Comment by sdflhasjd

5 days ago

Ebay do something similar too. You can immediately provide positive feedback, but you have to wait 7 days to add negative feedback. This is ostensibly to encourage sellers to address issues to retain reputation. Sellers can also get negative feedback removed after the fact by doing refunds, etc.

This means high volume low value sellers have little incentive to actually properly describe things or post correctly. A common issue I keep seeing is sellers using slower postage than paid for. You can immediately see from the tracking number, even if you wait 7+ days to submit feedback, you'll get a 'sorry' refund and the feedback is somehow 'addressed' without them going back in time and delivering it faster.

Online reviews are just a sham now, Goodhart's law etc as even if the reviews aren't fake, they're encouraged or incentivised from real customers. Look up any service provider on TrustPilot and it's the same: hundreds of 5-star reviews from people told to add a review just after signing up, a dozen 1-star reviews from bad customer service, and barely anything in between.