Internet reviews - what can you trust?
Tags: Internet
The Internet is a funny place. There is an amazing amount of information out there. There's also an equally amazing amount of misinformation out there too. Whenever I want to make a big picture I like to go to the Internet to read reviews. If Amazon carries it there are usually a lot of good reviews up there and Amazon is of course a great place to buy. For technical stuff I have had great luck with Newegg as well - lots of good reviews there by knowledgeable people.
The big purchase I am currently researching is mattresses. For this purchase I actually started in the stores. OK, no offense to any mattress salespeople, but what a bunch of pushy salespeople and liars. I know they are liars because every shop we went to contradicted the other shops. No way everything that everyone told me was true. The problem also is that you can't just lie on a bed for a few minutes and know how it's really going to work out for you. We pretty quickly decided to go with a temperature-sensitive memory foam bed. But wow, those Tempur-pedics are PRICEY.
Next I hit up the Internet to try to get some better idea of the market. I'm fairly convinced that Tempur-pedic has very good, very expensive marketing. I don't really believe that they're worth 3 or 4 times more than the competition though. But there really isn't very much good information out there. There is a LOT of bad information out there. Epinions.com often has pretty good reviews. I found another company producing supposedly similar mattresses that had a lot of really good reviews on Epinions, along with a few bad reviews. It looked promising, but as I delved into the writeups a little more something felt a little... off. The more I Iooked the more I became convinced that the writeups were probably planted there. It's hard to explain why, though. Too many 1-post accounts that signed up the same day the review was written and then never came back didn't help much.
The other thing about reviews on the Internet is that most are going to be negative anyway. Who buys something, likes it, and then reviews it for no good reason? More likely, someone has a bad experience, is really angry, and spouts off on the Internet for all the world to see.
So I finally found another Tempur-pedic type mattress that got a few good reviews on Epinions (as well as some bad ones of course.) This one was different though - the top reviewer has reviewed a lot of other things, has a link to his website, and, the kicker, wrote back to an email I sent him. OK, definitely a real person who has actually been sleeping on the mattress for the last two years (a little aside - that's the other problem with this purchase - most reviews were done after a couple of nights - not too many updates years later. And these things are supposed to last many years.) So we've corresponded a bit and he even called me - it turns out he can get a $50 customer referral fee, something I found and brought to his attention, not the other way around.
So... I'm still torn. I can find any opinion I want on the Internet. But I still don't know which mattress to buy!
The Internet is a funny place. There is an amazing amount of information out there. There's also an equally amazing amount of misinformation out there too. Whenever I want to make a big picture I like to go to the Internet to read reviews. If Amazon carries it there are usually a lot of good reviews up there and Amazon is of course a great place to buy. For technical stuff I have had great luck with Newegg as well - lots of good reviews there by knowledgeable people.
The big purchase I am currently researching is mattresses. For this purchase I actually started in the stores. OK, no offense to any mattress salespeople, but what a bunch of pushy salespeople and liars. I know they are liars because every shop we went to contradicted the other shops. No way everything that everyone told me was true. The problem also is that you can't just lie on a bed for a few minutes and know how it's really going to work out for you. We pretty quickly decided to go with a temperature-sensitive memory foam bed. But wow, those Tempur-pedics are PRICEY.
Next I hit up the Internet to try to get some better idea of the market. I'm fairly convinced that Tempur-pedic has very good, very expensive marketing. I don't really believe that they're worth 3 or 4 times more than the competition though. But there really isn't very much good information out there. There is a LOT of bad information out there. Epinions.com often has pretty good reviews. I found another company producing supposedly similar mattresses that had a lot of really good reviews on Epinions, along with a few bad reviews. It looked promising, but as I delved into the writeups a little more something felt a little... off. The more I Iooked the more I became convinced that the writeups were probably planted there. It's hard to explain why, though. Too many 1-post accounts that signed up the same day the review was written and then never came back didn't help much.
The other thing about reviews on the Internet is that most are going to be negative anyway. Who buys something, likes it, and then reviews it for no good reason? More likely, someone has a bad experience, is really angry, and spouts off on the Internet for all the world to see.
So I finally found another Tempur-pedic type mattress that got a few good reviews on Epinions (as well as some bad ones of course.) This one was different though - the top reviewer has reviewed a lot of other things, has a link to his website, and, the kicker, wrote back to an email I sent him. OK, definitely a real person who has actually been sleeping on the mattress for the last two years (a little aside - that's the other problem with this purchase - most reviews were done after a couple of nights - not too many updates years later. And these things are supposed to last many years.) So we've corresponded a bit and he even called me - it turns out he can get a $50 customer referral fee, something I found and brought to his attention, not the other way around.
So... I'm still torn. I can find any opinion I want on the Internet. But I still don't know which mattress to buy!
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