eHow

Have you ever Googled a car repair and it took you right to EHow? The writers for EHow quite often instructs you to open up the hood, change the part, then shut the hood. How about a home repair article? Go to your home improvement store and buy the material, then repair your home. You are better off going to YouTube and getting the rest of the 99% of the steps that EHow conveniently forgot to tell you. If they do give you more than 3 steps, it's not always accurate.

I attempted to use the site "ehow.com". It turns out the site is a complete fraud, stealing "how-to's" from legitimate sites. I went looking for instructions on replacing a head gasket on a 1.9 liter ford engine, there were some errors on the site so I sent a question to the web- manager. After 30 days without an answer I get an email stating that "my problem" was resolved. I re-sent the same problem along with excerpts from "chilton's auto repair manual" using exactly the same wording(with exactly the same errors).
Please don't waste your time with "eHow.com", and tell their advertisers that eHow is a complete fraud, and reflects badly on their companies. Thanking you in advance for your attention, Henry

The site should get better qualified moderation. People sometimes do post some ridiculous explanations.

They list free Vin reports. You fill out all kinds of personal information and then at the end of it FreeVinReport.org tells you "our system is down" so go get one with one of our "partners" for a discount price. NO. Even though you have asked for No Services, including "insurance" my phone started ringing off the hook with auto insurance companies saying I asked for a quote. I will never get on EHow again. Ever. Scam, scam, scam

They disabled my account even though I never wrote an article for them. They did not respond after I contacted them to ask why.

Useless jabber

Seriously, do they "research" their "authors"? There is so much BAD information and advice! My opinion is don't rely on 90% of what you read there.

This general interest website is bright, cheerful and informative without being to agressive. Ads are positiond so that the main article of interest can be read without too much inteference.
I like the vacation and travel section, which does a nice job of describing scams to avoid while traveling.
Also, when the site asks if the article read was helpful, a thank you note appears after my reply.

I really like how they explain things in detail and by steps.

Asked 1 medical question. Their answer was of zero benefit (ie; offered no hints as to various things that could cause the problem I was having). They then sent me an offer to "subscribe" to their service, which I declined. Am still getting monthly fees showing up on my credit card (and I have to call my credit card to have them removed each month). I can find no instructions as to how to terminate my dealings with this company. The only phone number I have (as shown on my credit card bill) is answered by a machine who does not identify their company and where you can only leave a message that is never returned... It's a SCAM!

Two fundamental objections to this site:
1. They really need to discover the value of visual support for the "information" they post. They seem to think their clever wording of complex procedures and designs will suffice without pictures... when, in fact, it usually DOESN'T.
2. They have too many posts on the same topic, which tends to clutter up a set of search results with similar entries that are equally unhelpful. Hey, eHow... more isn't always better.

I have tried several times to use this site for solutions to problems for auto repair and lawn mower repair. In each case, the instructions were incorrect for the make/model of the equipment I was attempting to diagnose and/or repair. I have learned to avoid this site when looking for usable knowledge and advice. Its been a big waste of my time.

Didn't answer my question, took my money, locked me out of the link they gave me.

Ya gotta love 'em. They are very consistant

1) information is frequently incorrect
2)"how to" articles are usually too brief and simplistic to be useful
3) often multiple articles covering same topic
4) directions are interrupted by advertising blocks and pop up ads

EHow should really be called "How-to for Morons". The articles are apparently written by the same folks who prepare those assembly instructions that come with cheap furniture kits. They're clearly paid writers who are copying information from other unreliable sources on topics that they know nothing about (click on the contributer's name to get their bio and you'll see what I mean). I've looked at dozens of topics on that site and the info is usually incomplete, inaccurate, or irrelevant to the question addressed. When it is accurate the instructions given are typically so generic and obvious as to be insulting; "to replace the battery in your remote control, remove the battery cover, insert new batteries, then replace the cover" - D'uh! Overall, I'd say eHow is even worse than message board sites like Yahoo Answers where at least you get several unreliable opinions to choose from.

