Home Depot Website Glitch Provides Two Ratings For Some Products

(ralph)

While researching products on a retailer’s website, other customers’ reviews and ratings of those items can be helpful. But a glitch in Home Depot’s rating presentation system has caused a bit of confusion: the product page shows two different ratings for some products.

Consumerist reader Victor tells us that while perusing garbage disposals on the Home Depot website, he noticed that the drop-down bar that reminds you what you’re looking at and includes the product’s rating doesn’t match the product’s “star” designation on the “your current product” frame near the bottom of the page.

While the listing for the Insinkerator Select Plus garbage disposal that Victor was viewing has 429 reviews in both views, it has just shy of five stars on the main webpage, but the drop-down bar gives the product just 4 stars.

So we did a little digging to see what the discrepancy was all about and it turns out that Victor was on to something.

A look at several products that include a portion of a star found that the rating loses that fraction of a star in the drop-down bar. Products with full stars are not affected.

We reached out to Home Depot about the issue and a spokesperson says the company is aware of the problem.

“So this is something that we had seen over the last few weeks,” Stephen Holmes, spokesperson for the company says. “We’re not sure why it’s happening yet, but the system is rounding down in spots. We’re working on it and should have it fixed soon.”

Holmes says that while the issue might be confusing, the good news is that it isn’t inflating rates, which would be misleading for customers.

by Ashlee Kieler via Consumerist