The business models for pricing aggregators and reviews sites are completely absent. Even Consumer Reports struggles to meet the costs of testing and staffing. The BBB is a mess. The "Good Housekeeping Seal of Approval" hasn't meant anything for decades.
It's a sad state of affairs: We all want unbiased reviews, but we won't pay for them. We all want to know the spread of prices so we can balance service/trust with cheap, but price aggregators are all either blocked out of existence or become affiliate listings.
While so many things have come true, there are still a few internet dreams like free-flow price summaries and wisdom-of-the-honest-crowd which are sadly still just beyond our grasp.
I recently decided to get a Consumer Reports subscription after not having one for 10 years. I used it to find the absolute BEST dishwasher.
But because their rating system is a little strange, and they don't exactly tell you BUY THIS, DONT BUY THAT, I ended up with a Dishwasher I hate. It was the most expensive, and best according to CR, but I cannot express how miserable this piece of junk makes me.
Then I look at the FREE reviews on Amazon, where I see many people who have the exact same issues as me. Why did I pay for Consumer Reports? According to their "tests" this dishwasher might last 20 years or something amazing like that, but for what I care about it sucks, its hard to use, and it doesn't dry dishes AT ALL.
I want to fund unbiased reviews, but I also need Consumer Reports or others to step up their game on providing information that is actually useful and changes my experience as a buyer.
A dozen years ago, I had a house built, and I bought all the appliances myself. I thought I would research the market, find the sweet spot, and get a good deal through a specialty appliance store because I was getting everything at once. Boy, was I wrong.
I subscribed to Consumer Reports online, and came up with what I thought was the right brand: GE "Gold". I bought everything in the line: stove, microwave, dishwasher, refrigerator, washer, and dryer. Within 5 years, the washer and dryer had both been replaced, almost all the plastic accessories on the fridge had broken, the stove's convection fan failed, and one of the rails on the storage pan fell off, several screws fell out of the dishwasher before I ever started noticing, and the silverware tray broke, and I couldn't keep microwave lights working.
What I finally figured out was that ALL of the stuff CR is reviewing is made by a few companies, and it's ALL crap. They make it seem like you can buy something "good" by paying twice as much, but even if CR is truly impartial, there's no material difference. I got more years of service out of the second-hand, refurbished, mismatched washer and dryer that I bought from the ratty converted house/shop on 3rd street than I got out of the "higher" end models, and paid 1/4 of the price.
And I'll tell you something else for free: it was damn refreshing to hear the guy who FIXES UP appliances for a living tell me he wouldn't even take my old units off my hands to refurbish -- for free -- because they really were total junk. Talk about salt on the wound! Find a local guy who does this and ask HIM what you should buy; not Consumer Frickin' Reports.
Before I was born, my parents went to Sears, and bought a "good" Kenmore washer and dryer. They lasted almost 30 years, till they couldn't get some replacement part for the dryer. I've concluded that the only way to get this level of quality is to buy "commercial" kit, and pay TEN times as much.
> I got more years of service out of the second-hand, refurbished, mismatched washer and dryer that I bought from the ratty converted house/shop on 3rd street than I got out of the "higher" end models, and paid 1/4 of the price.
I think that's one misperception. High end anything models aren't high end because they're more reliable - they're high end because they have more features or more expensive finishes, but have more complexity to go wrong. It's true of cars too.. My pet theory is the most reliable model is the highest volume model because the company doesn't want to get eaten by support costs.
I bought a low-end GE twenty years ago and it kept going with fairly easy parts repair on anything that wore out. But it was a very basic washer. I did eventually replace it with a higher end washer from another company - but I had to make my peace that I was getting low-water use and more complexity while likely giving up reliability. My wife and I have fantasized about starting an appliance company that values repairability and reliability without high-end features, but quality materials ...
> they're high end because they have more features or more expensive finishes, but have more complexity to go wrong
Sigh, this describes my recent tech purchases to a T. New wireless headphones? More trouble than I had with wired cans in five years, at 3.5x the cost. My first laptop with a dedicated GPU? More glitches than my Intel-only MacBook Air ever had, at 2x the cost. €120 speakers? Their wired "desktop remote" was so dumb that I returned them and bought used €11 speakers on a craigslist clone. (I actually think they sound better.)
I spent at least a day reading reviews for each purchase, too.
On the upside, I will save lots of money by never treating myself to "nice tech" again.
The highest volume model also has an entrenched pipeline of parts and widespread experience with any problems that model does experience. So repairs will tend to be more straightforward and less expensive.
The best strategy you can follow is, base your buying decision on objective things, you can verify. Price is something you can verify with 100% accuracy, so is features and usability and energy usage. But, all the other stuff: how long it lasts, I wouldn't take anybody's word for it, unless I knew them personally.
For dishwashers, specifically, I think you have to get a really old one for it to work. One that was made before all the stupid water rationing requirements came out.
This day an age, buying the very cheapest stuff, often turns out to be a pretty good strategy. I got a super cheap Vacuum from target for 30$!! It worked great for 3 years. Of course, the filter is like a zillion dollars, so instead of buying the filter, we just sold the vacuum on letgo for 7$, and then bought another brand new super cheap vacuum for 30$!
Bought a Coffee Machine for 12$ on amazon. it's 9 months later and it still works great!!
> I wouldn't take anybody's word for it, unless I knew them personally.
Maybe that's the thing: We need reviewers that we "almost know", who aren't faceless, but also aren't as deeply corrupt as most YouTubers? A bit like John Siracusa reviewing toasters in podcasts [1]. At least with simple gadgets, I would rather trust him than Amazon reviews, even though I've only heard him talking for a few hours.
