[Cholly]

Here's an interesting article from PC World regarding shopping engines like Shopzilla and Pricegrabber. Looks as though their vendor ratings are not to be trusted. Buyer beware!
http://www.pcworld.com/article/127943-1/article.html?tk=nl_dnxnws

 

[cdru]

What? You mean you can't trust everything you read on the internet? The next thing you'll say is that I shouldn't trust the guy on eBay that has a "Gr8 dealing with. A++++++!!!11!" feedback.

 

[Stewart Vernon]

While I do not trust everything I read on the internet...

Does anyone else find it ironic that an internet site is making the bold claim that you should not trust internet sites? Why should you trust pcworld?

 

[Steve Mehs]

You shouldn't. I like PC World for the articles, their awards and ranks they sell to hardware vendors don't get a look from me, pure BS. I subscribed to PC World for years, then stopped. More Dell ads in the magazine then any other vendor, Dell ads on the back cover of every issue, Dell products always ranked as the best or second best in every applicable category. I got a gift subscription to PC World for my Birthday, looking at the summary of the award winners from November 2006, not one is a Dell product, the back covers also feature ads for Systemax and I do not see one full page Dell ad. Hmmm.

 

[bidger]

I'm sorry, I got distracted.

Is that Tanya Memme or Danica Patrick as your avatar, cdru?

 

[Richard King]

Here's another twist on the shopping engine/store rating scams. This outfit http://www.shopcartusa.com/usaphotonation/Details/#reviews seems to sort all the messages so that you see the "good" ratings on the first few pages. If you click on the last page you get a true indication of what this outfit really is. Here's their rating from a more "reliable" source: http://www.resellerratings.com/store/USA_Photo_Nation 0.14 out of a possible 10. I didn't think it was possible in ANY way to go that low. This is with 337 reviews, enough to indicate a trend. :lol:

 

[Cholly]

You shouldn't. I like PC World for the articles, their awards and ranks they sell to hardware vendors don't get a look from me, pure BS. I subscribed to PC World for years, then stopped. More Dell ads in the magazine then any other vendor, Dell ads on the back cover of every issue, Dell products always ranked as the best or second best in every applicable category. I got a gift subscription to PC World for my Birthday, looking at the summary of the award winners from November 2006, not one is a Dell product, the back covers also feature ads for Systemax and I do not see one full page Dell ad. Hmmm.

In general, I have to agree. The problem with PC World's "10 Best" lists is that they don't survey the entire market (understandably). It would be better if they stated that the products in the list were the best of the ones they'd tested (and then provided a list of all that were tested). Of course, that might offend some of their advertisers.

Even Consumer Reports has a problem in that they can't review ALL products in a given category. Also, by the time reviews are published, there may have been major model changes in a product line, as with TV's, computers and printers.

 

[frank29]

I just bought a tv for $2K from Amazon. Could have "saved" almost $200 using various shopping engines recommened sellers.

Problem was reading the user feedbacks. Invariably, the least expensive sellers had bunches of positve feedback for small buck items; however, almost all the negatives were for big buck items. And these were the quadzillion star, super, great sellers. After realizing the pattern, I purchased for a small premium for a seller (Amazon) with which I have great experience.

I have bought two $400 cameras, a blender and a couple of printers from the cheap guys. I think I will continue the pattern of big buck items from known sources and small buck items from the cheapest source I can find.

 

[Steve Mehs]

In general, I have to agree. The problem with PC World's "10 Best" lists is that they don't survey the entire market (understandably). It would be better if they stated that the products in the list were the best of the ones they'd tested (and then provided a list of all that were tested). Of course, that might offend some of their advertisers.

Even Consumer Reports has a problem in that they can't review ALL products in a given category. Also, by the time reviews are published, there may have been major model changes in a product line, as with TV's, computers and printers.

While it's impossible to survey everything, one of my biggest complaints are the PC World awards were comparing apples to oranges in a lot of situations. They'd have consumer product lines and business product lines intermixed, standalone printers would be compared with multifunction and photo printers. It was like they hand picked their favorite mediocre product then picked 9 others at that sucked at random to make their cash cow look like the product of the century.