HomeSearchMerchandiseAboutMichael HorowitzMy CNET Blog

Epinions.com 

 Epinions.com is a web site where ordinary people give their opinions of products

October 5, 2001. I wanted to offer my opinion about a cellphone so I went to Epinons.com and found a web page devoted to the cellphone in question. I clicked on the link to enter my opinion and was presented with a web page for entering my two cents. After spending time entering my opinion, I clicked on the Preview Opinion button (the only choice). At this point I was prompted to log in. Of course, I didn't have a userid/password for Epinions and didn't know that one was needed. After going through the sign-up process my opinion gets lost in the shuffle. Did it take? Was it accepted? It's not at all clear after signing up. 

October 11, 2001. After giving Epinions time to process my new userid/password, I went back to the web page for the cellphone. Of course, my opinion is not there. This seems like a case of miserable application design. The web site let me enter an opinion without checking if I was a registered user and then after registering, it lost the opinion. 

Undaunted, I went to re-enter my cellphone opinion. Again I find the web page for the cellphone and click on the link to enter my opinion. Again I enter all the required data and text and click on the Preview Opinion button. This time when it asks for my Epinions userid and password I'm ready. 

Not so fast. It doesn't know who I am. Its not that my password is wrong, my Epinions userid is not found. To make a long story short, my opinion never made it to their web site. 

Thank goodness for this web site, which lets me enter my opinion of Epinions.com.

Partial or Impartial? 

October 12, 2001.  Epinions makes money by selling the products that people review. You have to wonder how they deal with poor reviews which don't generate sales and therefore are not in the best interest of Epinions to publicize. For example, on the main computer page today they touted Norton Anti-Virus 2001 as a highly rated product. It was reviewed by 27 people who all recommended it.  I use NAV 2001 every day and don't mean to say or imply it's a bad product . But it's not perfect and I wonder how come no one ran into any of the problems that I have with NAV 2001.  

The web page for NAV 2001 on Epinions has a link to buy it an J&R Music world for $129. NAV 2001 costs about $20 to $50 on its own. This link is to a bundle of NAV 2001 and WinFax Pro 10. Someone not familiar with NAV might think it was only sold this way and overpay dearly for the product. Fortunately, J&R is out of stock on this bundled software package today. The yellow rounded rectangle below that says Check latest price also turns up the same out of stock $129 software bundle. 

Another link on the NAV 2001 page says "Check latest prices". This returns only the out of stock software bundle for $129. Considering that this product is among the most widely sold software products for Windows, this is disgraceful.