Comments for entry "Shopping is Broken" at Dilbert.com Blog

Comment from sep332

WedPMPDTE_Rthth

There's a new gadget wiki, www.gdgt.com , that solves this problem in the exact opposite way to what you describe. By giving each user a public identity, other users can decide how "shillish" they are being by looking at past posts. The wiki gives the best of short-term hype and long-term experienced advice.

Comment from BTTFVGO

TuePMPDTE_Rthth

I like your scenario, better. I've researched several product reviews online, most to be negatively biased against anything said product is supposed to do. Usually I'll still buy the product, but I don't really know whether my opinion of the product is now slightly tainted due to the articles I read (the placebo effect?) or whether it's all in my head. For example, if I hadn't have read any negative reviews, and just bought the product, do you think the product would work better for me than if I read a bunch of negative reviews and then try it? .....

Comment from zombie

SatPMPDTE_Rthth

Look at this article in the current issue of WIRED. http://www.wired.com/techbiz/it/magazine/17-07/ff_facebookwall Facebook has lofty goals, but I do like the idea of a more personal internet experience. Anonymity shows up in truly ugly ways on the interweb.

Comment from shagbark

WedPMPDTE_Rstst

Re. aardvark: From their terms of service: "In the course of using the Service, Subscriber and other users may provide information about themselves which may be visible to certain other users. Subscriber understands that by posting information or Content on the Company Site or otherwise providing information or Content, materials or information to Company or in connection with the Service, Company is hereby granted a non-exclusive, worldwide, royalty-free, perpetual, irrevocable, transferable right to fully utilize in any manner such Content, materials and information (including all related intellectual property rights) and to allow others to do so." Since signing up with Aardvark gives them your facebook info, I think this grants them a perpetual, irrevocable, and transferable right to publish and/or sell pretty much anything you put on your facebook page.

Comment from derekludlow

WedAMPDTE_Rstst

Credit card companies could do this easily. You could opt-in at the beginning, and it would track what you've purchased with your card. Then when you are looking for somebody who has already bought that same item, the credit card company could send them an email without actually giving it to you. Responses could be a minimum of 250 charecters and the other person could report you if your response was just gibberish. You would get the right to send out 4 emails per response that you gave. You would be "credited" with the right to send out 4 question emails, and you would get 4 more each time you answered one. If you don't receive the answer within one week then it gets re-credited to you. It would benefit the CC company since it would encourage you to buy more things, and they are in the best position to do it since they know what everybody bought, have everybody's contact information, and could easily arrange it while keeping everything private.

Comment from jennifer5116

WedAMPDTE_Rstst

The efforts that are shown here must be appreciated. Jennifer Luis forclosed homes

Comment from trippy64

TueAMPDTE_Rthth

Exactly what facebook is going to accomplish. linking friends with products.

Comment from Leora

TueAMPDTE_Rthth

Let me add my vote for Consumers' Reports. They buy everything they test (no company freebies!), don't accept advertising, and seem to do a good job of getting customer feedback. I think I paid $20 for the year for unlimited reviews of practically anything. I start with their list of high-scoring brands/models, then pick out the ones with features that are important to me, then check the customer review page to see how real people liked it...or didn't . So far I've been happy with everything I've purchased or recommended based on their input. High trust factor, lots of feedback, easy to use...I'd say they do a great job of exactly what you're looking for.

Comment from Mogren

TueAMPDTE_Rthth

What about Aardvark? There you can at least ask people directly: vark.com

Comment from backslash68

TueAMPDTE_Rthth

I suggest you try http://www.ciao.com/ It's some kind of social networking website entirely devoted to product reviews. I think it started first here in europe and was later localized for the u.s. . It works for me.

Comment from gargamel9

TueAMPDTE_Rthth

While it should be clear by now that the level of mass consumption achieved was already unsustainable by early 2008, just before recession put an end to it, for the sake of this argument we will suppose that it is sustainable and desirable. The problem with todays products is that they are a lot more complex than most products used to be. Tvs used to last 20 or 30 years because they were quite simple, and most of the time even a lowly trained guy could fix the mechanical things that broke on it. Nowadays, even an alarm clock has a complex hardware card that only a bunch of guys of Taiwan know how it does its magic. Ive noticed a lot on times on different webs, post that are clearly from a guy inside the company talking about the goodness of the given product. Posts by competitors are harder to point out to me, as I tend to give more weight to bad reviews than to good ones. But both of them will most of the time be present I suppose. Also most people hate to concede that they might have screw up with their chosen product and tend to see only the goodness of it and not see its defects, either consciously or unconsciously. In the end if you want to be around 50 per cent safe about any buy, you need to do a lot of investigative work before buying. That is a must, it is not like someone should do something about it kind of thing, you need to do that work and put some time on it. You have to consider that part of the buying process, and the most important part IMHo. Now most people wont do that for whatever reason but buying blind nowadays is really dangerous, products keep getting more and more defective and advantages over older products are increasingly diminishing(CPUs are a great example of this, but it more or less apply to almost anything).

