This is an ongoing problem that we have been ranting about for some time however, it goes further than this.
There is no accountability behind the ratings as users can rate (though not review) without their names being used giving us no way to look into the issue.
The system can be gamed in that you can have your friends or alts make purchases and then add to your rating.
Most users don't know how to rate since it once showed up on log in asking that you review each product and now it's fairly obscure. This means older products who where there before the change have a higher likelihood of high rating though there may be many other products out there today that are much better and deserve a higher rating.
Star weighting is universal. If you have 5- 4 star ratings and then a 1 star rating shows up, it drops you from 4 stars to 3 since the negative weighting has a value of 3 less points since it works off a simple average. It should be harder to get 4 stars as it should also be harder to get 2 or three stars. To do this, everything starts with a baseline of 3 stars. If you get enough 4 star ratings, it moves to a full 4 stars (say after 3) and the same when they drop which would mean you would need say 4 1 star ratings to bring it down a point. It does this to some degree as it works off averages however, you need a lot of ratings for this to be affective which brings me back the paragraph above.
You competition can buy stuff and leave bad reviews as well as there is no accountability.
In all, many of us believe that the Rating System needs to go away.
It happened to me couple of times. I flagged those reviews as abuse or something, and they were removed almost the same day. Now, emails and all, we need those, but, first, people are becoming aware of dumb or fake reviews, and don't take reviews as relevant in general, second, in my experience, reviews don't take to much part in product rating anymore, and third, I solve rare review problems directly with cusomers ("sure, i'll redeliver, remove your one star") lol
A notification email is a no-brainer - one of the feature requests still outstanding from the SLM launch when all the beta jiras were marked inactive and the original SLM team skulked off in shame.
If that were in place, the "failed delivery" reviews wouldn't be so troublesome as they could be identified and removed quickly.
I must admit I do actually find them useful to a degree, esp when a number build up over time, to show when a merchant is no longer actively managing their business.
Ai Velde wrote:I just flag any 1 star reviews I see on mine or others' products as being 'off-topic'. I've noticed LL seems efficient to remove them when doing that.
I've never received a 1 star review for a failed delivery. But whenever I see one on any product I leave a comment and flag it as 'off-topic'. When I check back the review is gone. Merchants can be proactive by doing this with products other than their own.
Buit this does show the necessity of making people leave reviews when rating an item, especially when leaving a rating under 3 stars.
