Read the Agreement!

A large part of my research involves reading message systems called "forums", where users post reviews about products or services they have tried.

Sometimes the reviews are good. Sometimes they're not so good. The posts give an idea as to the good and bad things about a product or service, and can help weed out scams to avoid.

I've noticed that a lot of reviews are written by people who didn't read about their rights and "responsibilities" about a product or service. They didn't read the TOS (Terms of Service) or EULA (End User License Agreement), in other words. These types of documents are long winded, and contain way too much information for the average person to want to spend time reading.

(For those interested, a TOS (Terms of Service) applies to Internet services like email and web hosting. An EULA (End User License Agreement) applies to programs.)

Product and service providers (we'll call them "owners" to save me typing and save you reading time) must provide either document. This allows the owner to save themselves time in court if something goes wrong.

Be sure to research a product or service and its owner if you want to protect yourself from possible problems. If you're searching the Internet for information about the product or service, here's a general list of how you can do this so it gives you what you're looking for:

1. Put the name in quotes. This will keep the pages that have nothing to do with the product or service from interfering.
   
2. Add terms like "user review" (in quotes) and "review ratings" (without quotes). Read through the user reviews and ratings to see what people think.
3. Don't read testimonies posted on the owner's web site. Those are usually made up by the owner so the owner can make more money.
4. It's a huge hassle, I totally agree, but understand the TOS or EULA. Make sure the owner isn't going to try to take advantage of your money or efforts.
5. If you have any problems with a product or service, post it on one or more forums. Make sure it's available for people so they don't have to go through the same mess you did. Once there are enough posts, the owner must follow better rules to be able to continue to sell the products or services.
6. Be calm, cool and collective when writing a review. That will help your credibility as viewed by others.
   

Agreements are usually too long for anyone to want to pay attention to them. This is what scams take advantage of. A good product or service makes the agreement as simple as possible so people know what they can look forward to.