- When

shopping online

, looking at comparison sites may help you see if what you want to purchase is worth the money. If you find something on Amazon.com, the first thing you would want to look at are reviews that other consumers have left about the item. Most online stores have customer reviews, usually with some sort of rating system. On Amazon the reviews are broken down by 5 to 1 star reviews and you can click on each one to see what the reviewers had to say about the product.

- Besides reviews on the website, there are also reputable review sites like ConsumerReports.org where you can plug in the name of the item and then see whether or not it is consumer reports tested. On the product page you can see the grade consumer reports has given this item. There are also customer reviews as well. You can do this for all sorts of products and it's very useful, especially if you're thinking of making an expensive purchase.

- Note that you need to subscribe to ConsumerReports.org in order to see reviews and report cards.