NerdWallet
NerdWallet is a financial review site. They give ratings to banks, lenders, mortgage providers, and many other financial services businesses. However, what seems like a simple review enterprise is actually a meticulous scam.
In my NerdWallet review, I have discussed why NerdWallet is an unreliable review site and why you should avoid reading their ratings. Let’s begin:
Why NerdWallet is Unreliable
NerdWallet is a website which recommends financial services to people according to its evaluation. On paper, it seems like a great company. Finding the best mortgage lender or loan provider is quite challenging and requires a lot of research. So people look for third-party reviews to figure out which one is the best option.
So, they go to review sites such as NerdWallet. But this is where things become unreliable.
NerdWallet makes it seem like it’s giving an unbiased and detailed review of a provider’s services. However, in reality, it’s only a blogging platform which gives biased reviews on the basis of its affiliate network.
In simple terms, NerdWallet gives positive reviews to the people who give it commission for recommending their services. So when you read a review on this website, you’d think you’re getting an honest review, while in fact, it’s an affiliate review, which is a completely different thing.
What is Affiliate Marketing and How NerdWallet Abuses it
In affiliate marketing, a business forms a partnership with an influencer (or a website) and the latter gets commission for every customer it brings to the former. It creates a win-win situation for both parties. The business gets to promote its services and get clients, whereas the influencer (or website) gets to monetize its audience. It can be a great thing but websites like NerdWallet use it mischievously.
Did You know?
NerdWallet is a firm that delivers personal finance advice and tools to help people make smart money decisions. It also offers various features, like, comparison of financial products, tracking and improving of credit scores, monitoring of net worth etc.
This is a simple rundown of how an affiliate makes money:
- It partners with a business which gives it exclusive links (affiliate links)
- The affiliate recommends that business to its audience
- When a person clicks on the affiliate link and buys a product from the business, the affiliate earns a commission
The commission could range from 5% to 50% of the cost of the product (or service), depending on several factors.
I explained all this so you can understand why NerdWallet is an unreliable source. They earn commission from recommending you services. All the following ‘Learn More’ buttons are affiliate links:
Notice how all of the providers have a near-perfect rating. That’s not because the provider is great. It’s mostly because NerdWallet wants you to click on the affiliate link and purchase their services.
Why would they say their commission provider is bad? After all, they are a business and they want to make money too.
But, you, the reader would think the ratings are based on proper evaluation of a provider’s services. You wouldn’t think for a moment that NerdWallet is giving you a biased review so it can make money from you.
NerdWallet gets commission from the providers it recommends. That’s why, its reviews can’t be trusted. Why would it point out the shortcomings of a provider which pays its bills?
Others’ NerdWallet Reviews
When I googled NerdWallet reviews, I found multiple complaints from its readers. It seems like I’m not the only one who discovered this scam. Many others have shared their concerns over the trustworthiness of NerdWallet reviews.
On Trustpilot, NerdWallet has a ‘Poor’ rating. Even though Trustpilot is notorious for maintaining bias against other review sites, the number of negative reviews on NerdWallet is too much.
Following are some of the recent NerdWallet reviews, discussing this concern:
Misleading Ads
This is an interesting complaint. According to this person, they saw an ad for NerdWallet which claimed to offer 1.60% CD rates. However, when they went to the website, the highest CD savings rate they found was 1.10%.
It doesn’t surprise me that NerdWallet resorts to fake ads to promote its business. They must be promoting the CD rates of a major affiliate who offers them a great percentage.
NerdWallet is Not a Real Organisation
I believe this review summed up my entire observation in a paragraph. This person says that NerdWallet is not even a real organisation and only has pages full of company names that pay them for their traffic generation.
Just like this person pointed out, no one should trust NerdWallet’s reviews.
They Promote Horrible Business
This reviewer complained that NerdWallet gives good reviews to horrible businesses. They mentioned the example of Caliber Homes, which got a 4-star rating from NerdWallet while the lender has a terrible reputation in the industry.
It’s a sign of NerdWallet’s greedy approach towards writing reviews. Because their sole focus remains on affiliate marketing, they don’t focus on who they are promoting. They only care about the commission checks they receive from their business partners.
