Picture this: you go out on Saturday morning to buy a washing machine or a vacuum cleaner - a pretty simple task with so many electronics warehouses on hand.

These things have been around for years and are probably all the same, you assume. Prices are set by the market, the salesman particularly recommends the brand he wants to get rid of or gets most mark-up on. You point to one with the most familiar name and you’re done and dusted in half an hour.

The only problem is that you haven’t taken advantage of independent advice and you may end up with a machine that packs up in a few weeks, or just isn’t good enough to do the job you want it for.

How much easier would it be if you’d read the recommendations below first?

Upright vacuum cleaners

• Best: Sebo, Hitachi, Oreck, Panasonic and Electrolux
• Average: Hoover
• Worst: Dyson

Cylinder Vacuum Cleaners

• Best: Morphy Richards, Bosch, Numatic and Miele
• Average: Goblin, Electrolux, Panasonic and Hoover
• Worst: Dyson

Washing Machines

• Best: Tricity Bendix, Miele, and Bosch
• Average: Candy, Zanussi/Zanussi-Electrolux, Siemens, Whirpool and Creda
• Worst: Indesit, Servis, Hotpoint, Hoover and Ariston

Dishwashers

• Best: Neff and Bosch
• Average: Candy, Miele, AEG, Hotpoint, Zanussi/Zanussi-Electrolux, Hoover, Siemens, Tricity, Bendix, Whirpool, Smeg and Ariston
• Worst: Indesit

Washer-Driers

• Best: None good enough
• Average: Bosch, Zanussi/Zanussi-Electrolux, Whirpool, Hotpoint and Indesit
• Worst: Hoover

Tumble-Driers

• Best: Miele and Servis
• Average: Tricity Bendix, Bosch, Creda, Crusader, Hotpoint, White Knight, Whirpool, Zanussi/Zanussi-Electrolux and AEG
• Worst: Hoover

That advice comes from the Consumers’ Association, champions of shoppers’ rights for decades, and publishers of the famous Which? magazine. Their opinions of products were based on the findings because they surveyed of a survey of almost 14,000 members to see how they got on with difference appliances over a long period of time.

By paying attention to such advice, you can save yourself a lot of time, money, and hassle.

So when it comes to helpful recommendations based on the experience of real people, the mother of all review sites is Which?

Joining Which?Online is free for 30 days – although you do have to give a credit card number and you will be billed once the trial period is over unless you comply with the cancellation requirements.

The current membership fee is £7.75 per month and a helpline number is provided.

There are two justifications for the fee:

1. The quality of the reviews and recommendations.
2. The subscriptions pay for the running of the organisation – freeing it from any undue influence from advertisers or manufacturers.

Each year they publish hundreds of reports on a range of products, from electronic equipment to health issues, legal advice, travel and money. Their reputation is unquestioned (except by disgruntled manufacturers whose products have been lambasted).

Environmental awareness

For the environmentally conscious there is a lot of fascinating information available at www.ethicalconsumer.org/online.htm

This is the online version of Ethical Consumer magazine, an alternative consumer magazine. It has reports on everything from bananas to vacuum cleaners. And it also deals with corporate issues, alerting readers to bad behaviour by top companies. Founded in the late 1980s, ECRA is a non-profit organisation owned and managed by its staff as a workers' co-operative and is funded by readers' subscriptions and ads from ethically vetted companies.

Essentially the site's purpose is to help you buy ethically and it uses information from previously published sources, like Friends of the Earth, but they do their own digging too.

Products are reviewed for performance, and also for the corporate responsibility of the manufacturers, their environmental impact and so on.

Information exchange

By and large, when it comes to advice the best people to listen to are those who are consumer champions.

But it you don’t want to pay for advice from Which? and have no desire to join the ethical groundswell, you don’t have to. There is a range of free sites that allow consumers to post their own opinions on products.

You don’t get the guarantee of independence – or the editorial quality and professional muscle - but if you want to know the opinion of the man on the street, then these could be your options.

www.reviewcentre.com Review Centre was the first UK ‘reviews portal’ where the public were invited to submit their opinions. Some areas of the site have price comparisons as well.

www.epinions.com Based in America, but still useful is Epinions which again helps people make informed buying decisions and promotes unbiased advice and detailed product evaluations, as well as listing millions of consumer reviews, ratings and comments.

www.ciao.co.uk Part of a large European portal, Ciao draws consumers together for its reviews – and then tries to sell things through its shopping area. It earns its revenue through online advertising and merchants who pay to have their online stores linked from the site, and from market research activities.

www.uk.pricerunner.com Pricerunner.com offers specifications and prices for a wide variety of products and then leads you to the shops. It lists as many retailers, products and prices as possible and promotes products on behalf of advertisers.

www.dooyoo.co.uk Described as a ‘decision portal’ it provides a focal point for consumers to share experiences.