Red Green wrote:

"Pete C." wrote in
ster.com:


Existential Angst wrote:

Awl --

Rather than a harangue, let me just post some numbers, from the Dec.
Consumer Reports on Ranges I just got.

The first number is the price, the second number is CR's score

For 30" dual fuel (elec/gas),

Bosch 2,000 - 72
GE 1850 - 70
GE 1500 - 69

So far, so good, right? Heh....

Kenmore 3200 - 68
Wolf 5200 - 67
GE 2800 - 65
Viking 5500 - 63
Jenn-Air 2400 - 62
Dacor 6000 - 59
KithenAid 3700 - 50

If you were to graph this and do a linear regression for a
correlation coefficient, you'd wind up with a blob for a graph, which
means a correlation between price and quality of ZERO -- no
relationship whatsoever. If you didn't have objective scoring, and
were going by price/brand alone, you might as well randomly paste the
product sheets on the side of a barn, and shoot arrows at them
blindfolded, and buy whatever your arrow hit.

Wow.... And this zero correlation occurs in their longer review of
electric smoothtops and gas ranges, of over 30 products each -- many
of them GE, rated best buys, while $5,000 thermador is near the
middle, and $4600 DCS is 4th from the bottom.

How can this be?

Well, some would argue that CR doesn't really know how to test stuff,
or tests it peculiarly, and I would not totally disagree with that.
While Wolf and Viking may have not have scored well in CR's scoring
system, mebbe they are built like tanks, never break, last forever,
etc. I'll take reliability/longevity over slightly less performance
any day of the week.

But then, mebbe not! How do you know???

Apropos of Fox5's li'l bull**** expose on bogus on-line reviews (the
creamed Lifestyle Lifts, the retail plastic surgery outfit, creamed
them, yesterday, with a continuation of the general topic today), the
problem of Truth in general is a very real one: HTF can you ever
tell what is what, who is tellling the truth?

This zero-correlation between price and score is almost the RULE in
CR's tests, from vacuums to cars. A $100 Hoover vastly outperforms
$500 Dysons. It's just amazing.

But, I shouldn't really be too frazzled or confounded. After all, we
do live in a BizarroLand country where Big Tobaccer is telling us not
to smoke, and where a fat abless Tony Little sold millions Ab
Isolators and Gazelles for about 1/4 of a century..

--
EA

The simple truth has always been - Knowledge is Power - Arm yourself
with the knowledge to properly evaluate products yourself, and trust
no one else's opinion.

and trust
no one else's opinion.

OK, I'm gonna killfile everyone.

I didn't say not to review others opinions, I said not to trust them, in
other words use them to provide clues as to where you may need to
investigate further, do not accept them as fact.