I'd SO like to write a glowing review of this site. The member-contributed articles cover an astonishing range of topics, ranging from how to repair a computer to how to address an envelope, and the site is well laid out and looks thoroughly reliable.

But it's not. I recently sought instructions on how to upgrade the CPU in my laptop, which I hadn't previously opened. Having a step-by-step guide to which screws need to come out and which don't is a great help, and I found the appropriate article here and printed out the instructions, which were clear and concise.

Unfortunately they were for an entirely different laptop, as I discovered immediately, so I ended up just doing the upgrade with commonsense and a willingness to overlook the odd screw or two that was left over at the end.

The site is definitely worth seeking out if you're interested in trying something new or getting a refresher on something you've now forgotten how to do, but don't use it as your sole reference if you're doing something that needs to be right the first time around.

Some of the articles are a bit flaky and seem to have been written simply because the writers are claimed to receive $15 - $20 an hour for them. I don't need to be told that the best flowers to use in my room as an air freshener are the ones that smell nice. I really could have figured that one out for myself. And the community aspect of the site doesn't seem to have got off the ground, with a sparsely populated forum and groups that mainly seem to have only a handful of members and postings at the rate of one a month.

Ehow tries, but could do a lot better.

SCAM, SCAM, SCAM! Don't submit a question with your email address or your inbox will get slammed with spam.

A lot of these people are not experts.
I look at the dance instruction videos, tango, rumba swing etc.
These experts look like intermediate level students.

Not all of them, there are a few gems, but not many.

I'm just peeved that no one notices my site...

Grumble..

Content farm with useless information. Most of the submitters are complete dumbasses. Cluttering up search results.

EHow may be fine for some types of advice, but it should **not** be relied upon for advice regarding the care of pets--especially sick ones! Some eHow articles on animal care are obviously written by people who have NO CLUE what they are talking about. I read an article that says you should put cat flea powder on a rabbit to get rid of mites. You should never put products on rabbits that are intended for cats and dogs. You can kill your rabbit. Frontline *forbids* the use of its flea products on rabbits due to so many rabbit deaths and neurological problems in rabbits whose well-meaning owners used it on their bunnies. I feel it is very, very irresponsible of eHow to put information out there that is so potentially harmful.

Inaccurate information and won't respond to correction request from manufacturer

Just read the eHow forum before you take a chance on this scam site. They used to be legitimate, but they are not any more. Many of us think they were just gathering enough content to lure investors, and now that they're big-time, they are scamming residual writers. But you can see for yourself if you spend some time on their forums.

99% of their articles are worthless trivia. Why does Google rank them so highly?

We've run into another problem with Ehow.
Ehow hasn't paid the hardworking writers for Oct. 2009. They blame it on a bug. This bug has infested the payment area more then once. Funny how this bug causes writer's not to be paid and never over-paid. It's December and the problems have not been fixed. If there was ever an overpayment bug, Ehow would squash it instantly.

It also seems that the article views have disappeared. Ehow updates the article count, article views and the earnings all separately. Lately when an article is deleted by Ehow, the views and earnings disappear too. The earnings update after the article and views get deleted then the earnings update and doesn't include the missing views. Does Google know?
You use to be a better place Ehow.

Ehow's Religious Bias
Ehow has been deleting articles like crazy and it appears they are under the category "Religion, Other" There are over 2400 Christian articles which is a lot more then all the other religions put together. They are deleting the articles saying they are opinions and not based on fact. In other words, they're not Christian articles. Ehow has also changed their format. When searchers try to find something they have to go page by page to get to the non Christian articles. Also the articles are in order of the author not the title or subject. Since the authors are not in alphabetical order it's hard to determine why they come up the way they do, the lumping of articles by author is extremely unfair since they would get all the views and make all the money. There are more complaints pouring into my email. Once I investigate these I will update this review.

People have been banned from Ehow, stating they committed Click Fraud. No payment will be issued.