B&H Rated #1

[dave_s]

If they polled their own subscribers, you'd still need to know how they did the survey, but on the face of it, the survey is dubious. Ideally, you'd want to do this survey on the unselected customer databases of all these businesses, but you'd never get hold of those. Asking the CR subscriber database to rank on-line photo dealers is akin to letting the population of Denmark choose the next President of the U.S.-- you're just not sampling the right population.

 

Arcane details: there's a high probability that people ranking a specific store have never used that store. This is true even if the survey tries to limit the response to users of that store. If we assume that 1% of the subscribers of CR have ever used Abe's of Maine (probably on the high side), then 99% of CR subscribers have no knowledge on which to rate it. If even 2% of those make a mistake and rank it, then they outnumber the 'real' users by 2:1. Someone who knows about statistics and research design will know the name for this, but it's something like pre-test selection or specificity.

[GerrySiegel]

Survey sampling,yeah, recalls all kinds of college day memories about reliability and validity, sample selection and sampling bias...Written check- in forms covering all kinds of products go to people who subscribe to CU and then decide to turn in a long survey of multiple categories. And one lists the retailers from whom you bought in the past X years I recall. They have sent me the survey form on a number of times and I just can't remember the details. It seemed to be as reasonable as any of these voluntary written things get and is, I imagine subject to analytical tests by the measurement staff of their labs. Satisfaction is subjective and there is the rub. The suprise,nay shocker, is how Abe's wound up with any place in the finals list. That is plain weird given their low standing with all of us who are still half sane.

 

I will write to CU and challenge that just to see what the editors have to say. I am a member in good standing for years:-)

[thomas_hardy1]

There is way too much good, free information and reviews around too even think about paying for CR.

[mark_sirota1]

FYI: I sent a note to Consumers Union about Abe's of Maine, with a link to this <a

href="http://www.photo.net/neighbor/view-one?subcategory=2&neighbor_to_neighbor_id=306442">photo.net Member

Recommendations page</a>, which says:

<p>

<i>Abe's of Maine : PAYING for REVIEWS

<br>

Brian Mottershead , July 14, 2005; 12:10 P.M.

<p>

As the Editor of photo.net, I caution people against believing the positive reviews about this retailer. We have

reports that they are paying for positive reviews, and the positive reports are not consistent with the overall

negative reputation which they have gained and which is reflected in the earlier reports and in reports on other

sites.

<p>

We are regularly deleting reports from people who join less that 24 hours before a positive review and do nothing

else on the site but write a positive review of Abe's. I have just deleted 18 such reports. Besides these there

are many recent positive reports from people who joined more than 1 day before their report (and whose report was

therefore not deleted), but who have little other participation on the site.

<p>

Please do not rely on the feedback about this retailer in this section, because it is suspect.

</i><p>

I got a very appreciative reply.