Buying GSM cell phones online is one of the most popular daily activities of surfers around the world, according to industry analysts who track such data. It’s beautiful what the internet – of which the WWW comprises one of the most important parts, no matter that colloquially the two terms are treated as synonyms – is generally used for on a daily basis. Though initially devised to further academic endeavors (well, in truth the very first intention was for a means of communications that would survive a nuclear strike), it’s now become a popular way to buy and sell, all over the world.
A smorgasbord of GSM cell phones can thus be purchased easily, quickly. Consumers now can quickly access any amount of information to help them with their purchases. Word-of-mouth is viral online and a whole lot more powerful. That’s because the marketers have all but spammed the hell out of things online, and even mighty Google employing some of the smartest folks in the world can’t stop them. This means that a lot of what purport to be reviews of GSM cell phones (or anything else, really) are just plants – planted reviews, planted material, stuff that’s been planted to mislead at best and totally misinform more often than not! That’s right, it’s an eternal war between consumers that just want to make informed purchasing decisions and the online marketers whose job is to simply create more publicity and sales for a company.
Things have gotten so bad that even otherwise reputable consumer review sites have been subject to such efforts at misleading shoppers. Lucrative goods such as mobile handsets are subject to such abuses as a matter of course. So what’s a consumer to do?
Indeed, many – many things. The most important thing to do is to talk to the retailer. It can be helpful to talk on the phone. Do you notice the same person always picking up? Does anyone pick up at all? Or is there even a telephone contact provided? An address? And is that address accurate, or one that isn’t just an office in the mail-forwarding business?
And despite the planted reviews, you can still trust the majority opinion on the most reputable consumer review sites. Most scammers and bad businesses do not have the money to spend on the kind of online marketing efforts necessary to clear their names – for if they had the money, they wouldn’t be in such dire financial straits that they would need to resort to shafting so many of their own customers! So reviews sites are still important; just make sure that those are reputable, too!