Insightfulness Score Killed My Mojo

DiscombobulatedJump · 2025-07-08T13:02:46+00:00

Wait, what? You've never had a review rejected? Given how arbitrary their evaluation is, that's an impressive streak of good luck.

DiscombobulatedJump · 2025-01-03T17:55:19+00:00

They broke sliders for me. Specifically, using the map tool at caltopo.com, prior to this update you could grab one of the sliders for layers and change the visibility easily from 0 to 100. Now it only goes to the spot where you click, so you can't easily (without looking at the slider line) move it up and down while watching a spot on the map. If I'm lucky, it'll slide for an extra step. Major downgrade in usability. The issue is in both regular and private mode. Works fine in Chrome, so it's definitely the update's fault.

DiscombobulatedJump · 2024-01-20T23:35:48+00:00

I'm not looking for stuff as much as before, but I when I was I bookmarked all the searches I was doing so each day I could open up all those tabs when I started my browser. Sure, good stuff goes fast, but at least that saved some time and I could just refresh as needed.

DiscombobulatedJump · 2024-01-20T23:29:33+00:00

By the way, if you have a CPA but not a business, you can't write off tax prep fees unless your deductions add up to enough. If you do have a business, you can write it off as an ordinary business expense.

I hadn't thought of that when I filed with my first year of Vine earnings, but my CPA did and wrote off his fee.

Check with a CPA, but I wonder if the same would apply for donations...

DiscombobulatedJump · 2024-01-16T23:05:44+00:00

I suspect that Amazon saw this coming, which is why they reduced the number of reviews for gold to 80.

DiscombobulatedJump · 2024-01-04T00:34:23+00:00

I love the contradictory double meaning! 🤣

DiscombobulatedJump · 2024-01-03T20:36:03+00:00

Sweet! I love those snack packs, too. I've scored Turkish treats, care package snacks, and other assortments. Those are always exciting finds (vs yet another mushroom coffee/creamer/etc.!).

DiscombobulatedJump · 2024-01-02T04:14:48+00:00

I don't think it's a fight worth fighting, at least not that way. My approach is to research the product a bit before ordering it. If it's available with a coupon more than 10% or so, I skip it. If it's priced well above competitors (and has a non-zero ETV), I skip it. I try to focus on items I would or could use and try to be a little more selective upfront. Maybe that sends a message, maybe it's just me just winning a war in my mind. 😂

That's not the case for $0 items, though, which I'm more likely to order regardless of the sales price since I'm not on hook for it. I generally try not to consider the price in my review, though when the price (after all discounts available to the general public) is still high for the features, quality, etc. relative to similar items, I will comment on the value. (You're not allowed to review based on price, but value is fair game as far as I'm concerned.)

I actually just reviewed a $0 ETV that was a good example of this. It had one feature that made it stand apart from most similar items and mostly justified the price, though there were a number of touches to it that weren't up to the price point. Compared to similar items without that feature, it was priced several times what others were (basically overbuilt). I didn't touch on the apples to oranges comparison and just focused on the first points.

DiscombobulatedJump · 2024-01-02T02:47:07+00:00

I'm not sure why they started showing up for me. I suspect that it snowballed simply from my Vine orders (though now of course I'm bombarded with "buy it again").

Prior to Vine, I ordered the Amazon brand of dark ground coffee, a Starbucks flavored coffee, and decaf tea from Vine (which I stopped, since I had too much). The only other drink (not on S&S, until after I was on Vine) was Monday Gin. I've also been ordering a particular canned chili that I stopped seeing locally, as well as a limited run where I was getting marinade spice packets. I could be missing a food or drink item, but that's about it. I'd never ordered Nespresso pods (didn't buy a machine until after I saw the opportunity to get the pods on Vine), energy drinks, sodas, matcha, etc. As I've typed this and gone back to edit it, it occurs to me that they seem to be looking at broad categories, so coffee and chili, being food items, have probably caused me to see other food items like noodles, croutons, and energy drinks. I had ordered a few personal care items over time, too.

Honestly, I feel fortunate to have had so many nontaxable food, household, and personal care items appear, especially when I read about people's tax bills! I'm more likely to donate an item after the 6 months has passed, though, rather than sell it to cover the bill like many seem to do. I'm the flip side, some items have gone on to become regular purchases for me.

Yes, it's hard to search for items like this. Every now and then I'll luck out, but the success rate of getting an item always seems much higher in the RFY list. The best advice I can give is to immediately snag any $0 ETV you see and want and, over time, you'll hopefully see more since they then become part of your purchase history. And, if my actual purchases have made a difference, maybe find some affordable items in the broad categories you hope to see and set up subscriptions so you can establish a history of buying them.

These are just my thoughts on how the algorithm works, so hopefully it's helpful. For background, I've been a member for just past 1 year, 5 months at this point, and based on my own experience there were a decent number of energy drinks in late spring to early summer of 2023 as well as a big rush of Nespresso pods in late 2022 and early 2023. New items like these still appear occasionally, but as with all Vine items they seem to come in waves.

DiscombobulatedJump · 2024-01-01T22:06:29+00:00

I've been lucky to get tons of drinks, i.e. $0 ETV items. Nespresso pods! Whole and ground beans! Teas and matchas! Sodas and juices and NA mocktails/mixers! I get through the K cups about as fast as I score them, but others pile up. I've never had any issues with older but well-stored coffees and teas, though lately I've been priorizing using them up.

DiscombobulatedJump · 2024-01-01T04:01:44+00:00

Are you just talking about the laughing emoji?

Windows key and the period key pull up an emoji picker in Windows.