Yah, pretty much my experience with consumer reports too. They need more objective analysis, but that is hard too given that all it takes to win a 3 year "long term" study is not to have anything major break.
Having been in this boat myself, a few years ago, I decided to simply start fixing my old appliances. Many of which aren't actually old enough to not be efficient (front loading washer from the late 1990's). Its hard when you move houses, but the older appliances (mostly from the 1990's) in my rental are still chugging along. OTOH, the dishwasher, and microwave that got replaced when I lived in it are now on #3 in under 15 years...
Basically, it seems for a lot of things the "quality" seems to have peaked and then due to penny pinching, offshoring, whatever has declined. Of course my mother might say the same thing about her stove from the 1970's, but the current house has a gas stove with electronic igniters built in the 1990's and its also on #3... It seems electronics aren't really a good way to make something last. They might be better at saving some energy here or there, or providing a cool looking interface, but the old mechanical buttons/igniters/etc are often even better.
Have you checked out The Wirecutter/Sweethome? I find their reviews thorough and they always give you several options while explaining why you might choose one over the other. Here is their dishwasher review for example: http://thesweethome.com/reviews/the-best-dishwasher/
> they don't exactly tell you BUY THIS, DONT BUY THAT
> but for what I care about it sucks, its hard to use, and it doesn't dry dishes AT ALL.
I'm confused, it sounds like you wish CR had just told you which dishwasher to buy without going into more detail, but you also wish they had gone into more detail about specific strengths and weaknesses so you could make a decision based on what's most important to you.
Did CR just not talk about the things you hate about your dishwasher, or did they talk about it, but only as part of a complicated, confusing review?
I've generally found CR to be a million times more informative than any of the crappy, sleazy affiliate marketing sites peddling "reviews" that clog up the first few pages of Google search results. That said, I haven't really looked at them for a few years, so maybe they've gone downhill. Their business model does seem harder to sustain in the internet-era.
I did contradict myself there. What I was trying to say is that a highest customer satisfaction rating probably would have been better than all the information they gave. But barring that, random Amazon reviews which were free, provided me information more aligned with my experience.
What they talk about is how the dishwasher did, when put through their special "testing program". So apparently this top of the line dishwasher will perform a great number of cycles before breaking. Consumer Reports isn't wrong. The engine is great. They also measured the decibels, so they could say this is "the most quiet" dishwasher.
The information I could have received from Amazon reviews, was that it is hard to adjust the upper rack, meaning you can't easily wash a baking pan. And even on the most extreme drying setting you will still need to dry your dishes by hand.
I don't think CR tests reliability. They survey subscribers to measure quality... which seems more scientific than Amazon reviews, where it's an art to ascertain quality.
I agree that Amazon is great for finding what may frustrate you. Scepter when they combine multiple products and reviews into a single page.
I think one issue with any consumer product is that it is hard to find their issues when searching by generic terms (e.g. bran X problems) vs specific terms (brand X error Y). So it is only once you have the device installed and run into problems do you know which keywords to search.
Modern dishwashers basically suck except for looks, rack capacity/configurations and quietness. They are now all low water use and you can't get phosphate based dishwasher detergent. God help you if you have hard water or some other issues. I have a kitchenaid top of the line that has multiple cleaning sessions including a fancy auto-detect-dirty dishes pro wash feature that never cleans satisfactorily. I have to run on "tough" mode with extra rinse at high temperature to get anything "clean". And I say "clean" because if the water softener hasn't recharged or it's rained or I don't have cascade platinum, rinse aid, and vinegar then the dishes come out cloudy at best or still dirty. And then you have to run dishwasher cleaner every 2 weeks or so... Wine glasses are basically impossible to clean without streaks or residue. And then like you, drying dishes even on the dry cycle depends on relative humidity.. :) That being said I can't run a dry cycle by itself.. it has to run after a wash no matter what.
>> drying dishes even on the dry cycle depends on relative humidity
Thanks to Energy Star they can't put a heating element in them like they used to. Brand new Samsung dishwasher (why does everyone thing Samsung appliances are great? They are garbage) and it doesn't dry, dishes end up wet, dishwasher ends up stinking, Samsung suggests cracking the door... Went on Lowes website and half the reviews have the same complaints. Junk.
I’ve got a fairly modern (2008 or so), low-end (Beko) dishwasher that came with my house; it cleans perfectly. My main complaint would be that it’s a bit noisy, but it works fine, basically. The current version costs about 250 euro. A higher-end one that I had when I was renting also worked fine. You may just have been unlucky with the particular model; modern dishwashers aren’t all bad.
I bought a house four years ago. When I got in the only thing left standing was the microwave, and the stove. I needed a clean sweep of all the appliances. I went through the reviews, and went to a number of appliance stores. What I found to be the best tell of a good appliance. Was after market parts. I made sure everything I bought had readily available parts. I spent just about 200, and stocked up on spare parts for all my appliances. I went to the appliance stores again, and said notify me of any scratch and dent, clearance etc. of these models. This worked rather well.
The only appliance I had issues with was the dishwasher. While I had parts for washer, dryer, fridge, stove, and dishwasher. The dishwasher had a gasket just under the pump at the bottom of the unit. Every several months it would rupture due to being cheap plastic. I just grabbed one from my shelf and switched it out.
This model also applied to my family. when recommending a unit with more readily available parts. The repairs were less expensive. Are these the best units, not by a long shot. But I know I can repair it at least.
