Aging Capriciously

Everywhere you look today there are reviews telling you how other people feel about a product or service that they have purchased.  A good friend of mine refuses to read reviews.  She argues that it is a little like going into a restaurant and asking a server “What is good today?”  I see her point to some extent.  What do I care about what others think about something?  How do I know the server likes the same thing that I like?

Growing up on the East Coast, I love seafood and spicy food.  Relocating to the Midwest in later years, I found half the population in states like Minnesota and Wisconsin where there are thousands of lakes and millions of fishermen who say, “I don’t like fish.”  I used to ask them, “why?” I don’t anymore because I already know the answer.  “They taste too fishy, they will say”  I want to reply, “Oh, do you dislike steak when it tastes too steaky?  Or hate potatoes that taste too much like potatoes?”   But it would be useless.  About the same use as challenging someone to eat something spicy when they say it will give them an upset stomach.  Somehow, millions of Americans believe that spicy foods cause upset stomachs.

The opinions that inhabit the brains of other people should lead all of us to be very cautious when reading reviews.  Let me give you two examples of bad or stupid reviews I have read.  Then I will tell you the secret for finding useful information from reviews.  Information that will lead you to be able to make purchases nearly 100 percent of the time that provide the quality and reliability that you are looking for.  You see there is both art and science to reading reviews.  Most people merely rely on one or the other and obtain less than optimal results in their choices.

The following are two reviews I have actually read myself.  The first deals with my searching for a new pair of running shoes.  Most reviews unless noted are based on five stars with five being the highest rating.

“I gave these shoes a two star.  They looked good but they did not come in a wide range of colors.  My wife said though that they make me look like a super runner.”

I am a functionalist when it comes to running shoes.  I have been running for nearly fifty years and used more pairs of running shoes than I can count.  I have bought just about every brand of running shoe ever made.  When I buy a running shoe, I buy it according to the type of running that I will be doing.  Will I be on the street, then I want a shoe with more cushion.  Will I be on wooded trails, then I might buy a more minimalist shoe like a Vibram Five Finger Sole.  Will I be on rocky mountain trails, than I want a shoe with more support and a rock sole plate inside like the Merrill’s that I recently bought.

I do not find a correlation with quality and price when it comes to running shoes.  The only correlation that exists in the running shoe industry is with price and fashion.  Many people who run like to look stylish and wear the latest most popular running shoes.  They will pay two or even three times for a new fashionista shoe than it is really worth.  They are often more interested in the colors available for shoes than the quality of the shoe.  Hence, it is buyer beware if you are looking for shoe ratings.

The next stupid review I want to describe was for a book that I was looking at on Amazon.  I was surprised that someone rated the book with a one star until I read the review.

“I gave the book a one star as soon as I saw the title.  No book with a title like this one could be any good.  The cover was also very dumb looking.” 

The only thing dumb about this book was the moron giving the review.  I do lots of reviews on travels and places that I have visited.  I review tours, hotels, concerts, train rides, restaurants etc.  I would never ever want to tear someone’s place or product down with a review that is incompetent and downright mean.  Yes, I think it is mean spirited to write a one-star review unless you can document or back it up with some facts that support your rating.  Facts and circumstances that would justify a one-star review.  Furthermore, I think it is always imperative that you try to deal with the provider before you leave a nasty review.  Speak to the owner or manufacturer or manager before you leave a review that can hurt their business.

The world of reviews is full of problematic reviews that tell you little or nothing about the product or service.  On the other hand, many low rated reviews can provide a wealth of information that will be useful.  Similarly, many high rated reviews can either give you good data or be a waste of time.  The review by a runner that says “I do not run but I rated the shoes high because they came in a wide range of colors” is not likely to be useful to anyone running twenty or more miles a week on hard rocky terrain.

Lets look at the two elements of a review that you should take into consideration.  The first I will call the “Science.”

Simply, how many reviewers have reviewed the product and what is the mean and distribution of data around the mean.  A product with too few reviews could be biased for a number of reasons.  Friends or even employees might have been talked into writing reviews to make the product look good.  I do not trust reviews based on less than 100 reviews and generally I want to see a review with more than 500 reviews.  I trust a larger sample size more than a smaller sample size.

Next, I look at the distribution of ratings.  It is not enough to know that a product received a 4.5 rating overall since the distribution might be lots of high ratings together with some very low ratings.  The average is not always a good figure to rely on.  As the saying goes, if you have two people in a room and one is starving to death with no food to eat and the other person is enjoying an entire chicken to eat by themselves, than on the average there is ½ a chicken per person in the room.  I want to buy a product with a rating that has less spread than a rating with an equal number of ones and fives.

The second part of finding your great product or service is the “Art” part.  It is the reading of the reviews to discern what people liked and disliked about the product.  No one should be buying a product or service without some idea of what they hope or expect it to do for them.  You want to have some expectations of what you are buying in terms of quality and reliability and sometimes style or fashion.

Reading the bad reviews as well as the good reviews can give you invaluable information on how the product performs and what it is capable of doing.  If there are videos that have been submitted showing the product being sold (These can also often be found on YouTube), I will always watch these videos to get more information about the product.  It might be a great product or even a fantastic product, but it might not be great or fantastic for me.  I think it is imperative to match the product or service to your own needs and wants.

I may reject high ratings as well as low ratings for a variety of reasons.  Often, people have unrealistic expectations about the product.  When it comes to movie reviews such as those on Rotten Tomatoes, good reviews might be useless if the movie does not fit into the genre of films that I like.  I tend to like movies that have more plot and character development.  Movies that are short on car chases and action shootouts and high on interesting dialogue.  My choice of movies does not reflect mainstream attitudes today with the current penchant for horror and action flicks.

