What does 3/5 mean?

[purplecat]

I recently had the experience of purchasing an external hard drive from a scam trader on Amazon. After the hard drive failed to appear, and the store didn't respond to my contact, I activated Amazon's refund guarantee thing and got my money back. So far, so good.

Then I filled in Amazon's feedback form giving the store 1/5 and noting that the item had not arrived and they had not responded to contact. Then, because I had mild guilt that maybe something had happened and I ought to give the store more time, I checked out the rest of their feedback to find 95 reviews all of which said "Item never arrived. Seller didn't respond to contact".

I was mildly surprised about the number of reviews that had final "waah! what about my money?" sentences since getting my money back had been as simple as clicking on a couple of buttons. But what really flummoxed me was the people who had left more than 1/5.

Someone had left the seller 3/5 stars, together with the "Item never arrived. Seller didn't respond to contact" message. I couldn't help wondering what, exactly, a seller would have to do to earn only 1/5 from this person - email back an abuse filled screed? come around to their house and burgle it?

I would say answers on a postcard, only I don't really want a letterbox full of suggestions. Comments are fine though.

Comments

[lukadreaming.livejournal.com]

A lot of it is down to Amazon's relentless pushing customers to rate every cough, spit and fart. You can see that on 'reviews' of books where people give five stars for something they haven't read, but which turned up in the post ahead of the next Millennium.

[purplecat]

I do try to fill in the generic seller reviews (though mostly I give 5 stars and write "Obligatory comment" in the review box) but I think they are useful for people judging who they want to buy stuff from. I don't think I've ever left either a product or a packaging review - the whole concept of reviewing packaging seems inherently silly to me.

[fredbassett]

I get so cross about being asked to do more than give a star rating that I invariably back-button. I usually can't think of anything more to say, so I don't.