Things like washing machines, fridges, higher end (or mid range) vacuums, or other things you’d feel pretty bummed about dropping a bit of money on just for it to turn out being shit
I’m considering subscribing some time next year before I make some bigger purchases after tax time. I’m always morbidly worried about either buying something that does its job poorly, or just isn’t good value for the feature set.
From the couple of reviews/rankings I’ve seen, they seem to be a lot more scientific than random “what is the best x lists”. I feel like when you google reviews for any midrange products, most of the reviews are just “oh well yeah it’s okay but actually nah if you spend three times the price you could get 5% better performance so it’s actually bad and you shouldn’t buy it. Just buy the more expensive version instead!”
The minimum 3 month subscription term is the only thing that’s making me pause. If they offered single month subscriptions, I’d probably be more inclined to subscribe. But I’m interested in hearing opinions from anyone who either is a member, or has been in the past. Worth it?
When I lived in the u.s. and bought my first home, I had similar concerns as you as we were about to buy a lot of high end products to furnish our new home (a new car, dishwasher, vacuum, etc…).
We bought a subscription to “consumer reports” (https://www.consumerreports.org/). They test all types of products and give detailed reports on each product. They also listed some products as “do not buy” for whatever flaws a product may have - this convinced me further as there didn’t seem to be any partiality. We ended up making many purchases, all price ranges up to the price of a new car, based on their recommendations and don’t remember having any post purchase issues.
I don’t know if this can be accessed from your region nor if it covers any brands local to Australia, but it did cover a lot of imported products to the u.s. from Europe and Asia - hopefully this may help you as well.
New house needs new car? Wtf
Partner and I had just finished school and gotten really good paying jobs, we saved enough money to buy a house and new car and truck. I bought myself a new used truck to haul materials and products when fixing up the new house! 🙏
Does it work for Australian purchases? I’m sure lots of the brands will be here also, but I doubt a US site would be testing Australian/New Zealand brands like Westinghouse or Fisher & Paykel (however that’s spelled).
I just checked their website (you can look at what they’ve reviewed without a membership, just not the ratings or reviews) - there are 43 reviews for Fisher & Paykel and 45 for Westinghouse.
I’m in US so can’t speak more generally for Australian brands, but I have had good luck with CR (my library account gets me free access).