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Wirecutter strike and boycott Thanksgiving through Cyber Monday

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Re: Wirecutter strike and boycott Thanksgiving through Cyber Monday

#111

Post by noneeeed »

SV_BubbleTime wrote: post #102
noneeeed wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We need a new mattress, after about half an hour of searching for reviews I realised that there was no way I was going to find any genuinely honest reviews anywhere. Search results are packed with full-time mattress review sites that are all clearly getting affiliate payments of some form or other, many of them seem to have the same content. There might be some honest ones out there, but they are drowned out by all t…

Maybe we should have like… a place you can go feel them in person. Like a building where there would be a few of each model and you can test them BEFORE you buy one? /s. Mattress stores and mattress shopping is the fucking worst. Ultra scammy and there is a clear reason that the industry was turned upside down once someone figured out you can fit a mattress in a box and ship it. The last time I went mattress shopping…

Yep! I don't know what it is about mattresses specifically, but every part of the industry from highstreet shops to the online products all make me feel like I'm being ripped off in a way that no other product does.

Bed salesmen are worse than car salesmen.

Re: Wirecutter strike and boycott Thanksgiving through Cyber Monday

#112

Post by ethbr0 »

noneeeed wrote: post #111
SV_BubbleTime wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe we should have like… a place you can go feel them in person. Like a building where there would be a few of each model and you can test them BEFORE you buy one? /s. Mattress stores and mattress shopping is the fucking worst. Ultra scammy and there is a clear reason that the industry was turned upside down once someone figured out you can fit a mattress in a box and ship it. The last time I went mattress shopping…

Yep! I don't know what it is about mattresses specifically, but every part of the industry from highstreet shops to the online products all make me feel like I'm being ripped off in a way that no other product does. Bed salesmen are worse than car salesmen.

There was a 2018 bit on Planet Money about mattress stores (and specifically Mattress Firm): https://www.npr.org/transcripts/676543180

tl;dr - Turns out the markup at a mattress store is about 100%, which helps the economics of store rent vs profit. Also, Mattress Firm went on a debt-leveraged buying spree of their competitors (why there are so many physical stores). Oh, and also Steinhoff (think South African IKEA) bought them in 2016, for what seemed an inflated price. And it turned out Steinhoff was (or was soon to be) under investigation for accounting fraud: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steinhoff_International#Contro...

Re: Wirecutter strike and boycott Thanksgiving through Cyber Monday

#113

Post by ethbr0 »

ev1 wrote: post #50
f0e4c2f7 wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh no! I did as well. Who is the current honest broker of product reviews?

Anything that contains affiliate, referral, or commission links I do not trust.

What monetization models do you trust more?

Re: Wirecutter strike and boycott Thanksgiving through Cyber Monday

#114

Post by ethbr0 »

acomjean wrote: post #107
hoppyhoppy2 wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Consumer Reports has a long history of subscriber-funded independent reviews. They refuse all advertising, free/discounted items, etc. to prevent conflicts of interest. They review everything from cars and lawnmowers to mattresses and electronics, but depending on what niche of electronics you're looking at they may or may not have the kind of reviews you're looking for. https://www.consumerreports.org

Available in many libraries. They rate products in a bunch of categories using a table and a circle which would be various levels of full color depending on how a product rated. which meant sometimes you wouldn't just go to the highest rated if one part of the product scored lower in a category. Its an interesting data visualization method. Plus the table usually has specs too. https://www.consumerreports.org/consume…

As long as the categories can be boiled down into reasonable, discrete levels, I'm a huge fan of radar charts for quick comparisons. They communicate multivariate differences pretty well, compared to alternatives. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radar_chart

Unfortunately, they also require summarization, so they're only as good as the individual quality projections into discrete levels. Powerful when used correctly. Useless when incorrectly, or your audience isn't visually-oriented.

Re: Wirecutter strike and boycott Thanksgiving through Cyber Monday

#115

Post by dharmab »

ChrisArchitect wrote: post #105

Hot take: this seems like a very low-traffic period for them as anyone searching BFCM deals will have done the reading before the days? / content written before the days

Wirecutter runs a live update feed on major sale days that aggregates surprise/short term deals.

