Whats the site about and how does it all work?

Welcome to Not As Cool As It Seems.

Due to marketing hype, and astroturfing it is difficult to assess a product before purchase.

• Buying positive reviews on large websites.
• Paying bloggers for reviews or endorsements.
• Marketing companies employing individuals to post on public forums.
• Many other marketing practices.

Positive reviews of products are no longer valuable when researching a future purchase. Positive reviews are for entertainment and re-enforcing your desire to buy an item. Honest product comparisons of two closely matched items may help but as the links above indicate honesty can sometimes be hard to find.

Reviewers, professionals or consumers, can be unduly harsh or praising of a product for many reasons that is why here, in our product listings, we will try not to offer opinions, just factual point form lists to offset the marketing hype.

 What's this site for?

In short advertisers and marketers can tell you about a products features and its positive points, they won't hold back.

You can tell if a products' aesthetics and advertised features are what you are looking for.

We can tell you if a marketer was stretching the truth, if a feature falls short of expectations, if it is missing standard features you would normally expect in similar products or if certain features just don't work. We will list the negatives and the gotchas that most people don't find out about until after they have made the purchase. We will try to be factual and objective so you can make an informed decision.

We will also give you a voice in the market place.

We want your reviews, if you have made a purchase and you feel like you have been mislead by the marketing or the product has glaring flaws that you were unaware of before purchase then please come here, read the guidelines for a submission and then send us your product assessment.

We want you to trust us.

We are going to try and be as honest as possible about the site itself, and try to be as impartial as we are able when dealing with the products, your submissions and their listings.

The service this website provides may reduce the likelihood that you will make a purchase you may regret.

About the product listings and reviews.

It has become increasingly hard to trust the opinions of review sites, that is why NotAsCoolAsItSeems only displays user submitted issues, problems and defects in the product listings. We try not to endorse any particular product, the product listings are a result of community submissions and comments that we then attempt to verify.

Issues are verified by :

• Our site receiving multiple issue submissions or comments for the same device and problem.
• Researching the products official support site and forums as well as many others.
• Confirming the issues with multiple trusted review sites.

The reviews and articles posted to the main page are also user submitted, however these are the views and opinions of the individuals who submit them and should be read with that in mind.

By providing the product listings, search tools and a place for you to air your grievances we hope to keep the site alive. If you believe the site is helpful to you please support us by using the sites available features and  links. 

By submitting quality comments, reviews, voting and participating in the polls or just making an issue submission, you help to make the site more accurate and therefore valuable to the consumer.

Thank you

About our advertisements and affiliates

We have tried to make the advertisements on the site unobtrusive.

We are an affiliate to some of the on-line retailers, the images and product links of the reviews/listings are generally affiliate links.  We are not trying to sell you anything however we are attempting to become a trusted gateway to companies such as Amazon and Buy.com  who are.

The advertisements and affiliate links will never impact the impartiality of the product listings.

We have a custom Google search which is ad supported. We have tried to customise the search to return product links, reviews, complaints and forum posts about your search query. Again the site is very new and any suggestions modifying this would be welcome.

The sites bandwidth is paid for by these advertisements and links but we realise many, if not most of you, are running an ad blocker of some description.  We encourage you to place an exception in your ad blocking software for our site. We try our best to make the ads relevant to the sites purpose, however the site has obviously just started and we are still working out the bugs.

This is just a quick answer but if you are more interested you can read the full FAQ to get a better idea.

• It's for consumers to report any product defects, short-falls or annoyances for an item that they have purchased.
• It's for consumers to read about product defects, short-falls or annoyances for an item they may want to purchase.The listings are here to prevent you buying something that is not right for you.
• The site is here to offset marketing and advertising hype.
• The site is here to provide a community based review of products and companies.
• The site lists major manufacturer and distribution companies with their main support web site, forums and any relevant articles about the company that the public may find interesting. The company support services are listed and can be rated by users. Company listings can be found here.
• We want the site to become a useful resource where people can help each other.

If you would like a product included in the listings you can use the quick submission links to send us the products full name and any information that you feel would be relevant to other consumers. If you would like some initial product issues placed with the new listing please include them, however we will need some supporting evidence for each issue included. Just add links to support forum posts , reviews, or articles... basically give us a starting point to confirm the issue you would like added.

Registered users have access to a more direct and feature rich submission form

There are a few ways you can get an issue added .

