The Regret Score, explained.
A single number, 0–100, that tells you how many owners regret their purchase. It's calibrated on day-30, day-60, and day-90 satisfaction — long after the honeymoon.
Owners are still happy three months in. Safe buy — sleep easy.
Mixed long-term reviews. Read the specific complaints before you commit.
Most owners wish they hadn't bought it. We'll show you what to buy instead.
Why day 90 matters most
Most product reviews on Amazon.com, Amazon.ca, Best Buy, and Walmart are written in the first 48 hours — when owners are still riding the dopamine hit of unboxing. That's not the moment you want to hear from them. The truth about a product surfaces later: after the return window closes, after the subscription cost stacks up, after the battery starts to degrade. Pregret's Regret Score weights day-90 satisfaction three times as heavily as day-30 because that's where reality lives.
The formula (no black boxes)
For every product, we take verified owner check-ins at day 30, 60, and 90 and compute:
where day-30 weight = 1×, day-60 = 2×, day-90 = 3×
A "low rating" is 1 or 2 out of 5. A product with mostly 5-star day-30 ratings but mostly 1-star day-90 ratings will score high on regret. A product that stays 4+ across all three checkpoints will score low. The math is public and reproducible.
Our methodology
Every Regret Score is calculated from publicly available review data: Amazon star ratings, review volume, and complaint themes across the review corpus. We weight recent long-form reviews more heavily than short "just got it" posts because those better predict day-90 satisfaction. The formula is deterministic — the same inputs always produce the same score — and we recalculate weekly as new reviews come in.
Why some products recommend alternatives
When a product has a high Regret Score, we surface 2–3 lower-regret alternatives in the same category. These are curated based on owner data — the products people who returned the regretted item actually switched to.
A word on affiliate links
When you click through to an alternative and buy it on Amazon, we may earn a small commission at no cost to you. That's how Pregret stays free. Commissions never influence Regret Scores — we don't get paid more for surfacing higher-priced products, and there's no path to bump a product's ranking through payment.
Serving US and Canadian shoppers
Regret data is aggregated across shoppers in both the United States and Canada. Amazon.com and Amazon.ca often ship the same product with slightly different pricing, warranty, and return terms — Regret Scores are consistent because owner satisfaction is what changes slowly, not the retailer.