Richard J.

Angie's List charges users for what other review sites provide free, with the suggestion that its reviews are thereby more reliable. I've found however that there's no reason to believe that its reviews are superior in any way. Furthermore, to participate you have to accept a membership agreement that can have huge negative consequences for you (see below). And unless you're really careful you'll find you're signed up in perpetuity, paying a new membership fee each year.

Before writing this critique I purchased a membership, studied its materials, and also as a journalist interviewed spokesperson Cheryl Reid by phone.

Angie seeks to minimize ringer listings (reviews by the reviewees) by "proprietary" means which may include cross-checking reviewers' phone numbers, addresses, email addresses, etc. Angie also restricts the number of reviews of a single provider coming from one user—but I couldn't discern much if any protection against a merchant's attempting to buy off bad reviews by offering incentives to the reviewers to withdraw them.

Particularly worrisome is the fact that Angie will without prompting reveal to each service provider the identity of every reviewer of that provider's service. After I discovered this practice I asked a rep about it. The rep boasted that no lawsuit against a reviewer had prevailed. The rep would not say how many lawsuits had been filed. Of course, defending even against lawsuits that fail can be extremely costly, stressful, and time-consuming. "Reputation protection" services have of late become quite popular, and there is a dismaying probability of lawsuits from negative reviews. There's also the fact that a consumer may continue with a problematic provider (like a physician specialist for example) rather than take a chance with a competitor. In such instances the consumer may be reluctant to write a review even partially negative, knowing that the provider will be reading the review.

The likely result of Angie's notification policy is all but the most positive reviews will be self-suppressed or at least toned down, affecting seriously the reliability of Angie's List assessments.

Angie's List does accept advertising from listed providers who wish to offer discounts, and it reportedly solicits that advertising aggressively. Members may choose to search for providers offering these discounts, which purportedly don't otherwise affect the listings or their placement. They're available only from A- and B-rated providers.

***Membership agreements***

You must agree to Angie's privacy policy before joining. This document takes up an excruciatingly long page of tiny text, essentially impossible to get through and harder yet to comprehend. However: the super-diligent will note that buried in the interminable fine print is permission for Angie to disclose *any* information "permitted by relevant law." (So why all the fine print? Guess.)

The general membership agreement makes you liable for "liquidated damages" of up to $10,000.00—yes, ten thousand dollars—for a single violation of its terms, which cover such issues as how you use the reviews. These terms are about as easy to understand as those of the privacy policy. Moreover, you incredibly must agree in advance to any changes in the agreement made without notice to you.

(On the other hand, Angie is not at all strict about fulfilling its own membership obligations. The same membership agreement states without qualification that "Monthly and annual memberships include a subscription to the Angie's List monthly magazine." Yet in over a year I never received a single issue. When I inquired, I was told that magazines aren't sent to those with my class of membership—but that I was free to upgrade.)

Many members will be surprised to learn that they've signed up for membership in perpetuity. Angie's memberships are opt-out, that is, automatically renewed and re-charged, until the member affirmatively resigns. You can opt out of the opt-out when signing up—but if you do, get confirmation in writing!

***Site navigation and customer service***

Site navigation is quirky and sometimes frustrating. Customer service is highly accessible and friendly but too often clueless, and simple inquiries can consume half an hour or more.

***Bottom line***

I don't advise joining unless (a) you realize that Angie's reviews are skewed to the positive, (b) you're unconcerned about your privacy, (c) you're willing to wade through the extensive and opaque general membership agreement, (d) you're prepared to re-read the changeable agreement before taking any action related to the service, and (e) before joining you've opted out from automatic renewal, and have written confirmation in hand.

1. Like too many other websites, this one sneakily makes you await the results of a lengthy search and provide your own information before it reveals what you must pay for a deeper search--seemingly an opt-out monthly fee. (If you decide to pay it, be sure to opt out immediately.)

