Originally Posted by
Bill in VA
My largest beef with Amazon is that the ratings often include ratings for items that are not for the exact product you are buying. I have looked at items where the ratings reference features not available on the actual item being listed. In some cases it is a higher or lower level item by the same manufacturer and even may include ratings of discontinued products. I have gotten counterfeit DVDs from Amazon, but they did refund the money.
It's even worse than that. If you are going by ratings, you definitely need to look beyond the number of stars. Sometimes, not only is it not the exact same product, they had a rash of listings where they actually weren't even for the same kind of product because they kept the 4-5 star review rating but completely changed the product description. So, for example, you could see that a lawn mower had a 4 1/2 star rating, only to look at the reviews and find out they were actually discussing a crock pot.