My favorite is the one star review when it’s a shipping issue. “Look at this, the box is ripped!”

Five stars also means "this was just delivered to me and I haven't even used it yet".

I think the problem is partially the fault of companies that insist, at least where rated interactions with employees is concerned, that every interaction should be five stars, which in a system where the stars are all meaningful like this, is simply not realistically possible. This gives people the sense in general that rating anything that you don't completely dislike anything less than 5 stars is a bad thing to do, because it risks hurting some employee somewhere who doesn't deserve it.

What it's really useful for, however, is reviews.

People don't buy 4-star reviews, and angry people don't give them. Those middle 3 stars are the reviews with reading.

Tbh, that different understanding doesn't matter much if you have enough reviews since it averages out.

If you compare two products with one review each, then yes, it hugely matters whether the one reviewer considered 5 stars as "expectations fullfilled" or "the best thing that happened to me ever".

But if you got >1k reviews, both sides will get equal amounts of both reviewer groups and it will average out so that both products will be compareable based on their stars.

That's a big misunderstanding many people have in regards to reviews. Many people are also afraid that unfair reviewers will skew the score. But since these unfair reviewers are usually spread equally over all products, it averages out as soon as you have a couple hundred reviews.

And that's also what that article criticises. It's much more important how many reviews an article has than the exact value. It's easy to get a straight 5-star rating if you have only a single review. It's much harder to do so if you have 10k reviews.

So the information value is: <100 or so reviews, the rating means little to nothing. >1000 reviews it can be usually trusted.

To be fair, I think it is reasonable to rate things you have no complaints about as high as possible. If I see a rating with three stars, I assume that it was okay with a few rough spots. I like the idea that all products start out as five stars unless there is something really wrong, and you start knocking points for problems.

I also found that an odd question.

"you ordered a two pack of Durex extra small and a packet of malteasers. Would you recommend them to a friend? "

No. Because who the hell recommends stuff..? Unless it's something truly unique im not going to recommend it

This.

Sellers are able to entirely replace the product page with a completely different product. Give the reviews a once over to avoid getting something you think is good quality.

Yup, and that's essentially what I'm looking for. I read critical reviews, positive reviews that don't seem like shilling, and maybe a few recent reviews.

It would be even better if Amazon got their act together and penalized companies that introduce significant changes to the same product listing. For example, Wi-Fi dongles sometimes change the Wi-Fi chip, which changes the performance and compatibility. I've read reviews on exactly that type of product and chosen a different one because the replacement was worse than the original.

I just don't trust Amazon listings, and it has saved me enough times that taking the extra effort is worthwhile.

losing the view-at-a-glance quantity of reviews was really annoying when i had to shop for some things last week.

ended up chasing me to newegg for the first time in forever. was done in 5 minutes (including running to a different pc and booting it up, to complete an unexpected 2fa), and no iffy marketplace sellers getting in the way. got exactly what i was looking for from who i wanted to buy from (the site, not a third party). a split shipment all delivered in 2 days to the boonies, cheaper and faster than amazon.

the difference in experience sent me back to newegg--this time as the first choice, for a little part order i would have normally got from whatever highly-reviewed amazon marketplace seller was cheapest.

So 4.5 is bad in both of those scenarios? So how is the number of people having rated matter?

Personally I always look further than the AVG number anyway. As other commenters have said none of this means anything if you don't check negative reviews for reoccurring issues.