home products

Last night, I was up late and watching TV when I caught one of those late night infomercials…  you know - the kind that have impossibly upbeat hosts, and positive testimonial after positive testimonial. I admit that I’ve always been fascinated by these half hour long commercials, even though I’ve long since stopped being fooled by their sales pitches.

What’s so fascinating to me is that even though I know that the products that they’re trying to sell can’t possibly be as good as they’re telling me, I still find myself being lead - almost in a kind of trance - to believe that they are all that they say they are and can do.

Last night, among all the usual infomercials, I saw one for a new lady grooming product promising to make hair removal a snap - as easy as removing shaving cream from your skin I gather.  Although it sounded neat, I never believe claims like this anymore without checking them out first.

So I went to the internet and typed the product name into my favourite search engine.  As expected, the first page was filled with glowing review sites that I have also learned from experience not to trust.  You have to click at least a few pages of results deeper to find the real scoop on any product.  After some time clicking like that, I finally found some honest reviews and opinions from real people.  The reviews were not good.

That’s the problem with the internet as far as shopping online is concerned, in my opinion.  You don’t know who to trust.  And more often than not, the big search engines stuff the first pages of results with false positive reviews.

So, when you just want to find out who has the best deals on a shag rug, for example, you end up wasting your time going through bad search results.  It’s kind of ironic because the internet was supposed to make shopping easier.

I’ve sometimes given up in frustration when I’ve been looking for something as simple as a slipcover online. But, it has helped me to know that there are still honest people out there.  The trick is to find them of course.  It has also become a lot easier to spot the real deals by going straight to commercial shopping sites that have high standards for products and reviews.

Here’s another example:  Suppose you just moved into your new home and you happen to be looking for a lift top coffee table. You know the internet is the largest marketplace anywhere so that’s obviously the best place to be looking for the best selection and deals.  But it also helps to know what sites to deal with - and even sites to go direct to - instead of messing around in your favourite search engine wasting precious hours of your time.