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

[daniel-saunders.livejournal.com]

I had a reverse situation. I ordered a second-hand graphic novel that came with some torn pages and gave the seller three out of five, which I thought was generous - three stars rather as it was not advertised as new, but had been described as being in good condition. Next thing I knew I had an email from the seller giving me a full refund and asking me to retract my feedback, saying I should have contacted them first. I felt a bit bad, but I also felt like they were trying to bribe me to suppress what had happened, so I didn't change my rating. That said, ever since then when I've had a problem with a product, I contact the seller first before giving a rating - most give a complete refund and/or replacement copy.

[purplecat]

I do always contact the seller on the rare occasions there is a issue (though with the Christmas Tree chocolate incident referenced above that turned into a somewhat tortuous and convoluted process and I half wished I hadn't bothered). In this case, especially having seen the other reviews, she was clearly a scam storefront set up for a handful of weeks in order to get in as much money as possible before Amazon closed them down.