Given the increasing diversity of web based (and meat space) services it is a source of constant confusion and annoyance that there aren't any far reaching, respected, crowd-sourced review sites out there. Places where services can be thoroughly named and shamed, that coalesce market pressure to enable consumers to actually push back against dodgy practices.

I've recently been shopping around for breakdown cover (I know, living the rockstar dream right now!) and found myself desperate for somewhere I could compare user experience and ratings for major services. Whilst looking for hosting I frequently found myself directed to Reevoo and Feefo when searching for reviews, so wanted to just go their directly this time. The problem is, neither website's homepage actually lets you search for specific companies or websites, let alone reviews. Some further searching turned up the shopping microsite for Reevoo, but Feefo pages can only be reached by Googling "feefo+company name". In other words, these services are aiming themselves squarely at companies, not consumers.

Trustpilot does a better job, but I'm not a fan of searching on URL rather than company name. It's also clear that Trustpilot reviewers are not truly representative and often show clear bias towards negative experience. It could definitely be argued that this is due to the relative immaturity of the service, but I would expect Trustpilot themselves to be using this as a marketing strategy. Certainly, some breakdown services actively showoff their Trustpilot scores, whilst other (often far larger and better known) services appear not to care.

Personally, this appears to be an area that is just begging for a startup to pop up and begin making waves. Hopefully Trustpilot is just such a startup and within the next year or so it will invest heavily in promoting itself, both to companies and consumers, as well as refine how it works. Either way the market sorely needs some form of people powered leverage.