Mexico City Reviewers vs. Citysearch

Our friend Jess, a new mom, had a rare evening out with some friends the other week -- and unfortunately, had a terrible time at Mexico City. She's not alone, as commentators on various websites -- including people leaving messages at Rate-A-Restaurant -- have equally unkind things to say about the eatery.

But Jess, who was disappointed enough to actually write a review on Citysearch, is puzzled: Why, if most of the reviews are negative, does Mexico City still earn a 4.5 (out of 5) rating?


(Flickr pic by L.A. Addict.)

First, her review:

Being a new parent, finding time to go out to dinner isn't easy. That's why we were so disappointed with the awful treatment we received at Mexico City last weekend.

My husband called in advance to make a reservation and made sure to tell the person on the phone that there'd be 2 babies needing high chairs in our party. We were assured that we'd be accommodated. When we arrived, the restaurant's 3 high chairs were all in use. We asked to speak to the manager. She came over to our table and was wishy-washy about the whole thing, saying that people came in off the street and needed the high chairs.

She told us whoever we spoke to gave us wrong informationand they couldn't reserve high chairs. Then she proceeded to say that they'd even purchased morehigh chairs to accommodate people with families(how many did they have before, 1?) We didn't even receive an apology. Then, she just kind of walked away from the table and didn't say anything else. She was quite rude. The food was good, but needless to say we won't be returning.

And here's what she wrote Citysearch:

Question for you -- we dined at Mexico City over the weekend and had a bad experience there. I wrote a review, and when I went to look at it, I noticed that a lot of the other reviews were pretty bad, but the restaurant received 4.5 stars.

I did a little math and found that if you divide the total stars received by the number ofreviews, it would work out to a little over 3 stars for the restaurant -- but it has 4.5 on the site. So my question is, how do you calculate the total number of stars a restaurant has? If we had seen that it only got 3 stars (which is really what it should have gotten if you weight each review equally), then we never would have gone.The current system (whatever it is) seems a little misleading. Thanks for looking into this.

You go, Jess!