They weight energy efficiency way too high in their reviews of everything. Appliances, cars, etc. It means if you follow their recommendations you get dishwashers that don't dry your dishes and cars that can't accelerate to the speed limit on a freeway on ramp.
Bosch is the brand. Don't remember the exact series number, but its the most expensive model typically available in Home Depot or places like that. I don't want to slander them too much, because the product really is quiet, and very durable. But those ended up being the least important factors for me.
I have a mid/high-end Bosch and find that the dishes end up much dryer if you crack the door when the cycle completes. This is particularly important for plastic stuff like tupperware. It doesn't have a heating element, so it's best to expose the dishes to non-humid air while they are still hot.
It's somewhat of a recursive lemon problem. We (potential review purchasers) have no way to assure ourselves that we'd be paying for quality reviews and not some sort of fakes, in no small part because of the profusion of ever more convincing fake everything on the internet.
GrubHub / Seamless owns MenuPages, Allmenus, Restaurants on the Run, DiningIn, and Delivered Dish.
Seamless takes a percentage, not a flat fee, of the total food and beverage amount, even though its involvement is the same whether an order is for $10 or $250. Restaurants can choose from four commission levels (12.5%, 15%, 17.5%, and 20%); the more a restaurant pays, the higher up it will appear in the search results. When you search for restaurants on Seamless, you may have noticed that, in the default view, the results appear to be random, but they’re actually arranged by who paid what.
And unlike with, say, Google search results, there’s no disclaimer.
This percentage fee paradigm is no different to much of the finance industry. Clearly a farce, but it still surprises me how many people are happy to go along with it.
For me, I feel like wisdom-of-the-honest crowd is actually somewhat attainable. If you can find corroborating reviews across different review providers (Amazon, google, etc) then I've found that the information is much more likely to be true.
Amazing to see people stumbling upon millions. Most techies are trying to come up with clever technical solutions to try and build an online business. Whilst elsewhere there are people making millions from reviewing mattresses. Or whatever the next accidental hot market will be.
Review sites in any niche industry can be extremely popular. I am a guitarist, and there are a LOT of blogs and Youtube channel reviewing guitars, amps and pedals. Most are pretty boring, technical reviews which aren't all bad, but get a handful of views.
Then there are the channels that thrive on drama and conflict. One particular guitar reviewer is an older chap, with questionable playing skills and knowledge, but he excels in riling up companies, which in turn leads to more publicity and views for him.
He is well known for taking expensive electronic gear apart and saying things like "I can't believe they charge $2000 for this guitar effects processor when I know the motherboard and DSP chips on here only cost $200... etc.". When the company refutes these claims or tried to explain, he shuts them down with demands for payment to remove his negative reviews etc.
We cannot expect much more though - a whole generation of audience has been trained to seek out such drama and negative energy and latch on to it like a remora to a shark.
More accurately, he's accepting bribes to silence his freedom of speech. He's entirely in his right to have negative reviews as long as they're truthful.
See this page[1] for a detailed explanation, which explains that under most extortion laws, the threatened act may be perfectly legal (like leaking photos of someone in a compromised position). It becomes illegal if the threatened act would "harm" the victim and you demand money in exchange for not doing it.
(Legally, harm has a very broad scope, and can include loss of reputation.)
[edit] Note that what this YTer is doing would probably not be extortion under California law as long as his claims are truthful, as he has already posted the videos, and is only demanding money to take them down.
The guy posted an opinion. The company weighed the costs of refuting his opinion or paying him to shut up. I don’t think this is blackmail or extortion. How an opinion can be construed as defamatory I fail to see.
Since you are arguing the difference between bribery & extortion:
"Extortion could occur between two businessmen and still be a criminal offense, whereas bribery is primarily focused on the bribing of Government employees or bribing by Government employees. But the most important difference is the difference between a threat to do harm in extortion and an offer to do good in bribery."
I wasn’t arguing bribery vs extortion. I was questioning whether defaming someone is an illegal act.
Since you’ve brought it up, is it extortion to offer up a negative opinion and then to offer to take down a negative opinion?
The public space is as much yours as mine to say what we will about whatever subject under the sun including each other.
E.g., “I believe zebnyc eats donkey meat for breakfast. I don’t think he should be allowed to do this.” Now, if you were applying for a PETA contract, this opinion of mine could hurt you financially. So if I offered to take down this opinion for money, what illegal act have I committed? My opinion of your eating habits is valuable to you because of your external circumstances namely your PETA contract.
Is this any different from this guy stating that he doesn’t understand why a piece of equipment should cost in the thousands when to make it should cost in the low hundreds. The company could have argued the actual cost teardown or said that they attach their QA and reputation to each piece of equipment sold so that boosts the price or given him money to shut him up. The chose the last option.
That's it. You can legally threaten to tell the truth, and you can legally ask for money. But combining those two acts is what's illegal.
Note that I may be wrong about this case being blackmail, since the youtube videos are already posted (thanks to gamblor956 for pointing this out). Whereas "Pay me money or I will make a bad youtube video about you" would be blackmail.
Funnily enough, I'm a guitar player too and I know exactly who/what you are talking about... I guess the pool is smaller than I have always assumed. :)
> Whilst elsewhere there are people making millions from reviewing mattresses
True, but from what I read, this guy had SEO experience and ranked #1 for "Casper Mattress Review" for many years. In other words he was clever at marketing his site which was stuffed with affiliate links along with 1 on 1 agreements with some mattress companies.
