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Discussions about buying stuff on-line (especially from Amazon) come up here and there and rather than put this in a thread that just mentioned amazon reviews, I figured I'd put it in its own message...
My advice to family is to mostly disregard 1* and 5* reviews:
5*: too many paid shills, or someone just happy to get what they ordered quickly but hasn't used it long enough to have a real opinion. nothing's perfect, and most 5* reviews don't have much meat on them.
1*: someone's got an axe to grind. Often ordered the wrong item and was shocked that they received what they ordered.
4*: someone may've actually put some thought into this review. Ignore it if it's 4* with no discussion of the negatives; I want to know why it's not 5*
3*: similar to 4* but there's not usually many 3* reviews; people are rarely on the fence when reviewing
2*: similar to 4*, but a negative review; pay attention as 2* reviews usually have the most substance about what's wrong with the item.
Basically if I see an item with an average rating above 4, I'll read a bunch of 2* reviews to see what the negatives are, and then mostly 4* reviews to see what people who liked the item didn't like about it.
If the item doesn't have a lot of reviews and they're mostly 5*, I tread carefully, and try to ignore the blatant shills as much as possible, and if there's nothing else, I won't buy it.
Scan the questions&answers section as well - here you'll find people mentioning discrepancies in quantity / size / color etc. Often amazon item listings cover multiple companies selling things and often mistakes are made because one seller is selling the item singly and another sells a 2-pack or something. The Q&A often shows this as "are there two in the package?" "opened the package and only a single widget was in there, I paid for two". Or in my case yesterday, the item was advertised as being stainless steel (my requirement), and someone mentioned in the Q&A that theirs was painted plain steel (deal breaker for me, despite everything looking good from the reviews).
My advice to family is to mostly disregard 1* and 5* reviews:
5*: too many paid shills, or someone just happy to get what they ordered quickly but hasn't used it long enough to have a real opinion. nothing's perfect, and most 5* reviews don't have much meat on them.
1*: someone's got an axe to grind. Often ordered the wrong item and was shocked that they received what they ordered.
4*: someone may've actually put some thought into this review. Ignore it if it's 4* with no discussion of the negatives; I want to know why it's not 5*
3*: similar to 4* but there's not usually many 3* reviews; people are rarely on the fence when reviewing
2*: similar to 4*, but a negative review; pay attention as 2* reviews usually have the most substance about what's wrong with the item.
Basically if I see an item with an average rating above 4, I'll read a bunch of 2* reviews to see what the negatives are, and then mostly 4* reviews to see what people who liked the item didn't like about it.
If the item doesn't have a lot of reviews and they're mostly 5*, I tread carefully, and try to ignore the blatant shills as much as possible, and if there's nothing else, I won't buy it.
Scan the questions&answers section as well - here you'll find people mentioning discrepancies in quantity / size / color etc. Often amazon item listings cover multiple companies selling things and often mistakes are made because one seller is selling the item singly and another sells a 2-pack or something. The Q&A often shows this as "are there two in the package?" "opened the package and only a single widget was in there, I paid for two". Or in my case yesterday, the item was advertised as being stainless steel (my requirement), and someone mentioned in the Q&A that theirs was painted plain steel (deal breaker for me, despite everything looking good from the reviews).
