Do you rely on "reviews" to a large extent ?

[orchidsarefun]

I am curious because of my experience with these.

Firstly - we are fortunate to be able to vacation in Mexico every year. We religiously avoided inclusive resorts with bad reviews ( on tripadvisor and elsewhere ). That is until I decided to go and take a look at one personally. We were impressed and from the following year we decided to go for the resorts offering the BEST DEAL, rather than the highest reviews. We had one proviso to this - there had to be at least 2 good recent reviews. That was about 6 years ago and I am happy to say that we have not had a bad experience since.
Secondly - movie reviews. I have seen enough movies on DVD to know that a lot of reviews seemingly don't apply to our viewing habits ! If the plot outline, the actors and the trailer look OK, we are not swayed by bad reviews and see these movies on the big screen.
Thirdly - car reviews. Having been told NEVER buy a Chevvy or a Ford for years, we did end up buying both at different stages. And haven't been disappointed !
Fourthly - orchid vendors. I am not sure what to say about this, other than it really seems to be mostly dependent on luck and the plant. Where possible I now make sure I see the plant in "real life" before buying it. But I do buy on e-bay for those hard to find plants - its really about the plant, not the vendor - and maybe I am lucky, but have never had issues that couldn't be resolved.

All I can say is Caveat Emptor and you should really make your own mind up ! A review generally can't account for personal taste and luckily everyone is different...