Beware of website product reviews! – join a forum!

Although slightly ironic given some of the material on this site, definitely beware of web reviews of products.

What tends to happen, I’m sure you’ve all seen this, is that a person buys something online and 5 minutes later they give it a 5 star because it “looks pretty”, or maybe “it works fine”. But what will happen on the first trail use? In 3 months of hiking will that review be the same, or will you finally notice that the zippers break? Was bouncing around in your pack, or a 1 foot drop enough to make you reconsider the “it works fine” feature? Or maybe your guilt of buying something expensive is enough to make you ashamed to say bad.

You can consider this an appeal to trigger happy reviewing, but honestly, some websites could use a policy revisal. How many of us have bought something and then received an email from the website where we purchased it a week after ordering? What good is that review, accept to say they company has good shipping policies?

There needs to be some more questions in the review forms. Something like “How long have you had this product?”, or “How many times have you used it?”. With that in mind, there is an alternative: Join a forum.

Forums are usually made up of people who are enthusiasts. They probably bought the product when it first came out and either still use it, or chucked it long ago. So find yourself a forum, listen and ask questions. If you are one of THOSE reviewers, please stop before you post “The packaging is nice” or “It’s pink LOL I luv it forever1111!11!” If you want some real reviews, ask real questions and accept real answers.

Here are two forums that can help out:
Backpacking Light
Backpacker.com’s forum