When Carrie Ansell decided to buy her first house last year, she had absolutely no idea where to start. So she turned to the Web site Yelp.com to peruse what other people had to say about their real estate agents.
She found glowing reviews of Mandy Mills and David Getson of Hounshell Real Estate and used the team to help her find her Fort Totten rowhouse last March.
Ansell has since added her own recommendation of her real estate agents to Yelp, as well as the movers and the plumbing company she used to fix a leak that trickled from the bathtub to the ceiling below.
"It's definitely overwhelming to own a house and figure out everything on your own. It's helpful to get some guidance, and it just makes sense to tap into the array of experiences people post online," Ansell said.
Yelp and a burgeoning number of other sites allow consumers to do everything from heaping accolades on their appraisers to venting about their vacuum cleaners. Some focus primarily on home services, while others allow users to rate doctors, restaurants, even college professors.
There's Angie's List and Judy's Book, Yelp and Yahoo reviews, along with a phalanx of other sites that allow consumers to sound off. Most are free, while a few including Angie's List and Consumers' Checkbook charge fees.
"Sharing their views feels good to a consumer. It feels empowering to say, 'I just had a terrible experience and I want someone to know,' or conversely, to share something great," said Kelly O'Keefe, a professor of brand strategy at Virginia Commonwealth University, who has studied the rise of consumer reviews.
Sara Todd, who lives in Chevy Chase, agrees. She moved from Columbus, Ohio, to Montgomery County three years ago.
"When I moved here, I knew no one and felt even more handicapped than most people in having no one to network with to find service providers," she said.
So Todd turned to Angie's List, a customer review site that primarily grades home services but has recently branched into rating doctors, too.
She found someone to help rearrange her heavy furniture, hook up all her electronics and help with leaky pipes. She also used Angie's List to find someone to repave her driveway. "I was desperate because it was insanely expensive, and I couldn't find anything cheaper," she said. It turned out that none of the companies that were reviewed on Angie's List charged less than the estimates Todd had gathered.
"At least it validated what I was finding, so I knew I wasn't going to be wasting my money," she said.
Angie Hicks founded Angie's List in Ohio in 1995. "I really thought we needed a better way for consumers to network with each other and magnify word of mouth," she said.
The company has branched out to dozens of cities, including Washington in 2006. It has 35,000 local members -- 750,000 nationally -- who pay $67 for a one-year membership, plus a one-time $15 sign-up fee. Companies are rated with grades from A to F.
But online reviews don't always simplify decision making.
Reports can vary widely. Take the Rockville franchise of 1-800-GOT-JUNK? It has an overall grade of B from Angie's List. One recent review of the trash-removal company states, "Their service is excellent." But another recent review begins, "Disaster!" and enumerates the customer's travails, from inaccurate price estimates to workers who littered.
This feedback is important not only to customers, but also to the companies themselves.
"The good and bad reviews keep us on our toes," said 1-800-GOT-JUNK? spokeswoman Shaye Hoobanoff. "During these tough real estate times, customers are more cautious about what service they use and base much of their decision on real customer feedback, not just the stuff that people pick and choose to advertise on their Web site."
Another variable is the number of reviews posted about a company. For example, Kenney's Appliance Service in Damascus has more than 200 reviews on the Consumers' Checkbook Web site, but only 12 on Angie's List and none on Yelp or Yahoo Local. Both sites rated the company highly.
Consumers' Checkbook, which costs $34 for a two-year membership, plus a one-time $25 fee for online access to all reviews, does not give overall ratings to companies with fewer than 10 reviews.
"For people to rely very heavily on a few comments is a high-risk thing," said Robert Krughoff, president of Consumers' Checkbook, which has 55,000 members in the Washington area. "Sometimes people can be influenced by a single comment. Even assuming it's honest, I think you need a diversity of voices to paint a true picture."
Unlike other review sites, Consumers' Checkbook, which began in the Washington area in 1976 and now has branches in six other cities, does not take advertising.
Krughoff said he questions how sites with paid advertisers handle negative reviews.
"They don't have an incentive to put up scores that are low. I think advertising is a subtle pressure," on both the site owners and consumers, he said.
Still, Ansell, said she disregards the advertisements and uses Yelp because it's free, said she will continue to look at the site as a road map.
"I really wonder how people made decisions without these sites before," she said.