Digital SLR Camera Buying Guide

We do a lot of research in creating our Buying Guides. We see all kinds of scams lying in wait for unsuspecting shoppers. And guess what? The majority of scams aren’t big clean-out-your-bank-account kinds of scams. They are simple tricks to get you to buy a particular product or click on an ad, thereby profiting the scammer. Some of the more profitable of these simple scams appear in the guise of the User Review. Depending upon your purpose, user reviews are either

• a great way to get real feedback from real people to help make buying decisions, or
• a great way to trick buyers into choosing our product over the competition’s, or
• a great lure to attract unsuspecting visitors with a high probability of gaining advertising income.

Herein we recount a few typical User Review Scams for your enjoyment.

Way-in-Advance Reviews
Some unscrupulous salesmen will do anything to make the sale. As an example, take what I like to call the “way-in-advance” review. Here is a real example.

Book publishers announce publication dates far in advance. It’s a useful service to readers, stores and the media alike. A book will show up in online stores with a notation that it will be available on some future date. Recently, I found a book, not yet available, with 2 user reviews! Of course, the reviews were glowingly positive. Here is an exact quote from one:

"tis is truely a good book recomended to any one"

Let's take a vote. Was that review written 1) by a professional critic who got an advance copy of the book, 2) by a salesman who will do anything to sell the product, or 3) by a hired shill in India who writes fake reviews for a living? Mail your vote to Ucan Trustus, Inc., Freeport, Bahamas. Please include $5 in cash for processing.

Bogus Reviews Web Sites
This category of scams is a grey area, because there are a lot of great, useful Web sites that publish user reviews. Let’s just consider a few that I call "Bogus Reviews Sites" because they have no real content, typically just "Hey, I like this" reviews, links to reviews on other sites and sometimes search engines that purport to offer price comparisons. Think about it – would you go to some random Web site and contribute a product review just for fun? Many shoppers arrive at these sites through text ads on search engines and elsewhere. Look for humorously misworded ads such as "Find Great Prices on What digital cameras have wireless picture transfer". Here are some of their scams:

• Many products on Bogus Reviews Sites actually have NO REVIEWS. The “review” page contains a product name, a bunch of ads and a link that says “Be the first to review this product!” The scam here is to “trap” you on a page with nothing to look at except ads. If you click on one of the ads in hopes of finding real information, KaCHING! They just made money off of you.
• Some Bogus Reviews Sites also include "price comparisons" that are simple database lookups, no better than any of the other price comparison sites out there and less useful than real-time price services. Watch out for unreliable data and unscrupulous vendors in the search results. If you buy from one of their vendors OR click on a text ad on the vendor’s Web site, KaCHING! They just made money off of you.
• Advertising, Advertising, Advertising, Advertising, Advertising, Advertising, Advertising, etc.
• Tracking. Every page, every search, every article, every click. There is big money in targeted advertising and YOU’RE THE TARGET. Have you ever seen an ad on a Web site that is a product (or a close competitor) that you previously viewed on a completely different Web site? You, my friend, are being tracked. You would be surprised (and appalled) at what they know about you.

If a site offers no real content, you’re wasting your time. Get out fast and try not to feed the piranhas.

Bait-and-Switch Reviews
I stumbled upon a Bogus Reviews Site – one of those with a “trustworthy” name – that had digital SLR camera listings. You know, price comparisons, user reviews, search for something and get 100,000 results ("Wow! This site MUST be good!"). They "borrow" their reviews from a well-known, well-respected site. So I’m looking at reviews for a big-name semi-pro camera and see a 5-star review with 2 lines of teaser text that raves that the camera is "Top Gun". I click on the “Read full review” link. Landing on the respected site, I am faced with a ONE-HALF star review (yes, less than 1 star) that rages at the camera company for non-existent customer service and non-fulfillment of the warranty. So, how about that 5-star review? Do you really want to be spending your time on that Reviews Site?

Review Stuffing
Rumor has it that Chicago mobster Al Capone was the originator of the ballot-stuffing policy "vote early and vote often." It seems that some product manufacturers follow the same procedure, getting their sales reps to post phony user reviews to offset bad reviews written by real users. For example, I recently encountered a product in a high-quality store. The product had 4 reviews – three 1-star reviews and one 5-star review. Let’s think about that. Three-quarters of the users thought the product was garbage and one thought it was fantastic. ARE WE TALKING ABOUT THE SAME PRODUCT HERE? Yes, such a dichotomy is absolutely possible. However, it makes you wonder who is being honest – and who is not.

The Non-Existent Product
Being lied to and cheated is bad enough, but wait – there’s more!
Internet Shopping sites do everything they can to present themselves as Authority Sites. The implication is that they provide you with enough information to make an informed purchasing decision. Well, consider this: if a product is not in a Shopping Site’s database, IT DOESN’T EXIST! Well, as far as THEY know, it doesn’t exist. Brand new products not yet "discovered", products by smaller companies that don’t get as much media attention, older products whose reviews have been taken down, imported products, short-run products – NONE OF THESE EXIST (on the Shopping Site)! How could you possibly make a good decision? You might start by asking "does this site allow me to search complete, current store inventory or just pre-selected products captured in a database at an unknow time by an unknown method?"

Bottom Line
So is it even worth looking at user reviews? The answer is Yes, but that’s a topic for another article.