Comment from Detton

MonPMPDTE_Rthth

If only just for a moment, I would love to enjoy the serenity of Phantom's world.

Comment from wishnevsky

MonPMPDTE_Rthth

You have lots of decent ideas. You ought to deploy some of them.. Or work for google. Or hire a geek to do the grunt work.

Comment from Mokkery

MonPMPDTE_Rthth

The "Naughty Word Filter" on this blog is the worst I've ever seen. "Q - u - a - n - t - i - t - i - e - s" is not a naughty word. Please tell me you bought the blog software based on a Google search and not on the advice friends or family.

Comment from Phantom II

MonPMPDTE_Rthth

I know the answer: government. Government has done such a great job in doing things like telling us how much water can go in our toilets, what kind of light bulbs we must use and what kind of fireplaces we can and can't have and when you can use it, then why not let them tell us what we should or shouldn't buy? It's a simple and elegant solution: the few hundred geniuses in our federal government can start telling us that any retailer of any product must not sell it until it has at least two thousand happy customers. "Happy" being based on a governmentally-developed objective scale that requires an investment of two point two million dollars to prove the efficacy of the product/service. Of course, all that money would go to the government, who would spend it in the best way possible: making sure that the unions won't have to pay taxes on their health care like every non-union person in America will (see the Kennedy health care bill if you're wondering what this is about). After all, Scott, it isn't fair to make you responsible for your own decisions. That would be horrible. You deserve to have some kind of governmental edict to prevent you from making any bad decisions. After all, the government knows best what things should be in your house, not you. You are basically a complete idiot who can't weigh the issues and make decisions. Now, some cynics would say that the people who make the most campaign contributions would somehow get the best government ratings, but hey, that's easy to fix. Just make the government take money from the taxpayers to pay you back if the choices the government tells you to make turn out to be wrong. See? Everyone wins. Except the poor "rich" guy who has to, in all "fairness," pay for your poor decisions backed by the government's fiat. Hey, Scott, why don't you man up and figure out a way to take responsibility for your own decisions? You act like everyone who is offering you a product and service is really trying to screw you and cheat you, and only some outside force can protect you from . . . yourself. Is that the way you really look at things? If so, try being a slave. That's where you appear to be heading. But that's OK, as long as government tells you it's OK to be a slave, right? You, and the rest of the sheeple are too stupid to make your own decisions, or learn from your mistakes, or take action against the people who sell you a bill of goods, right? So let's just let government make all our decisions for us. Gee, what a great idea. Worked great in the USSR, didn't it?

Comment from Mokkery

MonPMPDTE_Rthth

That's a great idea except for one minor problem: Our economy is based entirely on the masses buying large !$%*!$%*!$ of worthless crap over and over again.

Comment from usaegxf1

MonPMPDTE_Rthth

I'm a fan of comsumer reports. It's unbiased. The draw back is that they may not have evaluated the product your looking for.

Comment from arbyisme

MonPMPDTE_Rthth

Wanted to buy a car top cargo carrier for light but bulky camping equipment. Went on the Internet and found a well known brand at a good price with free shipping from a famous and reputable vendor. Reading the reviews of the product from different sources was educational. They ranged from well intentioned, informative, objective personal experience to mean spirited, unfair picky rantings to outright stupid. The product turned out fine and those that bashed it were incompetent idiots who cluttered up the cyber world with their filth. A good sign is the honest folks almost always give their real names. The idiots are anonymous cowards spewing their graffiti garbage on a keyboard and running away.

Comment from charlesfunnish

MonPMPDTE_Rthth

I know what you mean. I've been trying to find objective reviews on comic strip anniversary books for months.

Comment from juvegirl

MonPMPDTE_Rthth

A different type of incentive program could utilize the "Was this review helpful?" option some sites already use. Perhaps it could be set up that a reviewer who receives, say, 10 helpful hits on 5 reviews gets a 5 or 10% discount. Or something on that order. While some individuals would no doubt create a few accounts trying to bump up their chances, I doubt many would open 10 or 20. Some, perhaps, but of course the site would have the option of reviewing the reviews to see if they were actually helpful or not, to try and weed out cheaters. Dwigt is right, people love to give their opinion (I mean, that's what makes this forum so active), the trick is in making the assembled opinions useful in some way to the next person to come along. Indicating that they were perceived as helpful, or using a thumb up/down system does that.