2. Before committing any money, read Brian's SiteJabber review at http://bit.ly/2ERzUeV and rep Carla's response. It's perplexing why Carla submitted any response, as it completely ignores Brian's primary objection, which is the absence of the paid reports' important information.

I volunteer at HelpOwl.com (under the name Odin) to assist folks with a broad range of products including the widely used Canon products. For many years Canon's online support was comprehensive and top-notch, maybe the best in the business. For an inexplicable reason Canon has removed entirely that support site and substituted this new one, which is rarely helpful. I've tried by both email and phone to find out what's behind the change, but cannot. Of course you could always phone Canon but after 90 days phone support will probably cost you.

Avvo publishes consumer reviews that paint an excessively rosy picture of the respective practitioners. That's because Avvo will arbitrarily reject reviews on the basis of what it deems to be "personal attacks, insulting comments, or accusations."

Only after your service is completed will TaskRabbit notify you of a 7.5% "Trust & Safety" fee that is separate from the service fee. (The service fee is deducted from the take of the "tasker," but the T&S fee is simply added on and kept by the company.) My inquiry about this duplicitous practice has gone unanswered.

Another problem with TaskRabbit is one of communication. After arranging a service, I needed to provide additional details to the tasker. The only way to do that was through TaskRabbit--but TaskRabbit never conveyed the message (or even got back to me!).

First of all, I need to take issue with previous reviewer Ian's panning of this site on the basis of its privacy policy. I invite readers to review that policy, at https://privnote.com/privacy/. I see no problem with it whatsoever, and I've written Ian repeatedly in the hope he would share with me his concerns, but I've received no response.

I recommend Privnote as a free alternative to paid by-subscription email tracking services, which I've found to be worthless or worse (worse because of misplaced reliance the user may place on them). Instead of tracking your email, Privnote tracks when the recipient reads a note to which she's referred by a special link you include in the message.

Privnote promotes itself as a means to send notes that "self-destruct," and that's true enough. In my view, though, its value lies, as mentioned, in its tracking capability. A secondary benefit is the air of importance assumed by a private note that can be seen only via the link.

The self-destruct feature can be marginally useful if you want to be sure nobody else has read your note. And before the note's been read you can use that feature to cancel the note, should you have second thoughts.

This review is of the "USP Verified Dietary Supplements" page, which you can reach directly at www.usp.org/USPVerified/dietarySupplements/supplements.html.

We all want to be sure the nutritional supplements we buy are acceptably pure and potent. To this end some shell out $33 a year to ConsumerLab.com for results of its periodic surveys. In most cases, however, a wiser course is to get completely reliable information here at no charge, from the venerable U.S. Pharmacopoeia. A plus is that you can also find out where to buy the listed products.

(It's true that USP charges the companies for its seal. The fact is, however, that some very inexpensive brands, e.g. Nature Made and Kirkland Signature, carry the USP seal.)

As the name suggests, this Web app lets you send free faxes, without a fax machine. There's a heavier-duty paid version, but the free version should be enough for most folks not in business. You can send up to 3 pages in a fax, and up to 2 faxes a day. You get free cover pages also, and there are no ads.

Unfortunately, this site facilitates outgoing faxes only. I'm not aware of a source for free incoming faxes, aside from trials. (eFax still will enable free faxes for its basic customers, but will currently accept only paid subscriptions.)

Update: Yelp now designates its filtered reviews as "not currently recommended."

Review site Yelp touts its impartiality. The problem is, it filters out some reviews as "untrustworthy," and will not say why. Indeed, the filtering operates without any apparent rhyme or reason. Filtered reviews are accessible via a hard-to-find link but will not affect Yelp's overall rating for that business. Companies have repeatedly accused Yelp of extorting them for ads, promising better review placement.

A good case in point is Yelp's page for UPS (Los Angeles office). You'll see 25 reviews, and will not see 13 more that have been filtered out—all extremely negative, many detailed and specific, each assigning the lowest possible rating to the company. (Those numbers will likely have changed by the time you read this.)