Most techies who are coming up with "clever technical solutions" either don't validate a need for their offering, or really suck (add me to this list) at marketing their solutions / online businesses.
Given how much malicious behaviour is often involved in SEO and strong marketing, I'd say a lot of techies try to come up with "clever technical solutions" in order to try and avoid unethical business practices.
Id say it's huge. More like a tens or hundred of thousands at one point. Everyone and there mother was blogging. Now it's just sexy insta pics holding brand name merchandise with hash tags mixed into 20 others as the advertising notice.
A friend of mine made a fair bit of money off of a website that listed "free stuff" promotions around the web. But it was manually-maintained and so quickly died.
... BUT...
He really only started making ad revenue on the site once he stopped maintaining it! People would find his site, then would realize the content was old, but would click on an up-to-date ad instead.
I'd say affiliate marketing is more of a modern "lemonade stand" business, just like youtube/twitch videos, game programming, and app development. There's an extremely low barrier to entry and it gives you an ideal place to hone business skills, but odds are you won't make enough to cover the cost of hosting a website.
My impression is that, if you find a niche, stick with it, and do at least nominal marketing, you'll make a few bucks. But emphasis on few. For most people, it's more akin to a nice hobby than a real business.
I don't find it that amazing having worked at large companies and watched middle to upper management do the same.
I try not to play the envy game lest I just self loathe. Luck has always existed. Also, tales like these help keep me humble and I just assume there is a cognitive dissonance and their talents are valuable even if I can't see how.
> I just assume there is a cognitive dissonance and their talents are valuable even if I can't see how.
I think that's the right attitude. Even if you look down upon SEO, there's no denying that the guy learned a skill that took time and effort, plus took some risks that it wouldn't work out.
The whole mattress industry is a scam. Actual manufacturing cost is $75-$300. Mattresses are even cheaper on Alibaba.
Vacuum-packing memory foam shrinks mattresses for shipping, and now they can be imported easily.
If you really want to annoy the US mattress industry, set up a review site and review sub-$100 mattresses off Alibaba.
(Personally, I have an air bed which cost about $200.)
There is a brand on Amazon (Zinus) that sells reasonable quality foam mattresses with low markups. I bought their Queen [0] for $289, and have been happy with it. I'm assuming that Amazon will also eventually introduce an Amazon Basics version and suck up all the profit...
I bought a California king from Zinus, they sent me two of them, and didn’t want the second one back. I paid less than 300, and now my parents have a free mattress too. One gripe was the lack of warnings on the box. I accidentally punctured the plastic trying to drag the package into my bedroom and one puncture was like a deploy mechanism that left me trapped in a door way as the mattress slowly inflated on me. We laughed about it, but I’m a large man, I can only imagine how a small person or child would have dealt with that situation.
Similar thing happened to an ikea spring mattress I bought for my guest rooms. Cut open the plastic and it pretty violently sprung open and whacked me in the face.
Bought one of those recently, most comfortable mattress I've ever had, and the cost was amazing. No idea why one would pay $3000 for a Temper-Pedic. Even if this mattress only lasted a few years I could buy 10 of them and still come out ahead.
not joking: i bought 2, and use one as the 'box spring'. it's pretty amazing sleeping on 24" of queen memory foam for less than half the cost of a single shitty mattress 10 years ago.
He was remarking that a box spring is there to provide certain things and that using another mattress instead of a box spring might not provide those benefits.
A few years ago when first moving to Seattle I bought a Queen spring mattress which has a thin memory foam pillowtop layer (effectively equivalent to a mattress pad). Less than $300. I've found it to be much better than the pure foam or pure spring beds I've experienced in hotels. I haven't had any overheating problems, except for when I briefly tried adding a plasticky bed bug prevention mattress cover which would have heated up any bed.
Thanks! I'll check it out - my $100 Ikea queen being near half a decade old and none too comfy even when new, it's pretty far past time I replaced it with something. This'll be a good place to start looking!
I use a spring mattress that has a layer of foam on top (see other comment). There are no heat problems, as long as you don't add a mattress cover. If you want to keep things extra cool regardless of mattress, try breathable satin sheets.
It is. I bought mine for 200-300$ on Amazon a while ago (lots of good reviews) and it was the best bed I’ve slept on. I laugh at people who spend thousands of dollars in their mattress and repeat out loud the marketing speech “you spend a third of your life on it”
Not surprising at all, because it's the main cause of aggressive and shady sales tactics. Which is exactly what happens when a company has too much money for sales and marketing. If someone created a business of selling X so profitable that 99% of sales is reinvested in sales and marketing you would have people selling X knocking your door 24/7 because sales would be the only way to scale up such business. However such profitable businesses are typically possible only because of false believes planted into the target audience. In this case, the parent comment debunks the false believe that paying $500-1000 for an average China-made mattress is a great deal.
Your comparison is unfair, given that new web apps are being created/updated (but also abandoned) constantly, and this requires work. Mattresses have been invented long ago, and can be mostly produced by robots. Mattresses should be a commodity, and be priced accordingly.
The evidence for the mattress industry being mostly a marketing scam is very old. There are a lot of brands but a very small number of manufacturers of the parts - there was only one for springs when this article was written seventeen years ago.
http://www.slate.com/articles/life/shopping/2000/11/going_to...
My brother has a foam mattress in his guest room. He found it on Craigslist (it was someone's unused guest bed), used it himself for several years, then replaced it with a larger spring mattress.
I can't stand sleeping on the foam mattress for more than a night or two. When I wake up it's like I've sunk into the foam and have been immobilized for hours. People are supposed to be able to move when they sleep.
