Here are a few reviews of a good nature, recommended companies.
I feel grossly under qualified to even provide feedback on the Google website! Recognised as the biggest search engine in the world and a household name almost everywhere that there are computers!
They have had to keep ahead of spammers to keep the ranks clear of people who try to manipulate them. Almost, or even completely gone are the days that something shocking appears on the first page of results that you would not expect and subsequently offence follows.
They seem to make their money, or at least a significant portion of it, from the sponsored listing down the side of the page and at the top of the page. Even these are, in part, organised by relevance and therefore costs the less relevant people more than the most.
Needing to take the information as to which site to rank most relevantly from the world wide web in general, Google have included their own rules as to what is acceptable to do on your own site and therefore 'mark down' websites that contravene these guidelines.
Overall I think this is a brilliant company with a great public image that is difficult to fault in nearly any way. It is however worth remembering that they are a money making business as opposed to some sort of charity and one of the top guys in the company, maybe even their solicitor has been quoted as almost boasting that they get sued every day. There are also a few questionable parts reported from time to time in the media. I seem to remember something about registering something in the Republic of Ireland to avoid having to pay tax?! Even that seems to be legal and good business practice as opposed to dodgy dealings.
I like it very much, both as a business tool and also as a personal tool for finding relevant stuff on the Internet as a family. Thumbs up.
Although I hate the idea of massive companies ruling any area of business, I have to say that Amazon seem to not only be dominating the online market for book sales, but also seem to be doing quite a good job of it.
Books and CDs seem to be really reasonably priced, with most of the things that I looked for being the cheapest that I was able to find. Over all, I found the site easy to find my way around, and order, with options for delivery and packaging being made clear at each point. Definitely a thumbs up for this one from me.
There is an additional side to the site now, where companies, other than Amazon themselves can sell to customers, with Amazon simply getting a cut. Although I am not fully aware of how this system works, it seems to provide a fair service for both the online retailers and customers doing business.
As far as complaints and refunds go, I have had to return a few items over the years, and even that experience was a good one! Where I would have expected a return of any item over the internet to be an awkward one, they seemed to make it really clean and simple. With complaints, well, I haven't really had any, so I am not too sure how they would deal with them, but going by everything else they seem to do, I imagine that they are pretty good at that too!
When searching for 'buy books' or 'buy books online' on the search engines, they seem to always come up tops, which is yet another triumph in my opinion for the search engines. Good relevant results, helping customers like me to get a good deal.
Thumbs up for Google and for Amazon!