Why do you only use Amazon, Argos, John Lewis and Tesco Direct to get your ratings?
We think that these four sites provide us with enough review information in the product sectors we report on. Amazon, Argos, John Lewis and Tesco Direct all have reliable on-site review systems. They are sites we trust, and are well established.
They are independent from each other and each one has a slightly different user base. This helps us get a broad view of the best rated products. Quite often we will see products that do well on one or two of these websites. Taking our broader view enables us find the products that score well across all the sites.
You state that a product has been user reviewed over 200 times for example, but when I visit a store, it’s got less reviews and the rating is different. Why is this?
Well Rated uses review data from more than one store, and calculates accordingly. But overall, a product will have had this many user ratings. We state on each page which sites we used for the product selection.
We also publish a list of the rating data which we find and base our calculations on, so you can check for yourself.
Why don’t you just tell us what the best product is, rather than listing the highest rated ones?
Best is a very subjective term. For example, we could say X is the best mobile phone, but if it has lots of features that you don’t need, which you will inevitably pay more for, then it might not be best for you.
We give you a list of solid products, for you to consider further.
I followed one of your links to a website, and as well as 4 and 5 star ratings, I saw some 1 and 2 star ratings. So is this product really so good?
A fair point. No product is going to be perfect for everyone, occasionally build-quality may be an issue. Sometimes bad ratings are left on websites because the product didn’t arrive on time, or the wrong model was delivered etc.
Our philosophy is safety in numbers – if the vast majority is happy then we believe it to be a good buy. This is why we only consider products that have at least 50 user ratings as we think that this figure gives a good indication of reliability.
I clicked a link out to an Amazon, but there weren’t as many ratings for the product as you quoted in your data table.
Sometimes products have different colours and are rated separately to the main one that we link to – we simply add in the other ratings for the colour variations.