Online shopping frustration: reviews

[Vipergrün]

So frustrating trying to shop for stuff online. Currently looking for knife sets, but could be anything.

Reviews on various sets range from 1 star to 5. People saying its the best product, others say its the worst.

Most of the time there are more "good" reviews.

Are the poor reviews just pissed off, unhappy people, who can never be pleased?

Or is there really that much variance in the same product?

Happy black Friday.....not! :--)

[widebody911]

Five Ways To Spot A Fake Online Review, Restaurant Or Otherwise : The Salt : NPR

Gartner predicts raft of fake online reviews by 2014 — Tech News and Analysis

Fake online reviews mean cash-for-comment is rife

http://www.csmonitor.com/Business/2012/1018/Is-that-online-review-a-fake

[legion]

Online reviews are nearly worthless IMO.

Many of the bad reviews are written by impossible to please people or people who misuse the product.

Many of the good reviews are written or paid for by the manufacturer or written by fanboys.

I tend to read a few of the bad reviews, try to decide if the product is being misused or I can lived with the perceived fatal flaw, and try to get a sense for the if most of the ratings are positive.

If I'm really concerned or laying down a lot of cash, I post a thread on PPOT, where I will get much better information (if you ignore the people that think you must buy top-of-the-line everything.

[krystar]

the best places to find reviews are not the retailer's website. but those nitch forums that have serve people that have that specific fixation on that product.

knife people....those are easy to find. we have a couple of them here in OT forums

like legion said, 1/5 or 2/5 reviews are usually more indicative of the product rather than the 10 5/5 "best product ever!" reviews

[masraum]

I use reviews as a rough guideline. I do occasionally see reviews for a product that are mostly bad or maybe even a balanced spread of great, good and bad. I figure if there are a lot of bad reviews then it's probably not a great product. If I see a product with many reviews, most of them being good, but a few bad ones, I'll read the bad reviews and try to decide if the writer sounds like one of those unreasonable, unrealistic, unhappy people, or if they seem level headed. I'll also goo through the good reviews to see if any seem to have any substance. If there are not many reviews, but they are all good, then they don't hold much weight for me.

And reviews aren't the only thing I'll look at if possible. Again, they are just a guideline

[89911]

I agree completely with the thoughts here. Being a Dentist, I'm getting a few new patients a month from Angie's list, Google, and others. When I ask them, I try not to let them know how I feel. I don't even know what others have said about me and my practice. I have had services that want to "manage" my on-line presence by monitoring reviews, burying bad reviews, using in house positive reviews to push my positive ratings. All BS to me, and I am one of the bigger Internet users in my profession. Something has to change or its going to continue to get worse. As far as on-line business's and restaurants, I look for a volume of replies for it to have any merit. Tripadvisor will jump a hotel ahead of another one if it has more positive reviews even if its less then 10. One further down may have a good rating but have a few hundred.