The 5 star or bust review process really bugs me. It doesn’t add any useful information about a service.
A 5 star review should mean above expectations Essentially I got more than I expected and a business went beyond what I paid for. There should be a means in a review system to reward businesses who do well. A 4 star review being an 80% should be a business that met all expectations that I’d gladly go back to. A 3 star review is still a passing grade and shouldn’t be looked at a a business being terrible. 1 and 2 should be reserved for where you did not get value.
Flames Gimp’’s review is exactly what I am looking for. Got a service, not quite what was expected, after a bunch of work on his side he eventually got a product he was happy with and probably wouldn’t do the transaction again. That is useful information for me as a consumer.
The problem is that fake 5 star reviews are used to boost ratings and are paid for making real reviews hard to find. The system is quite broken.
I get where Sliver is coming from that people leaving unreasonable reviews is a problem and people leaving false reviews is a problem but that is separate. Flames Gimp got a 3 star experience, why shouldn’t he share that. In addition the idea that you are destroying someone’s business isn’t quite fare. There is a finite amount of money being spent on any product category. It going to the best provider of the service instead of a worse provider is market selection. It’s a function of capitalism that some will fail.
In a world where too often the sole differentiator is price having something else to go is important. It’s too bad it’s such a broken process where customers blackmail owners for free stuff and owners threaten lawsuits for reasonable reviews.
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