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She Gave a Hotel a Mediocre Review. Then Came the Badgering

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Re: She Gave a Hotel a Mediocre Review. Then Came the Badgering

#71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Counterpoint: steam reviews with their binary choice result in a better aggregate experience and remove the need for bell curves. Binary choice leaves less room for interpretation and fuzzy ness, you either like something or you don't.

I've heard the arguments for switching to binary choice (netflix also did a big writeup about it), but I'd still prefer the ability to give a bit more nuance in my rating. It feels weird giving a movie that is okay and a movie that is excellent the same rating. Rotten Tomatoes goes further to emphasize the "love it or hate it" dichotomy - they display a ripe red tomato for a movie with a rating of 60 and a splattered…

You might prefer binary choice on more granular criteria: Like the pacing of the overall plot, dislike the performance of the antagonist

Re: She Gave a Hotel a Mediocre Review. Then Came the Badgering

#72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's an option. Still, it's not worth the small amount of money, to me, for a skeevy vendor like that to be able to say that they've paid me. Like, I don't judge. And when I was younger and broke half the time, I might've leapt at the easy money. I just wouldn't do it today.

It's not about the money to me either. I see it as, somebody acts unethically, and I can either (1) go along with their unethical behavior and personally benefit and encourage further unethical behavior, (2) refuse to participate, or (3) refuse to participate and discourage the unethical behavior. You choose 2 and I choose 3.

That’s fair. If you want to scam the scammer, darned if I’ll say you’re wrong for doing it. It’s not my thing, but fine by me if you do.

Re: She Gave a Hotel a Mediocre Review. Then Came the Badgering

#73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Same with me. Amazon rejected my review that was similar to yours, so I blogged about it instead: https://honeypot.net/post/amazon-seller-tried-to-bribe-me/ If it happens again, I'll go straight to blogging without bothering to report it to Amazon. I may not have that many readers, but it's more than the zero that I'd have through a rejected Amazon review.

I know I'm not adding anything new but I just wanted to chime in and say I've had the exact same experience as another data point for how widespread it seems to be.

I’ve had this experience probably 20+ times over the last few years with Amazon. Stars on Amazon cannot be trusted. Even products on Amazon from verified sellers can’t be trusted to not be fake. My general policy is don’t buy anything from Amazon for which I have any quality expectations.

Re: She Gave a Hotel a Mediocre Review. Then Came the Badgering

#74

I've heard from establishments after leaving reviews on several occasions. Typically they will either offer a free meal or a refund of the unsuccessful meal. I will update a review to let people know that I was taken care of, but I haven't ever taken down a review. I would consider doing so if my experience had been one-off, and I understood that it would not happen again (e.g., if an employee acted terribly and was…

Try Airbnb a few more times and you'll find out many more reasons to avoid it (the large majority of places are listed on other sites in any case)

Re: She Gave a Hotel a Mediocre Review. Then Came the Badgering

#75

I'm currently planning a trip to India. I've been to several countries around the world and never worried about reviews too much, but India really seems to align with this story. I'll see hotels with countless 5 star reviews (hundreds or even thousands!) that are overwhelmingly positive and get ready to book. But with one hotel my BS meter got triggered, since it was in a rather dingy seeming part of town but still h…

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Re: She Gave a Hotel a Mediocre Review. Then Came the Badgering

#76
post #7

Amazon seems to encourage this. I ordered a pair of cheap wireless headphones that were highly rated. I get them and they are crap. But, included in the package is a flyer offering an Amazon gift card for more than I paid for the headphones if I gave a 5-star review. My integrity is worth way more to me that that. So I leave a one-star review with a picture of the flyer, hopefully someone else will see that and reali…

> Amazon rejected my review

Someone should ask Bezos - was that a one or two-way door decision?

Re: She Gave a Hotel a Mediocre Review. Then Came the Badgering

#77
post #9

Ratings should always be on a curve for the rater, and on a 10 point scale, with no official meaning attached to the number of stars. If you rate everything 10 stars, you just gave everything 5 stars. If you want your 10 stars to mean 10 stars, you need to rate a bell curve of other stuff too. (you might say "but if I only select the best places, and the ratings are always confirmed, that would be downvoting them." N…

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Re: She Gave a Hotel a Mediocre Review. Then Came the Badgering

#78
post #9

Ratings should always be on a curve for the rater, and on a 10 point scale, with no official meaning attached to the number of stars. If you rate everything 10 stars, you just gave everything 5 stars. If you want your 10 stars to mean 10 stars, you need to rate a bell curve of other stuff too. (you might say "but if I only select the best places, and the ratings are always confirmed, that would be downvoting them." N…

a five-star system, but with stars instead of labels.

"Absolutely awful service" / "dissatisfied" / "basically what I expected" / "positively surprised" / "incredibly excellent"

This way, most customers would click "basically what I expected", making 3 star the default.

Adjusting all reviews based on the general mean and standard deviation after the fact makes sense, though.

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