Do 1 star reviews ever skew your decision when looking to buy a product?

Honestly, it depends.

If the site allows for votes to come with a detailed review and the 1 star comes with barely a sentence, i don’t even look at it. On the other hand, if there is a detaied explanation of the vote, i’ll read it and judge for myself.

I’m honestly more skewed by a couple of well argued 2 stars reviews than by a boatload of 1 stars.

A couple of points

1) I never, ever trust stars alone. Each person has their own grading scale, and who is to say whether someone else’s scale is the same as mine?\

2) I always read the text of what people have written. You can learn a lot more from negative opinions than positive opinions. So, YES, I do pay very close attention if someone says something bad. In fact, I am more likely to believe a negative review than positive one.

3) Companies pay people (ad-whores) to write good reviews. That’s why I tend not to believe them.

All the time. I just checked the online reviews of hand-held vacuums. both corded and cordless, to be used for quick vacuuming.

The one-star reviews were so clear in their overlapping detail that it led me to ignore the high ratings that Consumer Reportshad given them. I will be sticking to a broom and dustpan.

Depends. I buy a lot of computer parts on Newegg and most one stars are DOA. This is to be somewhat expected. And I have never bothered to leave a good review for something that worked.

But I looked on Amazon for TP. I was so excited until I read the reviews.

Usually I’m swayed toward or away from buying a product or service not by any kind of rating system but rather by user reviews and my own experience with the manufacturer and its competitors.

I’m with @elbanditoroso, as I will read the comments in the reviews to determine the relevance of the rating.

I also go along with @elbanditoroso . There generally tend to be far more positive reviews than negative. This may be due in part to self-promotion, but I think it is also partly due to people being more likely to give a review if they like the product. I do give more weight to negative reviews, but I am always careful to read the reasons given.

I fully agree with @elbanditoroso. The 1, 2 and 3-star reviews are often more informative than the 4 and 5-star reviews. The 4 and 5-star reviews are usually gushing with satisfaction at how well the product performs. We know from the product’s specs and features what it’s supposed to do, so I find that these reviews merely re-state that the product performs as expected. I tend to discount those reviews that say, “I just got this product and I love it!!”, or “I’ve had this two days now, and it’s perfect!!”. No, you haven’t used the product long enough. Problems often don’t show up until later.
The negative reviews, on the other hand, often bring up a product’s shortcomings and quirks that you might not have expected. This is useful to know. But I do read the reviews carefully, because sometimes the negative reviewer has unrealistic or wrong expectations. I also discount the negative reviews where the bozo obviously didn’t read the instructions. And then there are the dimwits that give a product one star simply because it was not delivered to them on time, and it had nothing to do with the performance of the product itself.