Checking other customers’ reviews is an important part of your shopping experience. It helps you determine whether a business is reliable and worth buying from. These consumer reviews highlight the good and bad of a business, its products, and its services.
When doing your due diligence, check online reviews on review websites and across forums. The information presented in the reviews on websites like Pissedconsumer.com will help you determine whether to buy from a given business or not.
Here is how customer reviews help you make better decisions when shopping.
Check for Reviews on Reliable Sites
There are numerous review sites to find consumers’ feedback about a business, e.g. Google Reviews, Quora, or Pissed Consumer. When browsing you can find detailed reviews of various businesses in an article.
However, not all review sites are trustworthy. Some have falsified reviews, while others allow businesses to delete negative reviews and leave only positive ones. Others are paid by the business to give a positive review; hence the reviews are not trustworthy.
It is advisable to check online shopping reviews on different websites to get a true sense of the reputability of a prospective business.
Don’t Just Rely on the Ratings
While a rating will give you an overall sense of whether a business is credible or not, they do not tell the whole story. Therefore, ensure to check the reviews to understand what previous customers are satisfied or dissatisfied with about the given business.
Scrutinize the Reviews
Scrutinize the reviews to establish if they are real or fake. For instance, if a business has 5-star ratings and all the positive reviews, those might be falsified. Pay attention to the wording and whether the reviews indicate clearly what the customer likes about the business. Also, notice if the positive reviews are posted around the same time.
Other red flags to look out for include all the words are in capital letters, excessive use of exclamation marks and other punctuation marks, and outright plugging of the business. Genuine reviews are generally long and provide extensive details about the good and bad of the business.
Negative reviews could also be fake. Unfortunately, some competitors go to the extent of paying people to leave negative reviews on their competitor’s page to gain a competitive edge. In such a case, you may notice that the reviewer emphasizes how bad the particular business is and may outrightly or subtly recommend another business in their negative review.
A Few Negative Reviews Do Not Mean the Business is Bad
Some negative reviews and complaints are social proof that the business is real. While businesses should aim to provide high-quality products and services, some consumers may inevitably be dissatisfied.
Since most businesses have a particular customer avatar, people outside the ideal customer profile may not be catered to by the products and services accordingly. Thus, you might come across dissatisfaction and negative reviews. You may also see that consumers who know how to complain effectively get their issues resolved by the business.
Generally, an overall rating of 4-4.5 is reasonable. With that said, avoid buying from a business that has too many negative reviews and a rating that is below 3.5.
Checking customer reviews is vital for a successful shopping experience. Therefore, aside from checking other consumers’ opinions, ensure to leave reviews for the business, you interact with, as they will help the next customer make the right buying decision.
