Justanswer.com Chages for access to archives and doesn't tell you that they are available free on the web. San Francisco California

I have been a customer of JustAnswer.com (JA) for several years and generally have been satisfied with the answers I have received in different categories. Since I set the fees, I feel that I usually get value for money. If I dont think the answer is appropriate, I do not accept it and am not charged. JA does keep my deposit, but it is used for my next question, which has been OK with me.

I also search the JA archives, sometimes out of curiosity and sometimes looking for previous answer to similar questions, like looking at any sites FAQs. There is a small fee for this, and until today, I thought $3.00 was a bargain.

This afternoon, I was surfing and decided to do a search using the name of the JA expert who answered my last question, which was about my daughters problem. Although that experts user name is a unique expression, it still could have brought up more hits than I wanted to deal with, hits unrelated to JA questions. As an experienced web researcher, I narrowed my search by entering . Suddenly, I saw a screen filled with links to that persons answers, possibly all of them (over 3,000 hits).,

All of those are available free. Doesnt that make charging for going through the JA archives a rip off?

Now, you do have to know the JA user name to do that, but I just found that's not a problem, even if youve never used JA. Searching gave me 873,000 hits to questions put to JA about names and their answers. Opening any link will give you the user name of the person who answered it, and you can then search and read all his/her answers.

So, because I have medical problems, I went further. Using gives 581,000 hits for questions/answer with the word medicine. Using gives 1,400,000 hits on medical questions, people and pets.

More examples:

SEARCH TERM HITS

justanswer ford 656,000
justanswer auto 1,170,000
justanswer tax 761,000
justanswer dog 908,000
justanswer collie 9,060
justanswer algebra 5,460

So, folks, if you want to search for information regarding a specific problem, not just general information, say, about line 21 on your 1040 income tax form, by using , youll get 530,000 hits; the odds are pretty good that youll find what you need there I just did! And I didnt have to pay an accountant or JA.

Now, the accuracy of any answer you find is not guaranteed by JA. In fact, JA does not warranty the qualifications of any expert on the site, and that is stated in a disclaimer. Keep that in mind. Regardless, I must admit that I have been fortunate, although a lot of others have complained about getting bad answers from unqualified people.

All those answers (to questions you may have) are out there, bought and paid for by other people, and available free if you are willing to be patient and put in the research time, probably less time than simply searching for a specific word or term over the entire web. Just put justanswer in front of your search term, and narrow you search.

So, why pay JA if you can find what you need at no charge? It would be nice if you could pay $3.00 to the person who asked the original question, but you cant. JA has already gotten its fee, so dont feel bad; the stuff is out there, not costing JA anything, so theres nothing to pay for.

Bottom line: Ill continue to use JA, but only after I have used Google to read old answers and havent found what I need.

Shakespeare
Brooklyn, New York
U.S.A.