He's since gotten an air bed for the other room, and I choose that one when I go to visit.
I ordered a spring mattress off the internet 7-8 years ago. I want to say overstock, but who knows. It wasn't a very good mattress--too thin. Even so it was giant when it was delivered. It's hard to see how a nice queen spring mattress could be sold online. Any company trying to sell that would have to figure out warehousing and last mile delivery.
I think one of the newer “bed in a box” companies do, either Leesa or Casper. They sell the usual rolled up foam mattress as well as a spring version, though I don’t know how they ship the spring mattress.
I sleep on firm mattresses and was able to find a "firm" rated cooling gel memory foam mattress. There are levels ~$300 where they have at least one layers of breathable egg crate foam.
Maybe things have improved in the past 10 years, but honestly any foam to me isn't comfortable - the bed needs to be firm enough to let my body breathe on it's own.
What's with all this talk about fancy imported mattresses from China? You can often just get a local foam wholesaler to cut you off a chunk of foam. Stick on a mattress protector if you really want to put on the Ritz.
I have a chunk of 2 pound, 4" polyurethane that I have been sleeping on for something like 20 years...
Just like TV's, you want to go see one in person. You'll find the big brands are playing model number games so you can't compare the same one between different stores.
Yep, I saw the signature sleep foam mattresses on amazon for about 300$. Compared to the ones in store that were all 5-20 times the cost, I just decided to try it cause even if there is a 10% chance it's good, it's worth a shot.
Bought 2x single mattresses from Aldi (AUD500 = US$390 total), to replace our old king mattress, and put a king overlay on top. So good having total isolation from any of your partner's tossing-and-turning.
Only problem is the combination is 15cm shorter than a real king mattress, so it's odd on the base. But meh.
When friends and family stay in my spare room, they love the mattress and ask where I got it from. £100, and I used it myself for a few years before it became the spare.
The irony here being, after I read this article, I'm now seeing ads for mattresses all over the web due to the embedded ads in the article. Marketing and advertising feels more like a virus than anything these days.
The only way is to blur your analytics. Move out of Google/Facebook. Install Ad Nauseam extension to not just block tracking but click on everything in the background. This will ruin the information they gather about you with noise.
Not really, just use a real adblocker and move on with your life. Adtech has plenty of problems but this kind of silly abuse is easily caught and filtered out with no effort. You might even cause yourself more annoyance with fraud and spam prevention tools used with common services.
>this kind of silly abuse is easily caught and filtered out with no effort
Not an AdNauseum user myself, but how can we tell this isn't ad industry FUD? They would certainly have a vested interest in discouraging the practice.
If nothing else at least AdNauseum can contribute somewhat to bandwidth and administrative costs.
Because it’s one of the most data driven industries with petabytes generated everyday of actual user behavior so abnormal usage, especially wild clicks, are among the easiest to catch.
Bandwidth costs would be a few extra bytes and you would likely only hurt yourself if using a metered connection. There are 0 extra admin costs.
If you don’t like the ads then avoid the site, but if you must still access the content the use an ad blocker because loading ads just to falsely click on them only generates a stronger signal than usual.
I've found Ikea to be a great place to buy a mattress. No shady sales tactics or aggressive salesmen, several models you can physically try out in the store, and good quality/value.
I went in there a couple of years ago, and bought a full-sized Sultan Havberg after trying a few out (it looks like they don't sell this anymore, but you can find it in their product catalog - http://www.ikea.com/ms/en_US/pdf/buying_guides_fy15/Mattress...)
At the time it felt fine, but when it arrived I found it nearly impossible to sleep on. I could feel the springs pressing into me as I inevitably rolled around over them. I guess you get what you pay for.
Fortunately a friend of mine whose girlfriend was moving in was giving away a memory foam mattress topper, which has turned it from one of the worse beds I've owned into the best bed I've owned.
It's really hard to anticipate how a mattress will actually feel when you try to sleep on it, and I recommend not skimping on one.
Next time ask the IKEA staff which one they buy. I forgot the name, but I bought one after a clerk in that department said, "We all own this one." It's amazing. Sometimes I wake up in the morning marveling at how comfortable I was.
Not sure if that's the one but I bought Hamnvik there. It was so nice that right after carying it up to our 3rd floor me and my girlfriend fell aslep on it in the middle of the day for no reason. Unfortunately it lasted just few years. They have 10 years warranty though.
I bought my mattress about 20 years ago (probably new forms of life evolving in it by now), one of those memory foam overlays gave it a new lease on life for about AU$200. Very comfortable. That and a down pillow and I'm hard pressed to leave bed at times.
Essentially just looks like some plastic foam, whether it's worth that price I couldn't say.
Seconded. Their latex mattresses are amazing if you are looking for a firm mattress, and priced significantly cheaper than anything else on the market. I have owned two over the last 14 years and both have been amazing: assisted in easing back pain and making my sleep more restful.
There is similar situation in the diamond engagement ring market, of all places! NiceIce, Beyond4Cs, Yourdiamondteacher, ProsumerDiamonds -- all affiliate marketing blogs that drive a lot of sales. No lawsuit yet to reveal the inner workings, but undoubtedly there is the same shadiness.
The fact diamonds can't be tracked means they're all, effectively, blood diamonds, given that everyone in the chain has a huge incentive for people to believe they're not and absolutely nobody has any incentive to tell the truth about them if they are.
Lying about whether a diamonds is a blood diamond is the only move which makes sense, so everyone must assume every diamond is a blood diamond, as it is impossible to prove otherwise.
