I will start by saying I am trying to consume a lot less in my life, but due to circumstance I need to start again in my life. I am also trying to degoogle not use Amazon etc.

With this in mind I prefer to buy a decent value product and look at the options however I have noticed that I keep coming across comparisons and over and over it’s driven by ‘check price at Amazon’. Amazon has ruined decent reviews for me. All anyone wants to do is sell Amazon tat at me. Anyone else have this problem of too much chafe when trying to research decent products?

  • rem26_art@fedia.io
    11·
    10 hours ago

    You really have to try hard to find genuine reviews.

    HouseFresh did a good piece last year about the general state of product reviews. They’re a smaller site that focuses entirely on reviewing air purification products and noticed a large drop in traffic coming from search engines compared to giant digital media companies that can churn out tons of perfectly SEO optimized reviews of products they’ve never even tried first hand. And you know all those reviews are crammed full of Affiliate links.

    It’s a hard time with so much junk information out there

    • Cherry@piefed.socialOPEnglish
      3·
      9 hours ago

      It was a pretty good read. It felt like much of what I was suspecting was laid out in a nice structure, with an idea of why it was occurring. It didn’t feel like a crazy rant. I did note they themselves are an Amazon affiliate however they did take an objective view.

      • rem26_art@fedia.io
        2·
        9 hours ago

        Yeah it seems like they still want to do a good job at the end of the day, and don’t seem to let the cut of Affiliate sales influence them to say “oh its all good pls just buy”, which is kinda what you end up with in a lot of other places.

    • Cherry@piefed.socialOPEnglish
      2·
      9 hours ago

      I did think at first it was me being overly fussy with what I was seeing. It’s good to know it’s not just me.

  • DominusOfMegadeus@sh.itjust.works
    English
    2·
    6 hours ago

    I do a lot of research before buying almost everything. Overall, I have a very good success rate, and I don’t pull any punches when describing a product’s shortcomings. I’m betting I have a lot of useful info for others, but it’s currently mostly trapped in my head. I’ve thought about trying to start up an unbiased reviews blog or something, but I’m just thoroughly daunted by how much work it might wind up involving.

  • rumschlumpel@feddit.orgEnglish
    16·
    11 hours ago

    Stiftung Warentest (at test.de) does a great job comparing products and pointing out faults. Probably not that useful if you don’t speak German, though, if the products they’re testing are even available in your country …

  • Ek-Hou-Van-Braai@piefed.socialEnglish
    5·
    9 hours ago

    So many computer channels I watch will skip over amazing products like hardware like ODROID because they don’t offer affiliate links. It’s sad to see.

  • Cherry@piefed.socialOPEnglish
    6·
    9 hours ago

    I was actually looking at gardening equipment which is a bit niche for there. I think I am missing the days where people tried stuff out and commented on it rather than ‘tried this from there it’s great go buy at retailer abc’ I had the same problem recently with kitchen utensils. I don’t want tons of plastic ones. I wanted a small selection of decent tools. It was frustrating wading through the crap to find good reviews and verdicts on what is/isn’t essential.