[JohnFen]

Before I started ignoring the ratings, I absolutely bought products with 3 star reviews, since my view was that "3 stars" means "it's fine".

And you know what? They were. I never really noticed a huge quality difference between things rated 3 stars and things rated 5. And, since I started ignoring the ratings, I've purchased things with 1 and 2 star ratings on Amazon (that were well-reviewed in other places). Those have generally been as good as the 4 and 5 star things as well -- and a couple of them were actually excellent, deserving of 5 stars rather than 2.