Owners of non conflict diamonds have an incentive to demonstrate otherwise.
However, the massive diamond glut means DeBeers has an incentive to buy up conflict diamond using proceeds from regular diamond sales. Which arguably makes all natural diamonds blood diamonds more directly.
> Owners of non conflict diamonds have an incentive to demonstrate otherwise.
Right, but because diamonds can't be tracked, they're indistinguishable from the good liars who want to pass off blood diamonds as good ones.
> However, the massive diamond glut means DeBeers has an incentive to buy up conflict diamond using proceeds from regular diamond sales. Which arguably makes all natural diamonds blood diamonds more directly.
That's a little surprising to me, don't minerals usually have characteristic chemical fingerprints that allow them to be located once the "fingerprint" has been established?
That's a proposal, one, and, two, it doesn't mention anything about diamonds being tracked that way, only other ores. An important thing to do, but not entirely relevant to the discussion at hand.
My knowledge comes from my knowledge of what people have said about Brilliant Earth, which charges a premium based on the notion that its diamonds come from Canada.
> Small problem: Everyone who’s worked in the diamond industry—for more than a week—knows tracking diamonds all the way to the mine is flat out impossible.
The only other info I can find says that diamonds could theoretically be tracked, but not in any way which implies they'd be tracked chemically, just that they could be tracked through a supply chain, in a way ultimately dependent on the goodwill and honesty of the diamond industry
> Second, the video is incorrect when it states baldly, “Diamonds can’t be tracked.” It is true, there is nothing gemologically in a diamond that offers any proof of origin, as there sometimes is with colored stones. But there is no reason that diamonds can’t be tracked. Bananas are tracked. Coffee is tracked.
> If a manufacturer buys directly from a specific mine, establishing a diamond’s origin should be relatively easy. All it has to do is segregate those specific goods and then make its systems open to audit. For an extra 2 to 3 percent, I can’t imagine many manufacturers would have much problem doing that. (There are probably some manufacturers that would eat the diamonds if it meant an extra 2 to 3 percent. But that’s another story.)
> So just because diamonds haven’t been tracked traditionally doesn’t mean that is not possible—or that companies aren’t currently doing it. In addition to Brilliant Earth, the Forevermark, Canadamark, and Rio Tinto’s new Canadian and Australian diamond programs all make provenance claims.
I think I've made my case as to why I doubt this would be sufficient.
Odd. The arguments all make sense, but the prices I am seeing are nowhere near the quoted ones. Have the prices on moissanite jewelry been jacked up since this site was created or something?
There's a wide range of prices. More often than not, you'll end up buying one that is custom made in an American lab, so it might not be exactly cheap, though it is cheaper than an equivalent diamond.
We bought moissanite because I absolutely refuse to support the diamond industry in any way. For what its worth, friends of our who are obsessed with image can't tell the difference.
Is the sting in the tale (sic) that DeBeers (or its major shareholders) owns the moissanite company/production/patents and created the competition to secure both sides of the market?
Moissanite is largely (completely?) controlled by Charles & Covard, at least in the US. I don't see anything online indicating any crossover with DeBeers.
The mattress industry is a total scam. Nest Bedding's CEO, the one that was quoted in the article, even goes so far as to threaten people who post negative reviews on Yelp. I left a one-star review on their website, but it doesn't even appear in their product ratings. The ratings distribution on Nest's website is statistically impossible!
Other companies aren't any better. Casper cheapened the materials used in their mattress, but is still riding on positive reviews for the original model which used latex (more expensive) as a top layer.
It's really unfortunate. There's a great book called Metaphors We Live By [1] that digs into this same observation, using "arguments" as an example: you "attack" another person's argument, you "defend your point." You either win or lose. We could have just as easily chosen arguments to be a dance instead of a war.
A lot of narrative here in America eventually turns into good vs. evil, and War on X is an example of that. I've heard people attribute this to anything from religion, to the revolutionary origin of the country, to military-industrial conspiracy.
>We could have just as easily chosen arguments to be a dance instead of a war.//
I don't see how that works - partners dancing together are cooperating to improve the outcome. Those competing in business are (unfortunately, in capitalist systems) almost always trying to profit and destroy their competitors. It's perhaps a bit like moshing?
War fits as a better metaphor for companies under capitalism.
If the companies were helping each other and targeting better products with less profit, that would be more like dance partners.
I think the idea is backwards. We don't use military metaphors for anything competitive, we use words related to competition for describing war, because war is competitive by nature. It goes back and forth from there.
Now this made me thinking of other online review sites. Are they all like that?
I couldn't give an honest review, if I get more money from B than A. So if they state otherwise, I call it fraud
And I know that's what people call marketing in general and there might be some truth in it - but that's why you go to these review site to get a neutral view.
So normally the customer should pay the reviewer, he is doing work for him, because when the company pays the reviewer ...
Yes. Any online review should be taken with a huge grain of salt. The vast majority are influenced by affiliate payments.
Some, like credit cards and other financial products, are especially bad since the payments per conversion (i.e. person who looks at the review site and then signs up for the credit card) can be massive. But even seemingly innocent niche markets, like light-weight backpacking equipment, can be full of affiliate marketing.
That said, just because a blog or website is influenced by affiliate marketing doesn't mean they don't have useful information in their reviews. They usually are accurate when describing a product's basic attributes. Where they typically bend the truth is when they're comparing products against each other (the one with higher affiliate payments is almost always better), or they simply won't talk about genuinely better products that don't pay for conversions.
