Posted by Stacie Savage, Inkjet Systems Communications

I’ve started my holiday shopping, and because I never seem to have enough time, I do a fair amount of it online. I still go to brick and mortar stores too because I actually like the hustle and bustle of the holidays, and the holidays wouldn’t be complete for me if I didn’t get to hear elevator music versions of Christmas carols while standing in long check-out lines with the handles of heavy shopping bags cutting a line in my hands, but I digress.

Back to online shopping. I find this type of shopping most convenient when I either know exactly what I want, and I just need to order it, or the opposite, when I know I want a particular type of product, but I don’t know which one to buy. One trend I’ve seen on shopping web sites is the customer review. I’m a little skeptical of reviewers. For example our local newspaper movie critic in San Diego seems to love to pan the movies everybody loves and praise the movies most people don’t enjoy. (I feel he owes my husband and me $18 for Magnolia which was the last time I went to see a movie based on one of his reviews.) More digression, sorry.

Back to online shopping. Although I am skeptical of reviewers, I have very much enjoyed reading online customer reviews of products I’m considering purchasing. Customers call out things that are very hard to evaluate by manufacturer-supplied information. For example, at HP, we strive to make our printers easy to set up and use, and we try to call out features that provide a concrete example of this. And, I personally write a lot of this information. However, I must admit that it seems so much more genuine and credible (even to me) to read a customer review that testifies to ease of use based on actual customer experience.

So if you are considering purchasing an HP printer for a holiday gift or for yourself, please visit the HP Home & Home Office Store (www.hpshopping.com). Once you find a printer or all-in-one (or any other HP product), click on the customer review link and see what other folks like you have to say. I think you’ll learn some interesting things. The customer feedback is uncensored, so on occasion you’ll read something that makes us cringe at HP. But the good news for us is it’s another way to get customer feedback, and if there are things about our products that customers don’t like, we have a chance to address those issues. Also, if you read something naughty (using bad language and such), please report that to us. HP runs a clean web site.

I hope your holiday shopping goes well whichever road you choose – the virtual one, or the one with eight lanes where few people use their turn signals before they change lanes. (Really, how hard is it to flip a lever up or down? I can’t read your mind!) Oops, more digression, better sign off now.

Happy Holidays!

Opinions expressed here and in any corresponding comments are the personal opinions of the original authors, not of HP and may not have been reviewed in advance by HP.