> appliance shopping, the ability to get information about what is actually quality is near zero
Do you know about Consumer Reports?[1]
It's a non-profit organization which puts out a magazine (and website) which does unbiased product testing, has zero advertising, pays for all the products they test, never takes sample products, buys all their products anonymously (so they can't be given better samples for testing purposes), and has extensive laboratories, procedures, scientist/technicians for testing (a private track for testing cars, for example).
I never heard of anyone saying that Consumer Reports was fraudulent or paid-reviewed. Appliances are things that they definitely review all the time.
The downsides of Consumer Reports are as follows:
- it's U.S. based, so it's focused on products available in the U.S.
- for appliances, say a washing machine, they are going to pick only 10-20 models to review, even though there may be hundreds of models on the market
- there are a million things they'll never review because they are not an ordinary, common, consumer purchases; you'll never see reviews of oscilloscopes :-)
> The downsides of Consumer Reports are as follows:
Another downside, as the article pointed out, is the intentional smokescreen of multiple product names and slightly differing versions that make comparison shopping and meaningful reviews virtually impossible, and why I don't get as much value from my Consumer Reports subscription as I used to.
This is particularly prevalent in the mattress industry.
Do you know about Consumer Reports?[1]
It's a non-profit organization which puts out a magazine (and website) which does unbiased product testing, has zero advertising, pays for all the products they test, never takes sample products, buys all their products anonymously (so they can't be given better samples for testing purposes), and has extensive laboratories, procedures, scientist/technicians for testing (a private track for testing cars, for example).
I never heard of anyone saying that Consumer Reports was fraudulent or paid-reviewed. Appliances are things that they definitely review all the time.
The downsides of Consumer Reports are as follows:
- it's U.S. based, so it's focused on products available in the U.S.
- for appliances, say a washing machine, they are going to pick only 10-20 models to review, even though there may be hundreds of models on the market
- there are a million things they'll never review because they are not an ordinary, common, consumer purchases; you'll never see reviews of oscilloscopes :-)
[1] http://www.consumerreports.org/cro/index.htm