And they certainly won't tell you "don't buy any of these things". I recently came across BabyGearLab (http://babygearlab.com), which has nice reviews of, say, different car seats or different strollers, and will tell you which one is the best if money is no object, which one is the best if you're on a limited budget, etc. But what I really want is the web site that will tell me "you don't need a smart sock". Yes, that's a thing.
Of course I can just not buy a smart sock. But I pretty much know that at some point I'm going to buy some thing that's almost as useless because it's for the baby.
This is the reason why I’m traditional journalism there is a very strict divide between the content and business sides of the company. The journalists don’t know about the deals, and the business side don’t get to provide input on the content side. Unfortunately in these smaller, newer forms of content business, those concerns are just ignored.
Erm, the traditional journalism buisness knows ads as well. And there are countless examples of articles being stopped investigating/published, because the main add customer objected and threatened to leave
Or when it so happens, that the boss of the media concern is a golfclub buddy of the senator who is accused of something.
It does happen, but most of the industry has a really strong negative reaction to the journalists and business side mixing in particular ways. It's a cultural divide that was established a long time ago and is still very important now.
There are very few review sites for any given product / service that aren't in the pocket of businesses through things like referral systems and sponsorships. It's an industry.
This is how the entire affiliate industry works. Content curators will generally pick the most profitable products to promote, not always but most of the time. I tried to explain that here to the HN crowd that the wirecutter reviews fall into the same affiliate bias but got downvotes to hell. The mere fact that most of their products point to amazon should tell you that they cannot possibly claim to give an honest review. I say this knowing there will be a ton of replies telling me I’m wrong but sure, what would a super affiliate know anything about that...
The Wirecutter/Sweethome states that part of their review filter is that reviewed products must be available for purchase online. This results in the exclusion of a lot of specialty and other retail-only goods.
I will note that for many products, they have recommended items not sold on Amazon, even over competing products that are available for sale on Amazon.
And let's face it: when Amazon sells the majority of goods most people are likely to buy (and that you are likely to review), "affiliate bias" isn't really that big of an issue because it just means you're comparing one Amazon product against another. At that point, the primary bias would be from recommending the most expensive product available on Amazon, thus earning the highest commission. And Wirecutter/Sweethome definitely doesn't do that.
Today's society does not favor unselfish behavior. Somebody with morality or the other qualities you enumerated is more limited than somebody without them.
Greed is somewhat what our race is breeded for in terms of society design. Greed is rewarded by our society.
While I'm sure you're right about the root of the word, this notion of entrepreneur itself comes from the french verb "entreprendre", which means something similar to undertake or enter a task/business.
I did not say it would be easy ... Only that it's easier then producing and selling the products/services/needs yourself. It will take much less work if you figure out a clever way to stand in-between.
I'm shocked that no one has posted https://www.themattressunderground.com/ yet. It is totally worth a look. The amount of technical detail is right up HN's alley.
Full disclosure: I paid nothing to the site, but used it to find a local mattress shop (and manufacturer) and purchased a mid-range queen mattress at a good price. Apparently the shop owner had received quite a few referrals from them, but he never paid them or received any payment from them.
Foam actually lacks the support of a traditional mattress. If you do end up making a switch, take a look at your typical sleeping position. Medium firm is good for side sleepers and firmest you can find is better for your back but honestly inner spring is best for your back.
I've suffered with backpain for almost a decade, a new foam mattress (Ikea) replacing a spring mattress seems to have helped a lot. It's a supportive foam with a memory foam top; firmer than the sprung mattress.
The only downside is, err, it doesn't bounce when you want to bounce, if y' catch my drift.
It feels quite different, definitely warmer (not a problem in UK), took a few days to get used to.
I lasted a month on $600 foam. I woke up several mornings with sore hips. Finally, I called the local rescue mission to donate it. When I explained that I felt bad passing it on to someone else, they said they are picking up a couple of these mattresses each week! It seems like it's a hard adjustment for many... zing.
Ah. It’s quite possible it was too soft and yes foam does get softer over time. There are some firmness levels between some brands of foam mattresses where they use different combinations of different types of foams that give a firmer feel but most box foam junk comes in a medium-soft variety to appeal to the broad market.
FWIW, I've been very satisfied with mine for three years now. It's a much firmer foam than memory foam, and gives me just the right amount of support for side sleeping.
The whole online mattress industry has a bit of a stink to it. Here in Australia, I have been stalked for months by a particular brand of online mattress, Koala(?), on my Facebook feed, which I ignored, but on the past few weeks, I see the SAME ads on FB with the SAME girl in them etc., sold as a completely new brand.
I assume the original company either went bankrupt or received a C&D from somewhere and had to change their name. But this does nothing at all to increase my confidence in these online sellers. Welcome to the Cialis of 2017...
I don't think it's possible to implement an affiliate program in a completely ethical way.
Even if you try to make your reviews fair and honest you will still have a subconscious bias to give every product as high score as possible, because high scores generate affiliate purchases.
I can tell you from experience that web hosting affiliates like this are absolutely the most "faked" of any industry out there. Affiliate payments from webhosts can equal 100x what a referral pays monthly, and the payouts are an ever increasing "race to the top" as hosts attempt to pump their customer numbers up
Not VC-funded, but MoneySavingExpert which is a fairly well regarded and large UK site for people interested in financial products, FI, etc was sold by its owner in 2012 for £87M. It makes most or all of its money from affiliate links, although it has a transparency policy where links that make money for the site have an asterisk next to them, and they also include (but not as prominently) non-affiliate links.
