# What are your strategies for getting good value from consumer purchases? **URL:** \ **Category:** In My Humble Opinion\ **Created:** [December 28, 2018, 11:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-are-your-strategies-for-getting-good-value-from-consumer-purchases/826844 "2018-12-28T23:34:03Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 3\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![clairobscur](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/839c29/32.png) [@clairobscur](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/clairobscur)\ **Post date:** [December 31, 2018, 12:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-are-your-strategies-for-getting-good-value-from-consumer-purchases/826844/21 "2018-12-31T12:43:50Z")
Internet reviews and tests. Consumer magazines tests. And also reviews by a major retail chain that I trust (namely, the FNAC, for the couple French posters here). ---
**Author:** ![Cheesesteak](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/cheesesteak/32/3694_2.png) [@Cheesesteak](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Cheesesteak)\ **Post date:** [December 31, 2018, 12:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-are-your-strategies-for-getting-good-value-from-consumer-purchases/826844/22 "2018-12-31T12:52:29Z")
I check reviews from wherever I can get them. I pay particular attention to the bad reviews. If they repeat the same problem and it’s a major issue, I suspect bad quality. I researched one item recently that got bad reviews for being hard to put together, but was otherwise positive. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk ---
**Author:** ![amaguri](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/49beb7/32.png) [@amaguri](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/amaguri)\ **Post date:** [December 31, 2018, 4:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-are-your-strategies-for-getting-good-value-from-consumer-purchases/826844/23 "2018-12-31T16:56:44Z")
Research, reviews and return policy 🙂 Amazon reviews are no longer reliable at all, particularly for electronics, so I use fakespot to make sure the reviews aren’t totally phony. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-are-your-strategies-for-getting-good-value-from-consumer-purchases/826844.md?page=1)