The major categories of products and services that I purchase include the following.  I will briefly provide a few caveats concerning each of these areas.  A lot more could be said but a few comments should suffice to give you some thoughts.

• Books

Books are very trendy and fashionable.  Always read a review to see if the content matches your interests and not because it is the “book of the month.”  Popularity does not necessarily equal a good read.

• Movies

Rotten Tomatoes has its ratings based on two categories.  Critics and Viewers.  A movie might be high in one and lower in the other, high in both or low in both.  I tend to look for the high in both categories but sometimes I have found a great movie that was low in both categories.  Many very popular current films will be high in both categories, but I do not like very many of the current films out there.  I try to look more into the aspects of the film and plot and characterization that resonate with my film choices.

• Hotels

This is a very difficult product to judge because a hotel is more than just a room.  It is convenience to other areas, amenities, staff, food, service, clientele, ambience and location.  It is very difficult to find ratings on hotels that are very high, and it is one area where I might concede a correlation between price and quality.  That said there are many bargains out there when you get away from the big chain hotels and find small independent operations.  The one that we stayed in called the Zags Hotel in Portland fell into this later category.  It was relatively inexpensive but one of the most fun hotels we have ever stayed at.

Many people are very critical when it comes to hotels and motels.  Some want walk in showers and feather pillows and others don’t care about the showers or pillows.  You must read between the lines when selecting a hotel or you will be very disappointed.

• Restaurants

Ratings on restaurants are also very problematic.  I blame restaurants for this to some extent since they often create their own problems.  Even the best restaurants in the country have days when everything is just off.   Service is bad, food not up to standards and ambiance bad.  One common review I have read goes as follows, “Used to be great place to eat, food and service have gone downhill.  Would not come back again.”  This review might be followed by another that reads “Great place to eat, food was excellent, service was beyond expectations.”

Two things that restaurants cannot control are the expectations of diners and the behavior of staff both in the kitchen and out of the kitchen.  Many diners act like they are monarchs and should not have to wait five minutes for any service.  I have read so many bad reviews on restaurants where I have had great meals and service that I can only wonder at what happened to the other diner to cause such negativity.  Having been in the customer service sector myself, I can tell you that there are customers that you could never satisfy in a million years.  Thus, I would take any restaurant reviews with a dose of probability.  What are the odds I will get a good meal and good service tonight?  Like with the weather, it will never be a one hundred percent accurate forecast.

• Cars

I have never made a bad purchase with a car.   I also put car salespeople on my list of top unreliable people to deal with.  I realize that they are in a very high-pressure business and that this is part of the problem.  They don’t get the sale then little Andrea goes hungry.  This means that they are liable to exaggerate claims on what they are selling.  A worse problem is that due to the myriad complexities of the vehicles they are selling you, they will probably be a let less informed about the vehicle than you would expect.  I have hardly ever been sold a vehicle new or used wherein the claims provided by the salesperson matched later expectations.  Despite this discrepancy, my tendency to research the cars I am going to buy and to spend a great amount of time looking at comparable vehicles has helped me be very satisfied in my choices.  The few discrepancies have been irritating but ultimately very negligible in the overall product choice.  One example is a follows.

In 2018 we were shopping for a car to replace our 2009 Honda Civic that had 235,000 miles on it.  We decided to buy a new Honda Accord as it came stock with the new safety package that Honda had developed.  All the new bells and whistles for braking, cameras, adaptive cruise control and other safety features.  One thing I wanted for sure was the built in GPS system.  The salesperson assured us that GPS was standard on the Accord we were looking at.  We bought the car and two weeks later we still had not figured out how to get GPS on the console.  The salesperson had assured us that all we had to do was download the right software.  Turned out that the car did not support GPS regardless of what software we downloaded.  When you buy a car, it is always “Caveat Emptor.”

• Merchandise

We purchase a great deal of merchandise on Amazon these days.  It is very convenient to peruse their products and their shipping and return policies are excellent.  Since January of 25, we have placed 129 orders with Amazon.  There is such a range of merchandise that it is very difficult to give hard and fast rules about reviews.

Certainly, the science of reviews as I described should be paid attention to.  The number of reviews along with the distribution of ratings is very important.  As to the art of the review, it is imperative that you have a good idea of what you want and that you research the various product options as thoroughly as you can.  This means that if you are buying clothes, check other online sellers out.  The same goes for furniture, appliances, hardware and pharmaceuticals.

The range of ratings for many items prohibits a simple decision.  For almost every product, you will find many people who love it and many people who hate it.  Know the features and benefits that you are looking for and select the product where people rave about these features.  If style is not important, then you may not care about color choices in running shoes.  On the other hand, if reliability is important than look for reviewers who have used the product for several months or even years.  I have seen too many reviews where a product such as a running shoe worked great for two weeks and then fall apart.

Conclusions:

It is not easy wading through myriad reviews to find anything bordering on absolute “truth” about a product.  I like to say that fifty percent of drugs work fifty percent of the time with fifty percent of the people.  The same might be applied to ratings and product reviews.  Some will love the product and swear that it cures old age, and some will swear that it was garbage and not worth the money.  Who is right is the mystery that you will need to solve.  Using ratings to help decide on a product choice is a great adventure in the swamp land of American consumerism.   Think of it as the last great adventure in life.