Do you trust the product reviews out there on the web?

September 10, 2005 1:21 AM

Do you trust all those product reviews out there on the web? Aren’t just the companies' staffs writing those?! I mean I guess there are people paid to write good about one brand and bad about all others. I think each company may have some of these clerks.
posted by persia to Shopping (14 answers total)

Response by poster: Now that I think I have to admit your saying that part of those reviews are written by solid devotees, but the "reviewing" has become part of the marketing these days so it is not rare if companies investigate in "reviewing business" for their products.

Although I don’t trust any product review any more but unfortunately there is no other way to collect information about products in to see if they are as their catalog says or not!
posted by persia at 2:20 AM on September 10, 2005

There are definitely professional reviewers on Amazon, Harriet Klausner for example reviews about 50 books per week. Another problem is that reviews get copied between similar but different products e.g this and this. Bottom line you need to do your own research, or find reviews from someone you actually know and trust.
posted by Lanark at 3:57 AM on September 10, 2005

There are definitely some biased sources of information out there, and not just on the Web. Consider Motor Trend magazine, whose Car of the Year award is one of the biggest jokes in the industry. Why would anyone give credence to a source that considered the Chevy Vega and Renault Alliance the best cars available?

If the products you're looking at are something that Consumer Reports reviews, read their report. They get no money from manufacturers, and have no axe that I've been able to discern. For any other sources, try to figure out where they get their money, or why they bother to review something.
posted by Kirth Gerson at 4:38 AM on September 10, 2005

Whether a product review is trustworthy depends entirely upon its context.

Well-established review sites (Anandtech, DPReview, etc) are generally pretty reputable, but they only review a narrow selection of products. User reviews (Amazon and many other shopping sites) are vulnerable to shilling, so no they're not trustworthy at all.

epinions tries to straddle the two by being a community-based review site, where you can rate and trust reviewers based on their review history and quality. This in theory makes the shills untrustworthy and easy to spot.

The forums of many enthusiast sites generally have pretty informed reviews, but aren't always very impartial (due to fanboy-itis). When taken with several large grains of salt though, they can be good sources for trustworthy reviews if you also have enough background to identify the knowledgable posters and to pick through posts to separate the meat from the offal.

My take on product reviews, regardless of the source: never let any single review be the primary basis of any purchase decision.
posted by DaShiv at 4:47 AM on September 10, 2005

I've had good luck with Amazon reviews. Here is the criteria I use:

• Be cautious of items with only a few reviews.
• Be wary of any review that gives 4 stars or 1 star without giving any logical reasoning for the rating.
• Reviews that spell out the pros and cons are best
• Note if the reviewer gives any ideas on how they used the product and see how they matched up to your expected use (i.e. An experienced Java programmer complaining about a book not being detailed enough wouldn't necessarily exclude the book for a newbie).

posted by mmascolino at 6:57 AM on September 10, 2005

You have to search far and wide for the unbiased reviews, and they usually get instant-bookmark status for me because they're so few and far between. DP Review is a good source of camera reviews, for instance.

For electronics in general, I tend to shop at NewEgg.com. Unfortunately NewEgg has a policy of deleting negative reviews. That's not entirely the same as shilling... they don't write positive reviews, they just edit out the negative ones. So I have to keep this in mind--when product A has 10 positive reviews, and product B has 120 positive reviews, and both products have been out for approximately the same period of time, I know that product A likely has a slew of negative reviews that were culled.
posted by Civil_Disobedient at 7:55 AM on September 10, 2005

My friend Sammy went through a longish period last year looking for fake product and book reviews and here is his list of things to look for. It's sort of amazing how easy it is to find at least some obvious shill reviews for practically anything.

1. no personal information; only a few sporadic reviews; could be one of a long list of dummy accounts... OR lots of detailed personal information, w/conflicting information coming out in individual reviews to make the reviewer fit more squarely into the target audience (See chickmagnet, below);

For instance, chickmagnet, whose profile says hes "19" and heading into the Air Force, but who claims to be 15 when reviewing SpongeBob Squarepants.

2. lots of A+/F movie reviews the day/weekend a movie is released (don't forget that an F review for the other movies in your space is almost as good as an A review for your own)
3. PR speak in the middle of a rambling, misspelled teenage post.

this battle between the Queen and the Predator and scientist is much more fast-paced, suspensful and action-packed, that is actually the way the whole movie was compared to other Alien and Predator films, more fast-paced, slightly more suspenseful, and much more action.

4. Combine detailed knowledge about backstage details (never EVER misspell the director's name) with atrocious orthography.

The way Paul W. Anderson created the story was just fenominle. (bushead)

5. Don't forget to hype the DVD. "I can't wait for the DVD!", "I hear there's going to be a director's cut DVD, that would be so cool", etc.
6. Don't forget the hype, period. "This was, without a doubt, one of the best movies I have ever seen." "i don't care what others say it the best movie i've ever seen!"
7. Compare favorably with a recent major success ("I, Robot" seems to be the fave here)

posted by jessamyn at 8:04 AM on September 10, 2005

speaking of newegg.com I stopped shopping there when they turned down my perfectly legit negative review of a product i bought there. Their service is generally great. But on principle I have a problem with their policy. I have taken my business elsewhere.

I have generally liked DPreview when it came to cameras. I also use amazon but as many said I always take a skeptical attitude.

Sometimes I have used audioreview.com for hifi stuff long ago. But I have not used them in last couple of years. I also remember goodsounds.com used to be a good source when things were more enthusiast driver. Not sure if they are still around.

But these days there are couple of good home audio video forums that have useful information when i look for home AV stuff.

I agree it is has become very difficult to find good unbiased reviews and google is not much help either. You search for product reviews and they keep pushing ads etc.. Another of my gripe against google..but thats a different topic.
posted by flyby22 at 9:08 AM on September 10, 2005

When looking at product reviews, I generally ignore the "I liked it" or "I didn't like it" kind of comments, and instead look for objective insights about the product -- "The retaining ring broke after three uses", or "It only takes 1 second to start up", then I look for common themes in the reviews. I think that people who don't know how to write an objective review are worse than shills.
posted by trevyn at 10:44 AM on September 10, 2005

I trust the negative reviews much more than the positive.
posted by LadyBonita at 12:25 PM on September 10, 2005

I've posted negative reviews of books on Amazon (of the "that other one is much better than this one" type) that have mysteriously disappeared a few days later.
posted by normy at 2:19 PM on September 10, 2005

wanted to add that i too feel better when i see some negative reviews about a product. Sometimes the negatives are not bad enough for me not to purchase the item, but they make me feel like i am buying something knowing what its issues are.

Somebody should invent a better review system on the net. At least one where the negative ones will not disappear like that.
posted by flyby22 at 2:28 PM on September 10, 2005

And talking of camera review sites, yes, dpreview is generally pretty good for all the technicalities, although I have an unverifiable hunch that they too have their biases (but who is truly, completely unbiased?). What I find frustrating about most camera reviews online is their incredibly nit-picking technical comparisons at the expense of useful information about using a particular bit of kit to actually take pictures like a photographer might out in the field. Michael Reichmann at luminouslandscape.com is better in this regard, although he generally limits himself to expensive top-end gear.

DaShiv nailed it when he said "enough background to identify the knowledgable posters and to pick through posts to separate the meat from the offal" - with that in mind, reviews from other users can't be beat. photo.net provides those reasonably well.
posted by normy at 2:35 PM on September 10, 2005

i personally do not have much problem about owner's trying to defend their gear as long as i get to hear all the competing parties. What I have problems with business interest backed flattery or vile.
posted by flyby22 at 2:45 PM on September 10, 2005