OldShooter
Give me a museum and I'll fill it. (Picasso) Give me a forum ...
+1When I’m doing my research, I focus on the bad reviews. For a product, if there are a number of poor reviews that mention the same issue, I tend to believe it. I also give consideration as to whether that issue would impact me. Maybe everyone is downgrading it for lack of a particular feature that I never plan to use.
For hotels, if there are enough reviews that say the area is bad or the property needs upgraded, I tend to believe that and stay away.
I also tend to throw out the really bad reviews if they seem like some clown with an axe to grind. I don’t hold it against a company to have a few people that are just never satisfied. We have one of those clowns in our family. I won’t go out to eat with them any more because it’s too embarrassing.
I do almost the same. The only additional thing I do is look at the review dates. If there are complaints about something that end a couple of years prior, I assume that the property or the restaurant has been paying attention. As I said in a previous post, we don't stay in chain motels unless that is the last option but we do use Yelp for restaurant reviews. I remember sitting on a bus bench across the street from a restaurant in Memphis, checking them out on a tablet computer. It turned out to be a great place. Life is too short to eat bad food.