Hibiki-an Dishonest Reviews
Sorry but that’s just unethical. I don’t care if it’s “good for business”, by hand picking reviews they are misrepresenting their product and misleading customers. What’s the point of reviews if constructive criticism isn’t allowed? It seems this vendor is less interested in feedback than manipulating reviews to use as a marketing tool.
Heck even Teavana’s website publishes posts all customers reviews.
I’m sorry, I thought I was having a reasoned debate.
Let’s agree to disagree.
You can keep expecting marketing to tell you the good bad and ugly of the products you’re going to buy (although it’s naive to assume even your hallowed “North American” tea companies do that).
And I’ll keep simply expecting people are only telling me the good qualities of their products and take what they say with a grain of salt.
ps: please stop asserting moral authority based on being from “North America” you’re just reinforcing the stereotype of Americans being arrogant, naive and racist.
@benthejack When he says North American he means Canadian, please don’t assume this means anything about Americans. The word American usually has the connotation of someone from the USA.
The manager of a five-star Radisson Hotel in India once told me customers really only post negative reviews—when they’re happy, they usually don’t bother. I had some issues at their property and posted a balanced review, but it may have hurt their business. At the same time, giving them feedback helps them to improve, and they took that feedback IN PERSON. Two managers came to talk to me about the issues, and they were extremely professional. I was impressed at how well it was handled.
For a small business, negative reviews can have a huge impact. Rest assured they read your review and took it to heart. Whether or not they choose to do anything with that information is up to them, but the internet will speak (and has spoken). Based on the reviews of their teas here, I probably wouldn’t buy any tea from them.
If you feel that’s dishonest, I understand, and you definitely have a point. It’s also entirely their decision to censor you on their private site if they see fit and to deal with the repercussions of their decision.
Jay, I can understand your point of view. People write nasty things about businesses all the time on Yelp, that’s just the nature of the Internet. It’s one thing to remove defamatory reviews, but there’s no justification for censoring negative feedback altogether. That to me indicates a company is insecure and lacks confidence in their product.
I disagree with your assertion that people only post reviews when they’re unhappy. If that were true, Amazon would be full of 1 and 2 star reviews. The majority of reviews on most sites, including tea shops, are in fact left by happy customers.
Ask yourself this. How would you feel if you dropped a pretty penny on some horrid puerh rated 5-stars only to later learn that the tea shop had artificially inflated its rating by suppressing dozens of critical reviews left by other customers? Wouldn’t you feel cheated?
Yes, your points are totally valid. I’d be pissed if I bought crap pu erh based on selective review publishing. And yes, the majority of reviews are positive. I do think consumers are more likely to post reviews when they’re pissed off, though
it’s interesting hearing this from people on both sides of the sale.
I guess there is a balance to be met between putting on your best sales pitch, and being upfront about your product and what people think about it.
LuckyMe You are absolutely right. I had already written one positive review.
I even spent extra money, that I didn’t have to, just so that I could try the whole range of matcha. I intended to leave positive reviews of the ones that I liked. And balanced reviews of the ones that I did not like.
Just because someone says: “People only do this” does not make it true.
…really?
Although I don’t agree with Quackers, that really doesn’t contribute to the discussion and is just inflammatory.
Hibiki-an is doing this to itself.
I’m sure that lying to people is one of the central tenets of the tea ceremony.
Bad business decisions can affect a product too.
Frankly, I would rather not have gotten mixed up in this mess in the first place. If I had been lucky enough to choose another tea provider…
This practice of his has been going on for at least 6 years now. He has been using other people’s reviews to boost his website, while deleting reviews that have any criticism in them. Do you think the people who wrote those reviews want their own thoughts misused in that way? “I said it was good, but don’t use my words to lie”
I leave this Hamlet quote, by Shakespeare:
So, oft it chances in particular men,
That for some vicious mole of nature in them,
As, in their birth—wherein they are not guilty,
Since nature cannot choose his origin—
By the o’ergrowth of some complexion,
Oft breaking down the pales and forts of reason,
Or by some habit that too much o’er-leavens
The form of plausive manners, that these men,
Carrying, I say, the stamp of one defect,
Being nature’s livery, or fortune’s star,—
Their virtues else—be they as pure as grace,
As infinite as man may undergo—
Shall in the general censure take corruption
From that particular fault: the dram of evil
Doth all the noble substance of a doubt
To his own scandal.
Lol sirturtle the meme gave me a chuckle. This whole discussion gave me a chuckle.
MrQuackers I’m personally not a fan of how you present your arguments, but you have successfully put me off trying Hibiki-An. They were also quite rude when I was emailing them about getting some wholesale products.
Good question. My point was that no matter how good it is, if you do something purposefully wrong, the whole essence of something changes because of it. Karma.
Hopefully this topic will quiet down soon.
No, just that it corrupts the whole, whether it is or is not the persons own fault.
Shakespeare is excusing those who are born with afflictions that are not their own fault, but he is also referrring to those which are the result of their own doing.
Alan: I have to say North American to include both the USA and Canada. (If I say either one alone, it’s incomplete)
Right, I should have said could be innate. lol
Either way, the reason I never bought tea from Hibiki-An is I felt the descriptions were too vague compared to O-Cha’s. I like details when buying tea online. Good to know I lucked out by not taking a chance on them.
When conversations go back and forth like this between two people, it’s meant to be done privately. Just saying, there’s a room at the top right you can both join because as far as we are all concerned: If a person doesn’t want to buy from a store for any reason, so be it.
You can invite me into the room at well if you’d like, sometimes I like to take off my shirt and stare someone in the eyes so they realize the conversation isn’t going anywhere.
I’m sorry to hear about the review situation. In terms of their tea, can anyone give me their honest review on their products? I am looking to purchase some samples to resell their tea but to sample all the organic teas its over $100, so before doing so I would love to hear your opinions.
I bought a nice kyusu from there several years ago, but I don’t have any experience with their tea. If it’s organic tea you’re interested in, try Yuuki-Cha instead. A much wider selection than HIbiki-an and most of their teas I’ve tried were very good. But the caveat is their teas typically come in 100g packets, so not ideal for sampling.
Check out Yunomi if you want to sample a bunch of different teas. You can usually find 10g and 20g sample sizes of all their products.
It’s… OK. I’m not a huge fan of Japanese tea so take my opinion with salt. I’ve had their mid range gyokuro, it was average. the houjicha is quite nice though, it has subtle menthol notes and more going on than the average houjicha. The kukicha I can’t grade as I’ve only had theirs so can’t compare, it isn’t really my thing but has some but not much subtlety. My general opinion was that I probably wouldn’t buy from them again as I was underwhelmed for the price of the tea.
Just wanted to point out there is a particular tea vendor who is big on transparency in the tea industry and even THEY don’t have reviews on their site. So take that with a grain of salt ;)
Hibiki-an a few years ago had great teas. But my last two orders resulted in mediocre teas. My hunch is that they have gotten too big, and that to meet demand they have lowered their standards (but kept their high prices). Btw, I also was prevented by the proprietor from posting a review that was less than five stars.
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