What's up with product reviews?

[hedgehog]

I could understand if the reviews were generally the same, but it's typical to find one that states the product is the greatest thing since sliced bread, and another that claims the product killed the dog then burned the house down. It doesn't make sense in this day of mass production and tight quality control that the reviews should be all over the place.

[cbayer]

1. Consumer Reports is about the only source I trust.

[kentauros]

9. Same here.

And that reminds me, I need to re-sub my online account. That's the best way to research a product, but you do have to subscribe to their site to get that function. I think it's $20 a year

[ohheckyeah]

2. I can tell you what's up...

people get paid to write good reviews. The jobs are posted all over oDesk, especially for Amazon reviews.

[KT2000]

3. People are paid

to write glowing reviews. Then again, people are mosre likely to take the time to write a bad review than a good one. You can get a feel for the ones written by paid folks - they are usually over the top.

[unblock]

4. tight quality control? have you actually purchased anything lately?

companies have a statistical approach to quality control. they don't try to approach perfection. they just try to get to the point where the cost of handling customer returns and complaints just offsets the incremental cost of quality improvement.

sure, plenty of times, purchases are "as advertised" straight out of the box, no real problems.

other times, a part is missing or broken.
many times a merchant will try to resell something someone else already returned!
there are plenty of times when what you got isn't compatible with things you have at home and you can't know for sure in the store.
then there are also things that simply aren't designed to stand to go the distance and fall apart after an unacceptably short period of time.
and there's always commercial hyperbole. products always seem better on tv than in real life, where they just can't handle real life use. that knife that seems to cut through anything on tv somehow can't handle the food in your kitchen....

in short, your mileage may vary.

[HopeHoops]

5. I remember hearing Howard Stern review the "Real Doll" sex doll - "Best sex I ever had".

[Honeycombe8]

6. You mean generally? Or is this about something in particular? nt

[hedgehog]

7. I'm looking at dishwashers, and the same unit will

get wildly different reviews!

[Honeycombe8]

8. I know! It drives me crazy. I read reviews before I buy anything. They're all over the place,

like you say. I need a new toaster. Impossible to find one that everyone agrees is good. It's terrible to some, the best toaster in the world to others.

[theKed]

10. User reviews are, by and large,

useless. The average user, broadly speaking, doesn't have the depth of product knowledge a professional reviewer would.

I notice this a LOT in computer/video game product reviews.

User review panels are much more apt to be flooded by friends/employed review plants to spike the scores up; or flooded by competitors to push the ratings down. Best advice? Find a reviewer or review site by professionals that are trustworthy and follow their recommendations.

This is not to say that professional reviewers don't skew their reviews.

[Initech]

11. The product reviews on Newegg and Amazon are completely baseless for that reason.