(Originally posted on Quora)

Original Question:

When you are looking at product or restaurant reviews, which ones do you read and why? Do you only read the 1-star reviews? The 5-star reviews? The ones in the middle? All of them? Why?

For restaurants, I tend to read all of them but I start with the 1-star reviews to see if there is a pattern in terms of what people complain about for a particular establishment. If multiple reviewers have similar complaints about that same restaurant, then I will tend to ignore the higher-star reviews. Too many poor reviews would be a red flag for me and I would not want to visit that establishment if I have never been there.

Unfortunately, for some reason I don’t follow the same principle when it comes to product reviews. Several years ago, I saw numerous poor reviews on Amazon for a camera of a specific brand. I chose to ignore those reviews and bought it. Sure enough, that camera had the exact same defects that others had mentioned about.

I think the difference, though, is that with restaurants, you probably want to give them the benefit of the doubt since you don’t know, let’s say it was poor service, if that came on a night when they were short-staffed. Perhaps on other days, the service is way better. You just ever know. For consumer products, on the other hand, it’s probably more clear-cut. Somehow I have been doing it backwards when it comes to restaurants vs. consumer goods, hence my little situation with the camera.