Helpful Consumer Reviews

I'm the type of person who does extensive product research before making a purchase. I especially pay attention to reviews by consumers, such as the ones at Amazon.com or Epinions.com because I feel those are more reflective of a typical experience than ones from professional reviewers. With the more popular items you also get more points of view, rather than just one critic's perspective and who knows who paid him or her to write what they did.

That said, I do notice on Amazon that there seems to be a ring of cronies who seem to go around patting each other on the back when it comes to reviewing business books. Maybe this goes on with other genres too, but since I am mainly browsing the business book section, this is where I've noticed it. They all jump in right after the book gets listed, write a glowing review, and make sure to promote their own book in some way, either in the title (telling you who they are and that they are the author of such and such book), or in the body of the review. With all that back-patting and covering for each other, it kind of makes you think they should be in the Bush administration.

Anyway, that's not what I am writing this. Last weekend we bought a new toaster oven so before anything else, I diligently read the various reviews around the internet to find one that seemed purchase-worthy. Pretty much all of them received mixed consumer reviews. What amused me were some negative reviews - the reason for these pans being things like, "this oven gets very hot and I burned my fingers on it." Or, they complained about the food inside catching on fire. Duh, don't you think an OVEN is supposed to get hot? For something costing about $50, surely you don't think the manufacturer could afford to put a lot of insulation on the outside, do you? And if the oven remained cool to the touch, then you'd have those same people complaining about how long it took to heat up anything. As for one of the posters who claimed the oven caught fire - the idiot was reheating a taco. A taco! Now, aren't tacos pretty greasy, and if the grease drips down on the heating elements, well, what do you expect is going to happen? It's like people complaining that their fireworks weren't fireproof. I hope no liberal lawmaker is reading this because the next thing you know, there will be a bill introduced to put a warning label on these toaster ovens cautioning people that they may be hot.

There was a voice of reason who pointed out that these whiners were expecting a $50 small appliance to perform like a $500 major appliance and how unreasonable it was. I guess as in life itself, the world of consumer reviews is reflected in a bell curve. There are always going to be those people on the far left of the bell curve. The ones who are never happy with anything, the ones who always seem to have problems, the ones who can't get along with people at work and wind up filing some lawsuit claiming discrimination. I'm not saying that discrimination doesn't exist, because it does, but it exists far less than the multitude of lawsuits would lead you to believe. Gee how did I wind up at this point? Let's go back to the consumer product reviews..

It's like when I was reading reviews for GPS units. There were brainless people complaining about how the GPS told them to make a turn in the middle of the block right into a building. This was a while ago so my memory is hazy but I think one of them may have done what they were told. Anyway, next time you're reading through the reviews and you run across someone who gives one star to a product when almost everyone else is giving five, take a look at his or her other reviews and see if they are the far-left bell curve type. The alarmists. The ones who expect everything to hold their hand. Included in this category are the people who give one-star ratings to a product because it took too long to be delivered to them, or the box came bashed in.

Ok, that's it for today.. just some more eye-rolling material for your day!