Misleading and Unhelpful Reviews
<nerdwallet review 4>
In this review, the person shared their concerns regarding the NerdWallet reviews on trading brokers. Apparently, this person has a lot of experience in online trading and has worked with several brokers in the past. They pointed out a few things which are clear indications of NerdWallet’s unreliability:
- One of the biggest online brokers in the industry wasn’t present anywhere in NerdWallet’s list. On the other hand, NerdWallet has positive ratings on multiple small brokers that didn’t even have a proper platform.
- The small brokers didn’t have mediocre ratings on NerdWallet as well. In fact, all of them had near-perfect ratings with only slight differences between each one. The reviewer also pointed out that the worst broker out of them all had scored the highest in their ratings.
- The final point this reviewer discussed was that the reviewers were not qualified to give ratings. This is another important thing to note because NerdWallet makes itself seem like an expert review website. So if their reviewers aren’t qualified enough, then their reliability becomes more questionable.
There were many other complaints on NerdWallet. They all show that many people question the ethics and trustworthiness of this review site. And I don’t recommend anyone to form opinions according to the information they see on NerdWallet’s pages. You can find many more complaints by looking up ‘NerdWallet complaints’ or ‘NerdWallet scam’.
NerdWallet Review 2021: Conclusion
NerdWallet is an affiliate marketer for banks and lenders. It writes biased reviews while seeming like a third-party to earn fat commission checks from its partners.
Similar report: Paradise Energy Solutions
These people give a bad name to the affiliate marketing industry. Most of the people who read NerdWallet reviews rarely ever check the fine print on NerdWallet’s site. They believe that NerdWallet is giving them a proper and most importantly, unbiased review.
You should avoid these guys.
Man these people are dumb as hell. Anyone else getting a kick out of this??? Lol! Hey RJ, ever think that you just fumbled whatever it was you were trying to do or are we playing the blame game? ???? I thought you was a man… guess not.
Accurate, beneficial, knowledgeable, has been around much longer than this guy writing this review. Lol! These folks are Neanderthals and will blindly say anything for attention. Every experience I’ve had with nerdwallet is positive and beneficial to my needs. Their reviews are actually unbiased but I guess you have to actually read the reviews to know that. When it comes to my finances they have always been spot on and in fact, are helping me get a car as I type this. Crazy how I stumbled upon this while waiting for paperwork. Huh…
I just did not feel comfortable having all of my personal financial information hanging out there.
From what I gathered and from what I witnessed it leaves you too vulnerable.
Hah, I was browsing their website and they recommend an UNREGULATED broker to their clients and give it a 4.5 out of 5 stars rating!
NerdWallet is being run by some very fishy people who don’t care about their clients at all. I couldn’t believe the level of selfishness a person should have in their heart to recommend unregulated service providers to their users.
Please avoid NerdWallet’s recommendations people!
Never follow NerdWallet’s advice. Those people recommend terrible service providers as if they are legitimate and reliable operations. I followed NerdWallet’s advice and ended up losing my investment. Their suggested banker caused me several losses. I thought NerdWallet gave expert reviews of companies as a third-party. But that incident changed my perspective on a lot of things. Now I know that NerdWallet isn’t a reliable source for getting information. They are a fraud. NerdWallet shouldn’t even be allowed to publish reviews like it does. They don’t hire or interact with someone. No, they just take the money, and write a beautiful praiseful piece so people would buy from that person. NerdWallet should come clean and tell people “We write nonsense here”
Yep, these people are shady. I had read a positive review on there about a mortgage provider. Their review prompted me to get my mortgage from that horrible provider. The review was nowhere near the truth. That lender has been horrible.
NerdWallet is a dangerous online scammer which thinks it’s okay to play with people’s finances. They shouldn’t be allowed to run like this. The authorities should look into this vicious operation.
It’s so obvious that NerdWallet writes biased reviews. They run an affiliate site for Pete’s sake. They wouldn’t make any money if they started telling the truth. Those biased positive reviews are their bread and butter. No matter how much others criticise it, they wouldn’t change it. The business model is working fine for them, so they don’t care about what other people say. It’s just sad to see when people make serious financial decisions based on those biased reviews.