In the UK, Which? is an organisation who provide consumer advice to consumers. I’m sure it’s still the first port of call for many British customers but I wonder how many are willing to pay the membership fee of about £7.75 a month when they have the Internet to their disposal.
There are plenty of community-driven review sites such as Ciao, DooYoo and (in the US) Epinions. These sites can give a general feel of a product, service or company but are likely to be biased because people are more likely to blog about negative experiences and blog in the first few months of ownership of that product. I also doubt the conditions products are tested in are as ’scientific’ as Which?’s.
Still, if I ever google a product name I will get dozens and dozens of high-quality results off websites who specialise in that area. Then again, on these specialist blogs and news sites, it can be difficult to identify bias.
Another issue I expect consumers will have with using the Internet for consumer advice is finding a starting point for buying a product. Because technology develops so fast, if I were to search ‘good digital camera’, I could end up with results which are a couple of years out of date! The second result on Google dates back to 2002 (’Digital camera manufacturers often give you a choice of image size, typically between… VGA and… 3.7mp’). Sites like Ciao do try to keep up to date by maintaining ‘hitlists’ of the best products in certain categories (I do not know if this accounts for time or not).
The Internet is a much better, and cheaper, resource than organisations like Which? if you know what you’re looking for but if you are absolutely clueless it’s probably a bit overwhelming. I do believe that the paid content model of Which? (you have to pay to read) will not work in the long-term online and perhaps they should begin to rely on advertisements (but that would damage their neutral point of view) or else they will reduce in size.
Disclaimer: I am a member of Ciao, DooYoo and Epinions, receiving payments off all 3 for reviews. I am also current an advertiser for Ciao. This review is written completely independently to all of these roles.
