Many (not all, but many) companies do want your honest opinion, but when your opinion is bad they would rather your opinion not be visible to the public. It is a very thin line and it’s different for every brand. Most reviewers I have spoken to live by the old adage “if you don’t have something nice to say, then don’t say it at all,” meaning that they just don’t publish reviews for products that they think are overwhelmingly bad.

In the event they wrote/recorded a poor review, the most a company will usually want from you is to send them your unpublished review so that they can log your complaints about the product internally and use them for future reference. Some companies just want good reviews in exchange for free stuff, but some companies do want to hear your scathing criticisms, they just don’t want the public to know them.