Monday, June 22, 2015

Review of Reviews

I’m the kind of gal that reads reviews before I buy something, and not just a few of them. I read so many reviews that I’ve come to consider myself a review expert. I mean I can spot a fake review a mile away, I can tell when a review is written by the vendor or by a rep from the company and I can tell when it’s written by a competitor. I’ve been thinking about writing a book about reviews and how to sort out the legitimate ones but I’m more of a reader than a writer, so there you go.

That being said, I’ll now inform you that this post is not about reviews. Not specifically, anyway. I was just mentioning it because I’m setting the stage for telling you about a new product I just acquired that’s one of my favorite items I’ve ever purchased on Amazon. So here’s the story.

I had decided to try out a set of those nonstick barbecue grilling mats. I don’t know if you’re familiar with those, but they are these fairly large, flexible fabric mats that you put on the grates of your barbecue and they allow you to cook stuff that would normally just slip through the grates. At least that’s all I knew about them when I started looking into it.

So here I am shopping for these grilling mats and I’m reading review after review. I don’t read the Amazon reviews so much. I mean I read a few of those but most of them are so short and cryptic that they don’t really matter. Here are some examples of that.

Fantastic

Great product!

Couldn’t be happier!

Exceeded my expectations!

You’ve seen those, you know what I’m talking about. You might not realize this, but there are a lot of fake reviews on Amazon because Amazon product rankings are based partially on the number of reviews so sellers will pay people to post reviews for them. Of course, Amazon is almost as good at spotting fake reviews as I am, so they pull a lot of them, but a lot of them survive too. So I look for the ones people spent some time on. Reviews that list the good things and the bad things and that make it clear that they actually used the product enough to be qualified to make comments on its quality.

Back to the subject at hand. So, as I said, I was reading a lot of BBQ grill mat reviews, one after another after another and I was also watching videos. It’s about the videos. What is it with the subject of the barbecue that makes advertisers think they need to yell at you? I mean the barbecue guys are usually big, granted. I mean look at what they eat. But can’t they quietly explain what’s going on? Do they have to shout? I hate that. So here I’m watching these bbq grill mat reviews. Back to the subject at hand. So, as I said, I was reading a lot of BBQ grill mat reviews, one after another after another and I was also watching videos. It’s about the videos. What is it with the subject of the barbecue that makes advertisers think they need to yell at you? I mean the barbecue guys are usually big, granted. I mean look at what they eat. But can’t they quietly explain what’s going on? Do they have to shout? I hate that. So here I’m watching these bbq grill mat reviews on Youtube and these big fat guys are all yelling at me the whole time. It almost made me want to NOT buy a barbecue grill mat at all. Just scrap the whole shopping thing.

But! I finally came across a video that just quietly explained what to look for in a grill mat, how they’re made, how they are all similar and how they differ from one another along with some pointers on how to choose one. Because there are a lot of brands of grill mats available now on Amazon. It’s like everybody decided to private label grill mats and sell them on Amazon. I mean are there any people left to buy them when everybody is selling them? Sorry, I crossed the line into smart-ass, something I had promised myself I wouldn’t do any more.

So if you’re in the market for a grill mat and you’re like me, in that you don’t like a lot of hyped-up advertising, with people shouting at you, then give this video a watch, because it’s short and educational and actually tells you stuff you need to know if you’re looking for a grill mat. https://youtu.be/_JxgHkY8og4

I’m on a personal crusade to put a stop to Shouting in Advertising. So I boycott any product that tries to sell to me with people shouting at me. You know, it’s not just the shouting that gets to me. It’s the total absence of substance. It’s like they have to shout because they don’t have that much to say, and what they do have to say isn’t that amazing so they shout it.

Don’t think for one second that I don’t shout once in a while. But don’t you think shouting should be reserved for emergencies and anger situations? It doesn’t seem appropriate if you’re trying to sell me a washing machine or a mattress. That’s just not a shouting situation. So I’m glad I could get that off my chest. Carry on.


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