Many people have mixed feelings online because you can’t actually see, touch, and make use of the product before you buy it. Online retailers have tried to combat this by adding detailed pictures of products, describing their products as best they can, and allowing customers who have already bought the product to share their experiences with other potential buys. This sounds like a good idea in theory, but there are a couple of problems with this.

Online retailers have a major disincentive to allow you to post negative feedback about a product. Let’s say an online computer retailer was selling a computer monitor, and everyone who bought said they hated it on the retailer’s website. How many more of those monitors do you think the retailer is going to sell? Probably not many. They would have a glut of inventory of a product that’s un-sellable to them and it would just be money lost.

A couple of years ago some major online retailers were editing customer’s reviews, making it difficult to post negative feedback and outright censoring comments. Amazon.com made it almost impossible for people to write negative postings about products. Newegg.com, a major online computer retailer, was caught editing consumer comments on product items, and Overstock.com was outright censoring customer comments they didn’t like. These companies have since changed their ways since they were outed, but the financial incentive is still there, and chances are many online retailers are doing similar things without us knowing it.

There’s also a major financial incentive for companies to have positive consumer reviews online. When people read about products online and hear good things about said products, they are much more likely to buy them. Companies know this and some of them create fake reviews, and try to get people who change their reviews to view their product in a more positive light. When you’re reading customer reviews from places like Epinions, you never know who wrote the product. It may very well have come from the company who makes the product.

So if we can’t necessarily trust consumer reviews, where can we go to research products online? Your best bet is to go to well respected resources like Consumer Reports that take the time and thoroughly compare different products. This will give you the best and most unbiased knowledge as to whether a product is worth purchasing online.

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