Re: Wirecutter strike and boycott Thanksgiving through Cyber Monday

#116

Post by newfonewhodis »

coolso wrote: post #96
newfonewhodis wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know what you are referring to but plenty of times they link directly to a retailers' website where they don't earn commissions. It's also a reasonable way for them to make money that isn't: 1. Invasive tracking 2. Nasty ads 3. Direct subscriptions Take your entitlement elsewhere.

> Take your entitlement elsewhere. What are your thoughts regarding ad blocking? Specifically, do you also find people who use adblockers (I assume you don't use one of course) entitled?

Absolutely (I am one of them though I'm a member of or otherwise monetarily support publications I frequent).

The thing I hate is people who try to come up transparently disingenuous reasons for why they are entitled to not support organizations they extract value out of ("ehh I don't like your CSS so I'm going to not give you any money").

Re: Wirecutter strike and boycott Thanksgiving through Cyber Monday

#117

Post by joshe »

wolverine876 wrote: post #84

I'm surprised Consumer Reports isn't enormously popular here. It's not personal, engaging blog-style writing - it seems written to help the broadest possible audience, but it's the most technical research by far: They have actual domain experts, labs (well-resourced), scientific method, and loads of objective data - e.g., for bicycle helmets, they have human head/body models, put all the helmets on them (I'd guess 50…

Was a huge fan 20 years ago, but it's low quality now. They just don't do much work now and the testing is superficial and lazy.

Re: Wirecutter strike and boycott Thanksgiving through Cyber Monday

#118

Post by noneeeed »

ethbr0 wrote: post #112
noneeeed wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yep! I don't know what it is about mattresses specifically, but every part of the industry from highstreet shops to the online products all make me feel like I'm being ripped off in a way that no other product does. Bed salesmen are worse than car salesmen.

There was a 2018 bit on Planet Money about mattress stores (and specifically Mattress Firm): https://www.npr.org/transcripts/676543180 tl;dr - Turns out the markup at a mattress store is about 100%, which helps the economics of store rent vs profit. Also, Mattress Firm went on a debt-leveraged buying spree of their competitors (why there are so many physical stores). Oh, and also Steinhoff (think South African IKEA)…

That explains a lot. I must have missed that episode, thanks for the pointer.

Re: Wirecutter strike and boycott Thanksgiving through Cyber Monday

#119

Post by hoppyhoppy2 »

noneeeed wrote: post #75
donmcronald wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The whole affiliate marketing space is a dirty business. Saying affiliate relationship is just softer language for kickback IMO. The incentives are the same. I think all reviews with affiliate links should have to be labeled as paid promotion. This [1] sleepopolis saga is an amazing read if you’ve never seen it. 1. https://www.fastcompany.com/3065928/sleepopolis-casper-blogg...

We need a new mattress, after about half an hour of searching for reviews I realised that there was no way I was going to find any genuinely honest reviews anywhere. Search results are packed with full-time mattress review sites that are all clearly getting affiliate payments of some form or other, many of them seem to have the same content. There might be some honest ones out there, but they are drowned out by all t…

Consumer Reports reviews mattresses, and they're independent and (imo) very trustworthy. A subscription costs money but some local libraries offer access.

Re: Wirecutter strike and boycott Thanksgiving through Cyber Monday

#120

Post by mindslight »

debaserab2 wrote: post #97
mindslight wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean when someone's motivation comes from what they themselves are interested in and their wanting to pass along their knowledge to help others, as opposed to say the external incentive of being financially compensated. I know this seems completely foreign in this age of played out incentives, but such publishing used to be quite common before independent sites were drowned out by webspam. You'd do a search, dig th…

I think you're waxing nostalgically about a time that wasn't nearly as good as you think it was. There's orders of magnitudes of more useful information on the internet today than there was decades ago. Yes, it's more often on platforms and not usually personal websites anymore, but there are still plenty of creators doing it out of passion, even if sometimes - but definitely not always - they also have financial inc…

Well I'm definitely remembering many occasions of finding sites that had in-depth technical analysis. And being unable to find such discussion today. There likely is a higher quality of information today (just due to sheer participation), but the stuff that's easy to find by searching is generally quite shallow. If you're lucky you'll get two or three forum threads that mostly address your question.
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