Power To The Consumer. Using Product Reviews

You may already know that we’re in the market for a baby cot. The price of a brand-spanking-new cot is 3 times more than I paid for our queen sized bed, so we’ve been looking at buying second hand.

We found an ad in the paper for a cot that seemed suitable. As the ad mentioned the brand, we jumped online to find out what other people thought of this particular cot.

What did we find?

That complaints had been made to the ACCC and the cot in question had been recalled nation wide due to faulty workmanship. Parts hadn’t been glued and the entire side rail had completely fallen off on several occasions. Complaints had also been made against the company as to the way they handled customer service for faulty goods.

Just as well we checked.

We research everything we buy now. Here are a few ways to get product reviews in Australia.

One of the product review services that we use regularly the Product Review website(aff. link). Products are reviewed by actual product owners and users. I’ve found this website pretty helpful, although a few products that we looked up haven’t been reviewed yet.

Choice is a perennial favourite and is useful for product comparison. If you’re not sure of the particular brand or model, Choice may be a good place to start. The downside is that the service isn’t free. While there are some free articles, you have to sign up and pay to read reviews.

You can just Google a particular product + the word review. A search will also bring up other info like news articles or product recalls!

Give Google Shopping a whirl also. While the shopping service isn’t available in Australia, the site is still really useful for product reviews.

Sometimes people only write reviews when they have something to complain about. 10 complaints out of 10,000 customers isn’t necessarily a fair reflection on the product or company. I found this particularly when we were looking into changing our insurance company. Every insurance company we looked into had a gazillion bad reviews.

When reading bad reviews, take note of of whether many reviewers have the same complaint. If so, it’s probably a product to steer clear from. Decide whether the complaints are relevant to your situation and whether the complaint is reasonable: I’ve seen reviews that say something along the lines of “I pranged my car while drunk and they wouldn’t pay the claim.” Check if you can whether the review is up to date or resulted in a change in company policy. You may need to do a bit of digging for this info, whether it’s worth it or not will be up to you.

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