Are Online Service Or Product Reviews Useful?

ARE ONLINE SERVICE OR PRODUCT REVIEWS USEFUL?

This is Part One of a three part series. It discusses what is, in effect, the driving force of reading online reviews of products and services – that is when money is scarce, no one wants to make a bad purchase.

John Penrose thinks it’s a good idea, but do we?

The new UK Government’s minister of tourism thinks that phasing out the existing star rating system for hotels makes a lot of sense because it’s “out of date” and “doesn’t reflect value for money or what guests want”. He argues that consumer-led reviews on the Internet are the way forward and are central to the Government’s tourism strategy for the future.

Of course, scrapping the roles of the independent assessors who grade hotels will patently save money and maybe their costs do not reflect value to the public any more. Moreover, consumer reviews are usually fresh up to date, contrary to the hotel assessor’s verdict which may be well out of date by the time a new tourism guide is published.

But none of these points are the real issue. That’s because whilst we all increasingly read online product and services reviews, recent malpractices that have come to light provide strong evidence of serious fraudulent manipulation. The real debate centres on the contradiction of reading reviews numbers going up, whilst credibility and trustworthiness of what you’re reading is going down.

So is scepticism regarding consumer provided reviews to be the new norm? Well, there are lots of reasons, both large and small, why you should be guarded against what you read. For in the middle of a recession when we all have less money, no one wants to make a poor purchase that offers bad value. Do you really want to buy a CD album at £10 say, without having never heard it first, listened to a few tracks or read a critics review? Probably not!

Part Two of this three part series will detail some of the scams and malpractices that you should be aware of.