Are there any honest review sites left?

[Griffith4ever]

It's become worse over the last 12 months, I swear. You want to read reviews of an item, or, perhaps comparisons of a selection of a type (like robot mowers).

1) "review"/"roundup" sites that are simply affiliate links to the products, pretending to be reviews.
2) Amazon "Vine" reviews - they get a free product and the reviews are invariable glowing 5 stars, then when you find a non-vine review, 1 star.... go figure
3) Youtube - and this is the stinger - it used to be good for honest-joe type reviews, but they all seemed hooked on "content" now. Making clicks money. All the video stills are of someone doing a "Wow!" face with hands in the air - followed by an obviously biased review, or one where they've clearly not used the product for more than 5 mins. I guess they want more free stuff to review, so can't go trashing products on their channel? (not forgetting the reviews where they don't even appear in them and use auto robo-voice to do the work for them, mostly just listing the items' features from the website...)

Its all getting a bit, "enstified" tbh :-)

[Tim Cognito]

Probably not.

Reddit was good at one point but now full of shills and AI.

Enstification indeed.

[Bluevanman]

https://www.rtings.com/
https://www.techradar.com/uk

[Peterpetrole]

Fortunately on receipt of my electric turbo ear wax remover from Amazon the box included an offer for a full refund (keep the product) if I left a 5 star review.

Being an honourable sort of chap I didn't do it, but made me realise that you can't trust anything now.

The ONLY people I know of who would still be "independent" (although there have been some controversies over the years) would be paid for Which magazine, and the chances of them having reviewed a particular widget, or indeed electric ear wax removers, are near zero.

[captain_cynic]

Peterpetrole said:

Fortunately on receipt of my electric turbo ear wax remover from Amazon the box included an offer for a full refund (keep the product) if I left a 5 star review.

Being an honourable sort of chap I didn't do it, but made me realise that you can't trust anything now.

The ONLY people I know of who would still be "independent" (although there have been some controversies over the years) would be paid for Which magazine, and the chances of them having reviewed a particular widget, or indeed electric ear wax removers, are near zero.

You really never could trust reviews. They were always for sale and few sites/publications refused to take payola. It's just that more people know about it and as a result, have stopped even pretending they aren't writing advertorials.

User generated reviews always needed to be distrusted due to zero context. Doubly so for "influenzas" on social media. Absolutely zero transparency about who is paying for what to be said.

I bought some travel insurance last night and have already received two requests to review... FFS, they know when I'm returning so surely that would be a more appropriate time to ask for my feedback but no, they're hoping people will give a mindless five star review before even having used the product (or potentially in the case of insurance)... What the living Eff am I meant to be reinventing "they took the money right out of my account and sent four me unreadable emails... five stars".

[Doesitdrive]

No, and if you leave negative reviews on Trustpilot they will fight you all the way, wanting proof of this that and the other.

[dapprman]

Griffith4ever said:

2) Amazon "Vine" reviews - they get a free product and the reviews are invariable glowing 5 stars, then when you find a non-vine review, 1

On the one hand no one knows how you become a Vine Reviewer, but we do know you need to give different scores over time - I was offered access after giving a 2 star review, and if you were to believe the private reddit groups then there would be far more fewer star scored than there are. Problem is on the same reddit groups you regularly see complaints of 'how did such and such an item get 5 star vine review scores'....
Key thing is I would suggest only to consider believing Vine reviews if they come with photos.

[captain_cynic]

Doesitdrive said:

No, and if you leave negative reviews on Trustpilot they will fight you all the way, wanting proof of this that and the other.

You've always got to ask "who is paying for it"... Trustpilot et al. are not charities, they're businesses that need to make money. This is why most review organisations essentially operate as standover men, "that's a nice hotel you've got there, it'd be a shame if someone were to NEGATIVELY REVIEW IT. We can make sure that doesn’t happen".

Someone's paying for it and if it's not you... who is it.

[Doesitdrive]

captain_cynic said:

Doesitdrive said:

No, and if you leave negative reviews on Trustpilot they will fight you all the way, wanting proof of this that and the other.

You've always got to ask "who is paying for it"... Trustpilot et al. are not charities, they're businesses that need to make money. This is why most review organisations essentially operate as standover men, "that's a nice hotel you've got there, it'd be a shame if someone were to NEGATIVELY REVIEW IT. We can make sure that doesn t happen".

Someone's paying for it and if it's not you... who is it.

Yep, money rules everything.

I am sure most can't be bothered jumping through the hoops and give up, I have done too.

This time the company had Dire reviews on Google, lots of them, they were horrendous to have working for you, after jumping through the hoops and getting clearance for my negative to be posted amongst the obviously fake positives, I linked the Google reviews.

