There are lots of great sites that help consumers make better purchase decisions like cnet.com , engadget.com, and consumerreports.org just to name a few but then there are sites at the other end of the spectrum like toptenreviews.com.
Why do I think toptenreviews.com is a pile of dung? In May of 2003, I launched a beta of boldchat.com to provide live chat service to websites. Shortly after this, toptenreviews.com reviewed boldchat.com. Here are the results…
- Today, toptenreviews.com lists a "Boldchat Review 2006" based on the Boldchat review they did in 2003 (hmm, this is a bit misleading already). Boldchat has had a dozen major releases since the first beta version in 2003 and added hundreds of new features yet toptenreviews implies they have a current review of Boldchat based on their very old 2003 review. Toptenreviews.com even shows the original logo and original pricing for Boldchat.com long since replaced with a new logo and new pricing.
- Even at the time of the original Boldchat review, toptenreviews.com grossly mischaracterized the available features in Boldchat. Since the very first version of Boldchat, Boldchat has had customizable chat buttons, had customizable chat windows, allowed transfer of chats between operators, allowed emailing chat transcripts, etc. yet toptenreviews.com lists these as Boldchat gaps. Most of the gaps shown for Boldchat on the toptenreviews.com site are incorrect — Boldchat has always had most of those features and added the vast majority of features since then.
- We’ve attempted to contact toptenreviews at least six times to correct the Boldchat review; however, we’ve never received a single response from toptenreviews.com to fix these problems in the Boldchat review (they only responded to sell us ads, hmmm, perhaps if we bought ads from them the Boldchat review would auto-magically get improved).
Boldchat has gone on to become the most popular live chat solution with 12,000+ active websites — I guess users had a different opinion of Boldchat than toptenreviews.com.
Is the staff at toptenreviews.com incompetent? Does toptenreviews.com have other motivations when doing a review? I don’t know why toptenreview.com continues to list a very old review as a new review or why toptenreview grossly mischaracterized the features of Boldchat or why they have never responded to any of our inquiries to fix these problems but I certainly do not trust any review on toptenreviews.com and would recommend that consumers look elsewhere for good advice.