Catalogue Shopping Review is a website set up to service a very specific need, to be a source for quality customer reviews of products sold by retailers (especially so-called catalogue shops) where it is not otherwise always practical or possible to find out much about the products being sold.
It is frustrating enough that reviews in general are hard to find on the web, with most optimistic links leading to price comparison websites and pages with those depressing words: no reviews yet, but still more so when a lot of the products sold through catalogue shops are exclusive or rebadged products, and at the time of writing, none of the big catalogue shops' websites allow customer reviews.
That's not remotely because everything they sell is rubbish and they want to hide that. Quite the contrary, but there are enough issues that it really is still a marketplace where the odds are stacked against the customer being able to buy wisely, and this site aims to redress the balance.
We do not currently have any affiliation with the supported retailers, namely Argos, Tesco Direct and Woolworths, and although we would welcome their cooperation, it is our aim to remain as neutral as possible. We make our money through advertising, which we hope you find unobtrusive, relevant and helpful.
At the moment, we can accept reviews for the majority of products sold by Argos, Tesco Direct and Woolworths, but we're always on the look-out for other retailers who fit our guidelines of selling a wide range of products to a general market, having an on-line store and not already publishing their own unbiased reviews.
The site works on the basis of reactive moderation. That is to say, reviews posted by members are usually published immediately. We keep a look out for inappropriate reviews, but also allow anyone (member or visitor) to report any review that they feel is not suitable for any reason. We will also soon operate a system of "review kudos", whereby members may mark a review as being good or bad, and the original reviewer's kudos will change accordingly. This is not intended as a mechanism for reporting inappropriate content, but to help members and visitors see which reviews and reviewers are worth taking the most notice of.
Thank you for using Catalogue Shopping Review; we hope you will find our website invaluable in helping you to make informed purchase choices!