Reading Reviews - Some Sites to Check

One way to try and make sure the good deal really works out is to read reviews of items before you buy them. When I come across something I might plan to buy, I'll check a couple of places to see if anyone has reviewed them. I've used epinions.com before many purchases, but I find dealtime.com a nicer resource because it links to epinions reviews, gives price ranges and gives ratings people have left for the merchants too. I take things with a grain of salt because you can't be sure who posted the reviews or whether they're objective. Nextag.com is another good shopping comparison site, again showing prices at different stores, reviews and ratings (appear to be different than the ones at epinions). I also often go to amazon.com to see reviews that might have been put on that site -- amazon has the advantage of having such a big customer base that there always seem to be reviews of almost everything. I figure if I look at those three sites, I get a pretty good picture of users' opinions.

The amount of time I spend on reviews obviously will depend on the cost of the item and my familiarity with the item, manufacturer etc. I recently was in the market for a couple of webcams, and although I found a great sale price on some, the reviews had many really negative comments. That prompted me to check reviews that had gotten better ratings. I then used some price comparison shopping and was able to track down some rebates on a couple of highly rated ones. I'm glad I did the reviewing because the webcams I got have been top-notch!