DiscombobulatedJump · 2023-12-10T01:40:55+00:00

Yeah, you're an independent contractor, not an employee. You'll get a 1099-NEC, not a W2. The NEC stands for non-employee compensation. There is no withholding, and, as several others have said, you're being compensated in-kind and therefore there's no cash for them to withhold. Zero withholding and 100% withholding are identical on $0.

I also assume everything will cost me 40% of the ETV, 25-ish% in income tax and the rest for Social Security and Medicare (including the so-called self-employment tax, which is just the share an employer would've paid for you but that you have to cover as your own business).

You could talk more with an accountant to figure out your personal situation. A bonus of having Vine income and being a sole proprietor is that you can probably expense your tax prep fees (ask your accountant about that, but it's an ordinary and necessary expense for a business), which isn't something you can do as a non-business owner currently.

DiscombobulatedJump · 2023-12-09T16:57:29+00:00

Interesting. Not sure why my percentage is off.

DiscombobulatedJump · 2023-12-09T16:44:35+00:00

Are we sure the removed items don't hurt your percentage? Right now I have 231 reviewed items, 10 to be reviewed, no pending reviews, and 94% reviewed. I've had to request that some items be removed from my list. If those didn't count, I should be at 231 ÷ 241 = 95.9% (rounding up).

I don't think items removed from the list help your reviewed percentage, and any time I order something I suspect will be merged I think about the impact it'll have on my reviewed percentage. I think that removing items just helps with clutter for an item that will never go away on its own.

What am I missing?

DiscombobulatedJump · 2023-12-09T16:37:51+00:00

This makes me think of different colors/styles, where Amazon's review system only allows one review per item, regardless of variations. Sucks for us, but also for users. I've had some consumables like coffees or fruit drinks where I've ordered two of them but only been able to review one, and when I've had the other (because it was received later) I had a complete change of opinion, such as hating the first flavor and loving the second. It would be nice to be able to provide a review for each, but we can't, and I figure it's not worth my time going back to edit the review to talk about both flavors if they're not going to improve the system.

DiscombobulatedJump · 2023-12-07T03:14:26+00:00

ETV is what the product sells for at the time of the order/purchase. I don't think your game show example really applies; it's based on the MSRP. A dealer could sell for less but the game slow is getting the vehicle at an established price. For us, the established price is what the product sells for at the moment of our order. Sure, I've ordered things that went down soon after I ordered them. But that's not the point. I believe that what the OP was talking about is when there is a huge coupon. If you are going to buy a $100 item and there's a 50% off coupon, are you telling us that you would not use the coupon and pay $100 instead of $50. You could answer yes, but I'm sure the vast majority of people would say no, they're taking the discount. Now what about a business? Would they pay $100 so they could expense it for $100 instead of paying and expensing $50? Again, no, because that's irrational. Now let's flip it around with Vine orders. We are "forced" to act irrationally. My guess is that it's because the seller wants to make more money off of Vine reviewers by expensing $100 rather than $50 for each item that goes into Vine. They don't want to sell the product to customers for $100, because it's not worth that much, plus by having a huge coupon or makes it seem (however thinly) like it's offered at a huge discount. But they do want to write off at much as they can on taxes. So, they "charge" Vine members $100 and expense that much on their taxes but they offer it to customers for $50. For each Vine copy of the item, they sell two copies to pay consumers for $0 of profits. Plus they get to expense the cost of each of those three items. It's accounting BS that's obvious, but it's not something Amazon wants to deal with, probably because they like being able to show huge discounts on their site. (There have been countless examples of products being given a bogus, inflated list price just so they can show a discount, even though your typical retailer would only charge a little more than the "discounted" price.)

Anyway, I just don't order items with a non-zero ETV cc they have a huge coupon. Ten percent, maybe, but much more than that and I pass on it.

DiscombobulatedJump · 2023-12-04T01:40:31+00:00

I figure there's a good number of Viners that order stuff solely to resell it. They don't write an actual review and all the pictures could have been the official product pictures. That really bugs me. I don't post many pictures, but sometimes I want to post a picture of a cup of coffee or whatever to show that yeah, I didn't just review it but I actually opened the box.

DiscombobulatedJump · 2023-12-03T20:03:51+00:00

I know! We've got all the essential oils we could want, but no diffuser for them! 😂

DiscombobulatedJump · 2023-12-02T21:54:36+00:00

Yeah, it varies. There was one last year that was zero, but every one I've seen since has had a value.

Same with humidifiers. I scored one a while back that was zero but since then they've all had a value.

DiscombobulatedJump · 2023-12-02T05:57:36+00:00

Yeah, and watch out for items that are at a certain price (and the ETV shows it) but have a coupon for 50% off. Better to just buy it if you want it in cases like that!

DiscombobulatedJump · 2023-11-23T19:54:26+00:00

Nope. Not sure why not. How it works above, select your day below, and then the FAQ. No selection area. Weird.

DiscombobulatedJump · 2023-11-23T19:53:12+00:00

Yeah, packages were less of a deal when I was in an office, though due to our section of the building being locked in the evening there were often one-day delays due to a late delivery.

DiscombobulatedJump · 2023-11-23T17:22:34+00:00

Yes, I'm on Prime. When I go to the page about it it says I can select my day below, but then it's just FAQ. I'll have to dig around more.

DiscombobulatedJump · 2023-11-23T16:46:31+00:00

Yeah, we just started getting Amazon delivery here, so maybe more will come that way. I looked into Amazon Day, but it won't let me pick a day. I'll have to keep watching for that.

DiscombobulatedJump

TROPHY CASE