Ratings confusion

This is one of the most confused things that you will ever encounter in your life. How to find out if you are dealing with somebody or something or someone, it is top of the class. I mean to say how you know that you are not buying something which is not worth your hard earned money. Although the people or institutions who rate stuff for us consumers may have good intentions in their heart but these good intentions create more confusion than clarifying which things to buy or choose for you, your households, relatives or friends. With so many ratings in place from so many different sources, it has really made common people handicapped in what to buy and from whom to buy and which ratings to believe so that their money is well spent. No part of your life has been spared in this race for ratings and even if there is no category, the creative people will create one and make money out of it. There are whole websites dedicated to helping (?) people make the right decision about some stuff to buy. I also rely on these ratings but it just confuses me more than one website may have ratings based on some criteria and the other one may have another rating based on some other criteria that they choose to apply. We the common people usually turns to expert to find out what is best for us but nowadays you can have many experts on one subject and everybody is claiming to have the right formula to decide what is the best one out of many.