PSA: vendor review sites are just paid ads now and it's wasting everyone's money
I spent 3 weeks digging through review sites for a new payroll vendor and noticed something weird. Every single 'top 10' list had the same 4 companies in different orders, and two of them were owned by the same parent company. I called one vendor and the sales guy literally laughed and said 'yeah we pay for those placements, everyone does.' If you're picking a B2B service based on those lists you're basically reading the vendor's own marketing with extra steps. How is everyone else finding real reviews these days? I'm about to just cold call 20 companies and ask their customers myself.