Comparison shopping made easy
When I'm shopping for something and I'm worried about plopping down a chunk of change on something that might not last, or something I'm not familiar with or something I'm not entirely sure about, I try to do a lot of legwork beforehand to reassure myself.
And when I say legwork, sometimes it literally means legwork and lots of time invested. For instance, when I purchased a laptop last year, I drove from store to store to check out quality, prices and features. I talked to friends about what they recommended. I scoured the Web to find different reviews of the laptops I was leaning toward. I searched for complaints about each model.
It took me almost a year to research and compare data to make a decision. In the time it took me to do all that, I bet several of the models I was looking at became obsolete. OK. I exaggerate, but you know what I mean. It took a lot of time.
That's why I was so jazzed when my good friend Gus turned me on to consumersearch.com, which is our Consumer Web Site of the Week pick.
Owned by The New York Times, ConsumerSearch pulls reports, reviews and other data together and puts it all in one easy place so you can quickly read up on anything you might want to buy from acne treatments to webcams.
For each product category, ConsumerSearch presents to you a description and ranking of the top reviews, a complete analysis of who the experts are and what they say, a list of the top-rated products and prices and links to retailers that offer the recommended products.
If you're worried the site is all fluff and no substance, click on a couple products and read the analysis and ratings of reviewers. Under webcams, for example, ConsumerSearch ranks Laptop magazine reviews on webcams poorly because the magazine reviews the product only occasionally and "While ratings are given, the discussion is disappointingly short."
Check it out. You might find that ConsumerSearch saves you a lot of time on-line so all you mostly have to do is check the product out in the stores to see up close what you want to buy.
Categories: Consumer Web Site of the Week, Shopping