I still recommend Yelp for the multitudinous reviews, but suggest you seek out the "filtered" links and, especially, take Yelp's star ratings with a grain of salt.

Update: Alice now charges for shipping of any order of less than $49, so I've downgraded my rating.

Offers a huge selection of household items (incl. Nutritional supplements) shipped free at a surprisingly low cost that's often reduced further by manufacturers' coupon offers. The minimum order of 6 items is easily achieved. Tip: For the best deals when searching for a particular item, sort by Price Per Unit or filter by Bargain Hunter.

Some sites can infect your computer just by your landing on them! Even when that doesn't happen, following a site's links can cause serious problems. Enter the Web address here, and URLVoid will instantly scan for safety with TrendMicro Web Reputation, Norton SafeWeb, Web of Trust, and 14 similar services.

It's often convenient to enjoy a meal while awaiting your flight. Use this site's Advanced Search to zero in on your preferences, and consult reviews. Covers airports throughout the world, and a free mobile app is available. Reviews are currently rather sparse, but should proliferate with time. (You could always look to Yelp.com for reviews, but as I've cautioned in my Yelp review, don't rely on Yelp's star ratings, and seek out Yelp's "filtered" reviews.)

For the good number of heavily used programs it supports, this Web app saves me from having to fiddle with original and update downloads, installations, and setups. And I needn't worry about accompanying junk like unwanted toolbars, or wonder whether I have the latest version. I click just once after selecting all the programs or updates I want.

Ninite will succeed where a standard installation may fail, although in some such cases you may have to pursue extra steps.

SECOND REVISION (2/28/16)

AllExperts is a useful service that's unfortunately badly compromised by poor administration. I speak as both a user (asking questions) and an expert (providing answers).

Well organized by nearly every conceivable subject area, the site facilitates users' inquiries to individual experts selected by those users on the basis of displayed qualifications as submitted by the experts. The experts' answers are rated by the users receiving them, according to knowledgeability, clarity, and politeness. The expert base is considerable, allowing users in many cases to choose from multiple experts. New experts are linked to a complex set of rules (not ordinarily seen by the users) and encouraged to email questions to site administration.

There are serious problems for both experts and users. The first two points relate to customer service:

1. Despite the encouragement alluded to above, questions by experts seem uniformly to be ignored. Using the special experts' channel, I've emailed many successive questions to the site (and reminders), all without response.

2. The same appears largely to be true of users' questions to the site (not to the experts). My correspondence to the site as a user--before I was registered as an expert--got one reply, but other questions were entirely ignored.

3. The system allows experts to easily pass over questions they don't want to bother with. An expert can choose a canned non-answer to be sent to the user, and even if the expert does nothing there is almost always no penalty. It is theoretically possible for an expert to be eventually dismissed for repeatedly ignoring questions, but the expert would probably have to be dead before that would happen.

4. When a user does not choose to rate, the expert's rating on each attribute defaults to 10 (the highest). Successive ratings for each expert are averaged and those averages are prominently displayed--but unbeknown to users and probably many experts, there is as buried in the material sent to new experts a practice that outlier ratings are ignored. These facts, together with those in point #3 above, result in average ratings that are essentially meaningless.

* * * *

In sum, AllExperts can be a good resource for finding answers--certainly better than the undeservedly popular Yahoo Answers--and many experts supply excellent responses. Don't expect too much, however, from any particular expert, high rating notwithstanding.

(Feel free to ask me a question. I'm Richard Johnson in the General Writing and Grammar sub-category.)

Giveaways are often the cheapest way to advertise and can be useful for getting feedback; and these opportunities can be a boon for consumers. Giveaway of the Day offers free software from well-known companies, that otherwise would cost you. You can sign up on the site for alerts by email or RSS.

Ebooks are great, but for real books you can't beat Better World Books. I recently was searching without success for an L. A. Thomas Guide map book in the old smaller format. The current editions of these books go for $34.95 plus tax.

