Like many, I pretty much discount everything I read on the web when it comes to business or service reviews. Everything is for sale including company reputations via fake reviews, puffery or sites that make money off businesses by removing negative reviews. Sites like Yelp seem to attract folks who want to make a lot of noise and rant about being mistreated. It's hard to put a lot of stock in those reviews because they are emotionally charged.
Product reviews are easier to trust since sites like Consumer Reports seem to be squeaky clean. Forums like this one and others are helpful for product reviews because everyone is willing to share experiences, good or bad, in the interests of fair and truthful discussion.
However, are there any websites that you use to get trustworthy reviews of professional services? The only one that seems straightforward to me is Sitejabber, although I have just now discovered it.
As an example, I'm looking for online legal services (boilerplate wills, directives, etc). Here's the disclaimer at the bottom of one review site that was high in search:
NextAdvisor.com is a consumer information site that offers free, independent reviews and ratings of online services. We receive advertising revenue from most but not all of the companies whose products and services we review.
I read their 'reviews' of 5 legal services sites. The site they would not recommend (1 star) and said was crap seems to me a great choice and got good reviews on other sites. To quote recent news headlines, it's a rigged system and it's based on pay to play.
If you have a trusted site, I'd love to be able to bookmark it for future reference.
Product reviews are easier to trust since sites like Consumer Reports seem to be squeaky clean. Forums like this one and others are helpful for product reviews because everyone is willing to share experiences, good or bad, in the interests of fair and truthful discussion.
However, are there any websites that you use to get trustworthy reviews of professional services? The only one that seems straightforward to me is Sitejabber, although I have just now discovered it.
As an example, I'm looking for online legal services (boilerplate wills, directives, etc). Here's the disclaimer at the bottom of one review site that was high in search:
NextAdvisor.com is a consumer information site that offers free, independent reviews and ratings of online services. We receive advertising revenue from most but not all of the companies whose products and services we review.
I read their 'reviews' of 5 legal services sites. The site they would not recommend (1 star) and said was crap seems to me a great choice and got good reviews on other sites. To quote recent news headlines, it's a rigged system and it's based on pay to play.
If you have a trusted site, I'd love to be able to bookmark it for future reference.
