Brian,
Just look at what happens here at SMC.
How many times do you see someone rant about a bad power tool they receive versus how many times you see someone post a good review about a product they receive? Obviously companies wouldn't continue to sell a seriously defective product.
I don't think you can place complete confidence on any one source of consumer information.
Magazine reviews may be slanted due to advertising. If so and to what extent? Who really knows?
Consumer Reports may be less biased due to no advertising but to often, their tests are rather short compared to actual consumer use, IMO.
Consumer reviews are hit and miss too. Right here at the Creek, we have had members who ranted strongly over something, and then admitted to me privately, the final resolution was "Operator Error" on their part and they were grateful I had removed the thread and handled the matter via PM. There are a lot of people who will try to argue technical/engineering data and details but on closer examination, they could not be my mechanic.
Complaints about "bad customer service" deserve close detailed inspection too. Regardless of how much money someone spends for a product, the customer IS NOT always right. They are always the Customer but they aren't always right. The attitude that someone displays when in conversation with a customer service representative may determine just how far a company may go to the letter of a contract and beyond to aid that customer. Customer service agents are humans too. They don't last long in those positions without having empathy and taking a certain amount of heat from a customer. Once that amount of heat a customer exhibits crosses an invisible line and becomes abusive, nobody has to take it regardless of how much money someone spent with your company. Then the customer service agent may become unfriendly.
Just recently we had two appliances give up the ghost. When the microwave went out, it was no big deal. My wife and I were shopping at Costco the next day and I said let's look at what they have for microwaves ovens. We walked out with a new microwave. I did no research. It cost less than $100. Why spend a lot of time worrying about it?
The next week when our main refrigerator in our kitchen died after 23 years (We have a much smaller one in the basement utility room), I didn't allow the shopping hormones of our visiting DIL and wife override my researching a product that met my wife's requirements, was recommended by Consumers Reports and one on which I found literally hundreds of good reviews at several different websites.
When it comes to making major purchases like dishwashers, for example, I don't think one can use just one source of information to get a true representation of a product's reliability, quality, and usefulness.
Last edited by Ken Fitzgerald; 12-03-2014 at 12:07 PM.
Ken
So much to learn, so little time.....