I found what I sought here, and my total price for the purchase was $5.03—that's right, five dollars and three cents. This included an optional five cents for "carbon neutral shipping"; shipping is otherwise always free. Described as in "good" condition, I would have called the book's condition "very good"; aside from a few small library stickers on the cover (probably removable), I could hardly distinguish it from a new book off the shelf.

The icing on the cake is the outstandingly helpful and friendly customer service, in sharp contrast to so many customer "service" operations. Hint: Make a note of the customer service number, *******303, which is not easy to find on the website.

MagicJack offers virtually no customer support, and no phone contact except a line for billing matters. I answer questions about a great many websites and companies for a help site, and magicJack engenders by far the most complaints. Many of those complaints have to do with not being able to get the device to work (perhaps after it has worked just fine for a while). Others concern renewal nags *after* the renewal has been purchased, or paid renewals that did not renew service—or, most troubling of all, charges for calls whose cost should according to the company's promotions be covered by the purchase price.

MagicJack's justification for these unexpected charges is this provision in the middle of magicJack's extensive hard-to-read Terms of Service:

"We may require prepaid purchase and/or we may charge you for calls to conference lines, platforms and certain high cost calls, or any call wherein we incur a cost from another carrier."

The average consumer, even if he or she were to look over the Terms of Service, will not grasp the import of this nearly-hidden provision.

Some magicJack customers are happy with the product. I don't advise however taking that chance.

This review of the Better Business Bureau (of particular interest to SiteJabber followers) concerns the BBB's service in reviewing businesses for consumers. You can get to that service directly at www.bbb.org/us/Find-Business-Reviews.

As a result of outside pressure, the BBB claims it no longer considers BBB fee-paid "accreditation" in its ratings. However, the review pages for each non-accredited business will include three (3) prominent mentions of that status, which you should ignore.

Considerations that the BBB says it does apply include BBB complaint history, business duration, government actions, and questionable advertising. BBB will also downgrade if a company fails to provide to the BBB complete information, if the BBB has revoked accreditation, or if the nature of the business is suspect.

The BBB also has a link for consumer reviews (not to be confused with consumer complaints), which do not seem to figure into its ratings.

BBB ratings are a helpful resource in evaluating a company, but should not be relied on exclusively. ConsumerSearch (see my separate SiteJabber review) reflects a huge number of consumer reviews from across the Web, and would be a good supplement to BBB ratings.

This is a variation of sorts on sites like Groupon and SocialBuy, which let you pay within a short time frame for substantial local bargains, usable then at your leisure. With all such sites you can order what you like from the various restaurants' menus. The big advantage of Blackboard Eats is that it requires no money up front, so you never have to use your bargain at all; you arrive at the restaurant not with a voucher but with a coupon. Other differences are:

1. As you might guess from the name, Blackboard Eats is only for restaurant meals. In my experience they are for higher-end restaurants exclusively.
2. Blackboard Eats may be more suitable for lone diners, as its bargains are always percentages off. With the voucher sites you pay a fixed amount for food that may be worth twice as much, typically enough for two.
3. Blackboard Eats's bargains, usually 30 percent off, are not as impressive as those of most of the voucher sites or even those of competitor Scoutmob.

To receive Blackboard Eats's emailed notices, sign up at the site.

Every driver should bookmark this site. It's useful in two ways: (1) It will locate the cheapest local or en route gas sources, and (2) It will tell you what the gas used in a contemplated trip will cost. I use it primarily for (2), and in the process I also learn the number of miles of my trip.

In order to get accurate results, I need to submit an online form detailing what vehicle I drive and its year, and which grade of gas I buy (and of course my starting and ending points). Or I could enter my gas mileage if I know it.

A minor downside is that as of now GasBuddy will not retain information that I give it, so I theoretically could have to spend a fair amount of time refilling the form every time I want GAsBuddy's help for a new trip. In practice however your form filler or password manager (such as RoboForm) should save your data for you and remove that necessity.