There are some revenue numbers in the Wikipedia page:
Personally, I think it's not a terrible way in making some sort of revenue. As long as it's honest and doesn't try to manipulate their potential customers. I'm trying to make some revenue from Udemy affiliation using my Twitter account as it relates to my profile and I don't see why others shouldn't be doing it as well.
I think it's a perfectly legitimate way of making money, so long as users aren't deliberately deceived into getting a worse deal to get a better deal for the company
No. Affiliate sales is just a basic "every sale you send my way, you make some money" arrangement, different only from traditional commissioned sales in that the affiliates usually don't work "directly" for the company selling the product.
Multi level marketing (MLM) schemes are situations in which people make money, or are promised money, based on their ability to recruit additional affiliate salespeople. The typical MLM pitch is "if you sell product X, we'll give you a (typically huge) sum of money, and also if you convince someone else to enter into this same agreement, we'll give you a different (usually smaller) sum of money, and what's more you'll get money for every sale that recruit makes, any people they recruit, and any sales they make, recursively on down the tree."
The con is usually in the fact that product X is difficult née impossible to sell, and that entering into such an agreement in the first place requires payment into the scheme. Those factors result in the people towards the "root" of the tree making tons of money simply from the fact that more people are getting recruited and paying in at lower levels. They make money from the tree growing, even though the leaves are not making sales.
This is widely considered unethical (and illegal, in some cases) since its primary profit engine is recruitment under usually-false pretenses. MLM can be practiced ethically between a given two parties, but usually only makes money due to subsequent unethical practices (e.g. one seasoned affiliate marketeer agrees to be a recruit of another such seasoned salesperson in a multilevel scheme, knowing full well the behavior of the scheme; they then both go on to enrich themselves and each other by shilling unsuspecting rubes with the typical "you can work your own hours, get tons of money, and, if you grow your network big enough, rake in the cash while your recruits do all the hard work!" sell concealing the "...for a nominal [signup|monthly|etc] fee" hook).
>based on their ability to recruit additional affiliate salespeople
If Casper took owership of every outstanding matress review website there is and ever will be (or made some of their own in the pocess and have it high ranked, whichever is the cheapest form of tactics), affiliation would never be an issue. Wouldn't be ethic, but eh...
Specifically, if sales = Sales Dev Rep + Closer, then affiliate sites (leadgen) is like outsourcing the SDR and them getting a commission or referral fee.
Many podcasters are in the same boat, though they try to mask it. I only listen to probably 3 podcasts, but I hear the same sponsor reads on a daily basis. Casper, Fracture, Betterment, Warby-Parker, etc. The reads given by these sponsors are only guidelines, the better podcasters personalize them to make them sound like real endorsements not just ad reads.
Even when you can tell the difference, it's hard to ignore the effect of someone you enjoy listening to do the read. With my favorite podcasts, I enjoy the "company" of the hosts, and have an implicit bias towards what they say. So an ad read by them is extremely effective. If it was a canned commercial like on TV, I'd be able to tune it out much more effectively.
They advertise one of the non-Casper mattress brands, though. Internet mattress hipsters!
Also, two brands of internet razor. Podcasts seem to specialize in advertising things that I definitely would want to buy in an actual shop and not the internet.
They do identify them as sponsors. The just read the ad spots during the normal podcast, in the same conversational tone as the podcast itself. They sound just like podcast content, and even with disclaimers, they have a strong effect.
This reminds me a lot of the web hosting industry, which also has a huge issue with questionable review sites set up for affiliate payments and hosting companies owning supposedly neutral sites about the industry.
There are at least a few active forums you can ask about good hosting companies on (which is something the mattress buying process seems to lack), but then you have to deal with astroturfing and companies 'hinting' that you should use their service in every post.
Either way, I think these industries (and many others) are in this situation because the internet has just made good, high quality journalism unprofitable. Along with clickbait and actual lies, it seems affiliate commissions are where the money is in writing nowadays, meaning there's a huge incentive to write pandering crap and an equally large disincentive to care about being a truly helpful source for this information.
Felt about right for the complexity of the story and the thoroughness of the research. I think we should be encouraging long form journalism, not falling back to click-bait news.
Sad thing is even with full disclosures there are vast numbers of people who will not read the disclosure. Some sites do a bang up job of making the disclosures so unnoticeable that they never lose a referral.
I really knew very little about the whole affiliate marketing economy before reading this. My primary reaction after reading it is just to SMH at the fundamentally greedy acquisitive dishonesty of the whole mess. I realize it's nothing new, but still.
> Much of this traffic went to Amazon (when Derek lacked a direct affiliate relationship, he sent traffic to a brand’s page on Amazon, with whom he did).
Something is not not right here. Was Derek banned from the Amazon affiliates program? How else does he "lack a direct affiliate relationship" ? I made a viral cat videos site for kicks and was approved by amazon affiliates to link to cat product reviews... so why wouldn't someone like this guy be able to get a direct amazon.com affiliate account?
I think the author meant he lacked a direct affiliate relationship with the mattress websites. So instead of linking to the mattress websites, he linked to Amazon.
Article sounds like infotainment to me, made to advertise mattress advertising websites. After reading that article you certainly going to remember their name.
Everything in the article is probably true, however.
It's a sad state of affairs: We all want unbiased reviews, but we won't pay for them. We all want to know the spread of prices so we can balance service/trust with cheap, but price aggregators are all either blocked out of existence or become affiliate listings.
While so many things have come true, there are still a few internet dreams like free-flow price summaries and wisdom-of-the-honest-crowd which are sadly still just beyond our grasp.