Oh is so this person asks can you put coolant instead of water in this and then jazz goes into a lot of detail about water actually cools better than antifreeze this is why you still have to mix antifreeze with water antifreeze is an additive that prevents the coolant from freezing in the case of CPU application my understanding is the bigger issue is that bacteria and fungus any additive would prevent contamination but with a sealed system like this you shouldn't have any problem with that why did he go on a long spiel about antifreeze the person didn't ask about antifreeze they just wanted to know if you could change the coolant that's interesting but at least by the end of it they still didn't answer the question actually they didn't even answer the question and then David responds with water is a coolant thank you David you really cleared it up there buddy thank you so much wow that came out more Canadian maybe I'm starting to assimilate anyway we've got no this is a sealed unit I'm using this with the system overclocked to this amount and it works fine oh yeah that's a weird flex there this is a sealed unit all in one and in this person is also flexing here with their Extreme Edition Intel CPU and then yeah okay so at least somebody does get to the answer so here is a pretty straightforward question which in my opinion does make sense to ask on a product page right you're asking will this specific cooler fit in this case and then Dan responds with it takes a special computer case with more room at the top I'm guessing I have dual fan 240 and I can tell you this much forget the stock fans it comes with and get the Thermaltake slim low-profile fans in order for the fans to not get in the way of the motherboard and memory slots exclamation mark the dual fan radiator keeps my CPU ice-cold seriously I have cold air coming out of the back of my computer due to the 240 millimeter dual radiator after all of that he says to answer your question you may have to go with a full tower for extra head I would hate to see you take out your DVD slot bracket to make Dan what the hell man like I don't even really know how to respond to us to a statement like that let's see if somebody else yes see that was what the person was looking for either yes or no not this entire spiel that ends up with I would hate for you to take out your DVD slot bracket to make it fit in conclusion I clearly cherry picked some pretty ridiculous responses to some fairly ridiculous questions but I think it illustrates my point quite effectively now my point is that if you're the type of person who asks tech related questions on product pages on Amazon chances are you won't really be able to tell the difference between a useful response which there is a lot of on Amazon it's not all ridiculous but you won't be able to tell the difference between a useful response and something that's just a complete waste of your time so I think if you do have tech related questions about products either google it or ask on a forum or a related subreddit any place where there's a community of people that know what they're talking about that'll be able to point you in the correct direction I think that's definitely a better bet than asking around on Amazon anyway thank you very much for watching this video if you enjoyed it subscribe to the channel like the video share it with your friends follow me on whatever social media I've got it all linked in the description below and yeah until the next video byeif you've ever bought anything on Amazon you've probably gotten one of those emails where Amazon very politely asks you to answer some questions about the product that you have for people who potentially want to buy it so what we're gonna see today is if all those questions and answers are just a festering dumpster fire or if there's actually some useful information there and maybe we'll be able to determine whether or not you should even bother asking questions on a product page on Amazon today we're gonna be focusing almost entirely on tech related products and it's gonna be mostly focused on PC gaming hardware now I think a really good place to start with this is actually with pre-built systems now here is the top sponsored product it's by CyberPower it's called the gamer extreme vr gaming VZ but the next one is actually are their expansion slots available on the motherboard if so what ones it isn't visible in the photo and cyber power actually kind of responded to this so it's good that they're that they're checking that out so they're saying thank you for reaching out there will be two slots available you know it's very useful information they even give you a phone number at the poll it's very nice of them and someone says there are no extra SATA ports on the motherboard so you won't be able to add any hard drives why would it not have SATA ports available like I'm pretty sure that that answer is incorrect yeah okay that's not a good start now here someone asks can I use two GPU very to-the-point very succinct and then CyberPower responded to this one as well and they said thank you for reaching out unfortunately the motherboard may not support dual graphics if you want to use dual graphics cards you'll need a motherboard that supports these features they're not giving you a direct answer that it specifically won't but they're saying it most likely won't and then someone else responds that yes the as Zork b 360 m motherboard that it uses supports crossfire so cyber power support and manual are that they're giving competing arguments here yeah I don't actually know it doesn't specifically say what the motherboard is so I don't know who's right someone asked does it really work which I guess is an interesting question to ask because you know I don't know if cyber power is the best reputation what what's the name of the RAM company and then tech cyber power reaches out and says well we don't know it varies from product to product so so they don't seem to know what Ram they use so here if someone says I need this PC but I want faster delivery and then mike responds with prime capitalized p or prime without a capitalized it kind of looks more like he's asking how do you spell prime as opposed to giving a suggestion I hope to get faster delivery but yeah anyway thank you Mike it's it's the thought that counts I guess so here we have a prebuilt by ibuypower so let's see if i by power is as helpful as cyber power and sky tech when it comes to responding to customers questions obviously the first one with 19 uploads is does this run fortnight and according to iBUYPOWER yes it does you should be able to run it no problem I mean you really should be able to what what system is this oh this is that terrible GT 710 system and then someone asks how many FPS will you get an in Rachel responds with my toaster oven can run fortnight which is very helpful Rachel but I think junior-junior really captures the imagination with his response which is just fortnight sucks