Comments on: My Online Opinion On Online Opinions

By: youngandthrifty

youngandthrifty — Thu, 19 Jan 2012 05:18:15 +0000

My University Money, I like Questrade. It’s cheap, decent to look at.. and cheap.

You do get what you pay for though, sometimes

I’m huge on reading reviews. before a make a big purchase I usually look online to see what other people say.

By: Gordon

Gordon — Mon, 16 Jan 2012 18:11:03 +0000

Like traditional media, the anti’s hog the spotlight. Usually people who are bitter about many things and personal experiences. Those who are happy with their live! experiences are the ones who you seldom hear from. Give me a couple more years and I’ll be 90. Life is so interesting I hope to see 100!
My take on Questrade is it’s a great inexpensive service; a couple of tweaks and it would give me all I could ask for. My experience with appliances is that one usually hopes for perfection in quality and usefullness. You have to make allowances for the profit motive behind everything that’s made and sold.

By: My University Money

My University Money — Wed, 11 Jan 2012 04:21:49 +0000

Ouch… *this guy timidly raising hand to roof* I was definitely one of those guys in your last post. What you said makes a lot of sense. I am still just a little scared of online trading (as a young investor with a fairly small level of capital). As you point out, the relative popularity of Questrade should far outweigh a few bad experiences online.

By: Brad Ferris

Brad Ferris — Tue, 10 Jan 2012 02:08:33 +0000

Great post Mike! Nice to have some humour in the first few posts of the year!

By: Four Pillars

Four Pillars — Mon, 06 Oct 2008 23:37:23 +0000

Hyder – good point about the shipping issues.

By: HyderabadChick

HyderabadChick — Mon, 06 Oct 2008 21:04:10 +0000

I pay a lot of attention to reviews and wish there were more. I look for age/gender of poster/ country of origin/ level of savvy depending on what’s being reviewed (hotels, cities,

I pay especial attention to details about what the problem is. Also to the details about the customer service following the problems. I’m more likely to purchase items with reviews than those without.

I do separate shipping issues from the product to some degree – Negative shipping reviews could prompt me to buy from a different vendor. But customer service is absolutely a part of the product for me as a buyer.

By: Sara

Sara — Sun, 21 Sep 2008 18:38:40 +0000

I always look for reviews for just about anything I buy, but I don’t always take them at face value. I mainly pay attention to reviews that give a lot of details about specific features that are good or bad. I’ve seen people rate a product as 1 star, but the comment is completely unrelated to the product (e.g., a complaint about the customer service or the shipping time), so I ignore those.

I also look at the ratio of positive to negative comments. I once bought my mom a gift at a brick-and-mortar store, and when I got home, I looked up the reviews on Amazon.com. There were 11 reviews for the product, 9 of which were 1 star, so I decided to return it and buy her something else.

By: Weekly Roundup: NASCAR Edition at Clever Dude Personal Finance & Money

Weekly Roundup: NASCAR Edition at Clever Dude Personal Finance & Money — Sun, 21 Sep 2008 12:47:27 +0000

[...] – Four Pillars offers his opinion on online opinions. [...]

By: Ken Deboy

Ken Deboy — Sat, 20 Sep 2008 20:58:14 +0000

Triciatim:
You might look into the Pentax K200D. The main reason I picked this one is that it works with just about every K-Series Pentax lens ever made (though some of the auto features won’t work). Also, the anti-shake feature is built into the camera body, not the lenses as on some other brands. It’s priced about the same as other brand (Nikon, Canon) entry level models. All the DSLR’s I looked at were fully adjustable, but had a point and shoot mode. I would hesitate to buy one made by a company that’s new to making SLR cameras (Sony, Panasonic, etc). Better to stick with one of the “big 4″ (Nikon, Olympus, Pentax, or Canon) IMO.

Cheers,
Ken

By: Wealth Manager

Wealth Manager — Fri, 19 Sep 2008 18:11:51 +0000

When starting any product research these days, I always start with ConsumerSearch (http://www.consumersearch.com).

This site which “reviews the reviewers” is a nice aggregate of what major review sources are saying and saves me the hassle of visiting a half dozen sites to get a feel for what the top products are in a given category.

Once I have a short list, or if I’ve started with a particular product in mind, I usually venture into one of a handful of forums to get a feel for what people are saying.

For this I usually head to RedFlagDeals.com or DigitalHome.ca which also have the benefit of discussing the products from a Canadian perspective – in particular, places to purchase and the prices paid.