I like when people disagree on ratings because it means that probably the truth is half-way
I was wondering in fact why the spells would be so bad, considering they've been out in the wild for a couple of years already from the free web supplement to PotA... I thought people have used these spells a lot, and feedback has been collected (and in fact some of those spells have been revised!).
Treantmonk makes some comments on a few spells which apparently are straight worse than Fireball on a one-to-one comparison. I remember that Crawford has even commented sometimes that Fireball is OK if slightly overpowered because it's the most "iconic" spell. But I do not think it's good at all if there are spells which don't even have a single incentive to be taken compared to others.