and then yeah someone's like at all I have the same question but yeah thank you Junior thank you for giving us your opinion on on the game ok so it seems that as far as pre-built systems go you mostly get decent information if you ask questions so let's go to something like a CPU let's try the AMD 3700 X this is a CPU that I have so I feel fairly qualified to answer questions about it and see whether or not people's responses are are worth anything why is it a hundred and thirty dollars over MSRP which is a very very worthwhile question and in the first answer is capitalism they will restock in a week or so and then it'll be at MSRP so now we're actually sitting with it at below MSRP so at least capitalism is now working the way that it's supposed to I guess so everybody is just complaining about how expensive it is and then there's a surprising amount of questions of will this work on a specific motherboard so your answer here to the should you use it on a prime a 320m motherboard the correct answer to that one is probably no it could work it would work but it's it's not recommended now here is a pretty good example of what kind of question you shouldn't be asking on on the Amazon product page and there's a perfect response to it as well someone says how is this compared to its predecessor the rise in 720 700 X what are the differences in terms of performance and whatever and then TT responds with mate just write and search 3,700 X versus 2700 X on google or youtube and watch videos perfect response because like what do you want do you want somebody to give you all of the benchmarks on the Amazon product page like that's a really weird question to ask so it's starting to get a bit more interesting as you get further down the comment section because here someone asks which CPU is better this or an i-5 7600 which is a bit of a weird kind of it's it's a bit of a weird comparison but anyway Alan tries his best to reply he says better depends upon the comparison criteria which okay yeah that's fair enough this link sums up some benchmarks rather nicely and then he compares the 3700 X to a different CPU which you know it's it's an interesting it's an interesting move here although I've used Intel processors for 20 years of my build I've moved over to AMD because it was not clear if Intel has fixed their specter and melton vulnerabilities adequately most likely whichever CPUs you choose wear it whichever CPU you choose you are unlikely to know to some major difference ok Alan I don't really know where you came up with that information because these 9600 K and the 7600 are very different CPUs and you can't really say that he's not gonna experience a difference but let's see if somebody corrects Alan further down keith says this by a large margin the cpu outperforms an i-9 and some benchmarks and then the 3700 x by farm so for some reason this is the top rated one I don't quite understand why but anyway here we have ok here we have a very good example of why you probably shouldn't be asking questions on Amazon answers if I have an a IO and ask for an expert installation will they use the a IO that is that is mounted for an AMD CPU CPU or will they always go for the stock cooler and then Dino responds with what is in a IO why respond why respond if you don't know what it is like what just ditto why why why so let's see what kind of questions people have a iOS on Amazon because I feel like you know as that previous answer suggested not everybody knows what an AI Oh is so this person asks can you put coolant instead of water in this and then jazz goes into a lot of detail about water actually cools better than antifreeze this is why you still have to mix antifreeze with water antifreeze is an additive that prevents the coolant from freezing in the case of CPU application my understanding is the bigger issue is that bacteria and fungus any additive would prevent contamination but with a sealed system like this you shouldn't have any problem with that why did he go on a long spiel about antifreeze the person didn't ask about antifreeze they just wanted to know if you could change the coolant that's interesting but at least by the end of it they still didn't answer the question actually they didn't even answer the question and then David responds with water is a coolant thank you David you really cleared it up there buddy thank you so much wow that came out more Canadian maybe I'm starting to assimilate anyway we've got no this is a sealed unit I'm using this with the system overclocked to this amount and it works fine oh yeah that's a weird flex there this is a sealed unit all in one and in this person is also flexing here with their Extreme Edition Intel CPU and then yeah okay so at least somebody does get to the answer so here is a pretty straightforward question which in my opinion does make sense to ask on a product page right you're asking will this specific cooler fit in this case and then Dan responds with it takes a special computer case with more room at the top I'm guessing I have dual fan 240 and I can tell you this much forget the stock fans it comes with and get the Thermaltake slim low-profile fans in order for the fans to not get in the way of the motherboard and memory slots exclamation mark the dual fan radiator keeps my CPU ice-cold seriously I have cold air coming out of the back of my computer due to the 240 millimeter dual radiator after all of that he says to answer your question you may have to go with a full tower for extra head I would hate to see you take out your DVD slot bracket to make Dan what the hell man like I don't even really know how to respond to us to a statement like that let's see if somebody else yes see that was what the person was looking for either yes or no not this entire spiel that ends up with I would hate for you to take out your DVD slot bracket to make it fit in conclusion I clearly cherry picked some pretty ridiculous responses to some fairly ridiculous questions but I think it illustrates my point quite effectively now my point is that if you're the type of person who asks tech related questions on product pages on Amazon chances are you won't really be able to tell the difference between a useful response which there is a lot of on Amazon it's not all ridiculous but you won't be able to tell the difference between a useful response and something that's just a complete waste of your time so I think if you do have tech related questions about products either google it or ask on a forum or a related subreddit any place where there's a community of people that know what they're talking about that'll be able to point you in the correct direction I think that's definitely a better bet than asking around on Amazon anyway thank you very much for watching this video if you enjoyed it subscribe to the channel like the video share it with your friends follow me on whatever social media I've got it all linked in the description below and yeah until the next video bye