Water Softener Reviews – Beware of Manufacturer Sites

When you are looking to purchase a water softener, reviews are an incredibly useful tool.

There are so many different brands and styles to choose from; some have additional features and they all come in different capacities. How do you know which one is going to be the most cost effective and most reliable brand of water softener? Reviews! That’s how!

Water softener reviews can be found in various places throughout the internet. It’s a good idea to look around and read reviews from a variety of sites, including Amazon and Epinions, because sites such as these contain reviews written by people who have actually purchased and used the products.

Product reviews can tell you a lot about a particular product; things that you won’t find on the manufacturer’s site.

Manufacturers of products tend to offer only the information that they feel will sell the product. Any problems, or other issues encountered with a product are generally not mentioned, so customers are only getting one side of the story.

Sites dedicated to the reviews of products have one goal in mind, and that is to keep consumers as well informed as possible about as wide a variety of products as possible. People are invited to share the personal experiences they’ve had with various products that they’ve purchased, whether good or bad.

On a site such as Epinions , you might notice that some products have more reviews than others, and that’s something to make note of. Lack of feedback can tell you almost as much about a product as a large number of negative reviews.

Such sites have user feedback on virtually every brand and model that might interest you - such as Kenmore, Culligan, Kinetico and Water Boss. The bigger units, things like dishwashers with built in water treatment, by brands such as Whirlpool and Morton also have lots to read.

Typically, people are most likely to write reviews when they have a negative experience with a product, but when they are satisfied they often don’t give it a second thought. A good thing to look for when reading product reviews is a recurring problem with a particular product. This may indicate that this particular product is flawed or poorly constructed and is to be avoided.

Beware of water softener reviews that you find on sites that are dedicated to selling a specific brand of water softener because they’re likely to be rather biased toward that particular brand. You aren’t going to get accurate information about a variety of brands from sites such as these.

Major stores such as Lowes or Home Depot also contain reviews sections, but once again, those reviews are limited to only the brands sold by those stores, so the information you get might be biased. Of course, these major chains, such as Costco and Home Depot, have a lot riding on their online reputations, so they take their sites and user feedback very seriously. It can help though to take a look at review sections for home supply stores to get a look at some of the brands you might be interested in purchasing.

To get accurate information about a large number of different brands of water softener systems or any product for that matter, there’s just no beating Consumer Reports ( discussed here ). Accurate comparison and review of products is what they do; it’s all they do, and they take their business very seriously. It’s one of the best places to go for accurate reviews of water softeners.