Best places to get human reviews/recommendations outside of reddit?
Often times when duckduckgoing (is that the right term for that) advice for products, I use the !ddgr key to directly search reddit for advice. But in a post-blackout world, I need to do this a lot less. So I want to know what the best places are to get reviews and advice for products that are human and not top 10 listicals.
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I only had occasional luck with this even on Reddit. Some smaller subs for hobby stuff had genuinely good advice, but a lot of times it'd just be people repeating the same brands and products with a shallow recommendation. And there was a lot of astroturfing. Over the years I've learned to ask elsewhere:
For major appliances, the best approach I've found is to find a local business – a well reputed one that's been around for years, and does service as well as sales – and simply ask the salespeople what they recommend. If the shop's willing to warranty it, it's probably good enough.
For gadgets I tend to start looking at recognizable review sites that are easy to skim (RTINGS is especially useful, but Ars, The Verge etc. all have decent reviews) and then expand out to YouTube for the products I'm most interested in. Sometimes it's a good idea to look up the company itself for anything that might change your mind about them (Western Digital's unlabeled change to SMR drives is a recent example).
Shoes and clothes are the hardest thing to get good advice on. The most useful advice I've received has been very general stuff about what to look for in fit and quality. I've also found that high ethical standards from a clothing company tends to go hand in hand with quality and longevity.
Cars are an area where Reddit was still helpful. YouTube can be helpful here, but not so much typical car review channels: the most helpful YouTube videos are often from people who've owned a particular model for a year or so and can speak with experience about its quirks.
Finally, and most of all, I've learned to check the instinct to look up reviews. It's worth spending some time to research stuff between you and the ground, or that you'll use daily, but I've wasted too many hours comparing details that really don't matter. Make sure it's something you legitimately care about before you reach for other people's opinions.
Be careful on that appliance recommendation strategy. Even small businesses salespeople receive kickbacks from manufacturers. And pretty much every service plan from a store these days is underwritten by someone like Assurant.
If you can get in touch with either someone in customer service or a repair tech then you'll get the best info.
Customer service generally has the incentives in the right place. If they tell you something isn't returned often then that means they don't have to deal with you coming back and complaining for no monetary benefit to themselves.
There's also lots of channels on YouTube from small appliance repair companies and they're more than willing to tell you who sucks.