The company lost a very lucrative contract immediately, for using unqualified gas engineers.

[skyebear]

They're all bought and paid for.

Trustpilot reviews written by bots used to be easy to spot: "Agent Holly/John/315 were great and helped me buy holiday/jewellery/house." 5 star review obviously.

Many 1 star reviews would immediately be followed by a dozen similar 5 star ones.

Louis Rossmann who fixes Apple kit and supports the Right to Repair stuff I'm the USA did a load of videos on how one review company tried to trash his business. I think he refused to be extorted buy an upgrade and the company left him fake 1 star reviews.

I've paid for Which subscription before as these companies have bills to pay so if I'm not paying them the selling companies are.

[Lincsls1]

I bought a cheap £15 Casio watch from an Amazon seller sometime ago. Turned out it was a fake.
When I tried to leave a review saying as much, the site refused to accept any words such as fake, copy, not genuine etc..
Within 6 months the watch stopped working.
Very hard to trust reviews these days.

[Doesitdrive]

skyebear said:

They're all bought and paid for.

Trustpilot reviews written by bots used to be easy to spot: "Agent Holly/John/315 were great and helped me buy holiday/jewellery/house." 5 star review obviously.

Many 1 star reviews would immediately be followed by a dozen similar 5 star ones.

Louis Rossmann who fixes Apple kit and supports the Right to Repair stuff I'm the USA did a load of videos on how one review company tried to trash his business. I think he refused to be extorted buy an upgrade and the company left him fake 1 star reviews.

I've paid for Which subscription before as these companies have bills to pay so if I'm not paying them the selling companies are.

That was exactly my argument with Trustpilot, every 5 star review used a name, every one of them, and I said they were bullst.

So I used names for the numpties from the company in several negative reviews, which they got quite upset about and begged me to remove lol.

[durbster]

Online reviews have become extremely devalued since they were introduced. Ironically Amazon was the first to bring them in, and probably has the least trustworthy reviews of all. They don't give a st though - more good reviews means people buy more stuff.

I pay for Which? partly because I think it's absolutely critical to support organisations like that, who are an effort to protect us from the ensttification of everything.

[dapprman]

I wonder if Which have changed over time as the reason I avoid their reviews is they use to be very obviously paid for.

[Blown2CV]

there is very little verifiable truth on the web at all these days. Now AI is layered on top and makes recommendations based upon biased reviews too.

[Doesitdrive]

dapprman said:

I wonder if Which have changed over time as the reason I avoid their reviews is they use to be very obviously paid for.

Thinking about it , A Newquay hotel paid me, not to leave a review, by refunding my 400 odd quid within seconds of calling the general manager the day after leaving.

They very obviously knew that the issue was there, or have a protocol of refunding anyone that complains lol.

[Tomo1971]

Griffith4ever said:

2) Amazon "Vine" reviews - they get a free product and the reviews are invariable glowing 5 stars, then when you find a non-vine review, 1 star.... go figure

As a relative newcomer to been a vine reviewer ill offer my opinion.

I think that there is a subconscious sentiment that one may get kicked off the program if you don't leave good reviews when you first join and some reviewers will want to leave good reviews in the hope of bagging expensive items. No one knows how the item allocation works for the higher value items so people may just be adopting their reviews thinking (likely in vein) that they wont get removed from the program or get better items.

Personally, I only try and request items that I think I have a fair chance of reviewing honestly but will admit in the early days did try and find the positives where I could. Now ive been in a few months and have 'levelled up' to the second and top teir of reviewer, then I will genuinely say if I think that there are issues, constructive criticism etc.

I have given some items 1 or 2 star and still been rated on my review by Amazon as excellent as clearly the reasoning in the review substantiated the low rating.

I think you can trust them if you have your eyes open somewhat.

[durbster]

dapprman said:

I wonder if Which have changed over time as the reason I avoid their reviews is they use to be very obviously paid for.

Interesting - how was it very obvious? Got any examples?

[JQ]

durbster said:

dapprman said:

I wonder if Which have changed over time as the reason I avoid their reviews is they use to be very obviously paid for.

Interesting - how was it very obvious? Got any examples?

I’d be interested too, surely they’d have been outed by now as they publicly claim to be independent.

I’ve renovated lots of houses over the years and always join when we get to the stage of buying appliances. Bought lots of fridges, washing machines, toasters, TV’s etc based on their reviews, haven’t bought a dud yet.

[dapprman]

durbster said:

Interesting - how was it very obvious? Got any examples?

This was years ago, but it was things like pans, where the heavy advertising hype ones were getting top results despite poor reviews else where.