• The easiest way from a casual site visitors point of view would be  to just add a comment at the bottom of a product listing.If you use this option place the phrase "Additional issues" in the title field of your comment. Other users can then vote the comment up. After a comment has been voted up significantly it will hopfully be brought to the site admins attention and added to the listing. After which the product listing will be cleaned up and any redundant comments will be removed.
• Another easy method is to submit it to one of our statistical forms under the quick submissions menu item, this is quick easy and helps maintain site accuracy.
• If you are registered and really keen to have a set of issues listed you can create a product listing , this is the most direct way however we will need some supporting evidence for each issue. Just add links to "support forum" posts , reviews, or articles... basically give us a starting point to confirm that the issues you would like added actually exists. Try to keep your submission in the style of the site - We are really fond of bullet points and attempt to reduce opinion based comments.
• Post about it in the forum (not yet active). If enough people agree it is an issue, confirm the issue exists , or add supporting evidence to the topic then it will eventually get added to the product listing and the redundant posts will be locked/closed.

You don't.

 

Oh wait .... We offer a flat rate for companies wishing to have a product removed from the site listings

$100 million dollars per item.

Remove two get get the third one FREE !!

Call now and we will even throw in this wondeful set of steak knives !!

( Direct deposit only , we do not accept Paypal or creditcards.)
_{(Items are not guaranteed to remain unlisted for more than 2 months)}

If however you feel that an issue listed is no longer valid or accurate (products do change with firmware updates etc) you can leave a comment, or use the quick submission form.  We will investigate and modify the entry when appropriate. Please try to point us in the right direction with links or supporting evidence. Manufacturers are encouraged to email us with updates.

If it isn't up yet or you can't find it there are a few reasons why that may be:

• It may have been integrated with a pre-existing article or listing.
• The listings title may have been changed to fit with our scripts and links system.
• It may have been submitted to the wrong section, though if we realize this we usually try to move it.

You may not have indicated that you wanted credit for the article.( we will always give credit where it is due and repect the privacy of our users, but mistakes can be made - if we have made an error e-mail us we will fix it immediately)

It may not fit in with the rest of the site (sorry)

If the site is suddenly busy it may just be a time factor, the site launched in its present format with over 500 articles listings and  pages . There is a forum and a comment system as well as various submission forms. The site it self has a lot of content but only one person maintains it. Me.... volunteers are welcome.

Sorry....

• It may have been a simple mistake.
• I may have accidentally enabled comments for an item that was not intended to recieve comments and to your detriment I have remedied this..sorry.
• The comment may have been confused with spam.
• The comment was in relation to an issue listed , however the listing has since been updated, the comment may no longer apply to the item. In the interests of keeping the listings accurate and not confusing for other users it was removed . This is not a reflection on the quality of your submission or comment. It is done in the course of site maintenance to keep the listing information clear and relevant. Sometimes comments may be merged with the main article for clarity.
• You may have given a product a favourable review or endorsement within the product listings comments, other parts of the site are for this.

The product listings are for listing issues or providing factual information relevant to the product , the forum is for general product/ company /support discussions and recommmendations, quite often based on opinion. The Pro's vs Con's is for reviews and endorsments, again opinion is welcomed there.

This is actually pretty important to making the site useful. If a product is voted up it appears on the front page and its problems become highlighted to the community.
 

Here is a quick guide to how you should use the voting system.

The items with the greatest number of correctly listed issues or useful,entertaining articles should have the highest votes.

On product listings vote up

• Based on the listings accuracy.
• Any listing that has an issue you have experienced.
• A listing that contains information that the wider community should be aware of before purchasing a product.
• A listing you believe to be correct because you have information that confirms the contained issues.

Do not vote up items because you like or dislike the product. This is not useful or helpful

On product listings vote down if

• the listing is not accurate
• the list of issues has a manufacturer supplied fix. (please indicate this in the comments)

Do not vote down items because you like or dislike the product. This is not useful or helpful

Vote up Comments on product listings if

• They have requested an additional issue is added and you know it to be correct or have experienced it yourself.
• They have stated that an issue has been fixed by the manufacturer and you can confirm that the fix works.

Vote down comments on product listings if

• they are false
• they are misleading
• it is spam
• they are attempting to give a positive review within a products' issues list (that is not what the listings are for)