SL needs to junk the review system. What do you think?

I am rather cheesed at receiving yet another unjustified one-star review on one of my best products. In my case, the feedback was because the customer “bought the item for a large sim” and thought the item “looked bigger”, even though the ACTUAL DIMENSIONS for the build were clearly indicated in the listing description. I know other merchants have had similar issues, and several others have reported receiving “bad” reviews for Marketplace non-delivery issues and other technical matters that are totally out of control of the merchant. I have flagged the review as inappropriate content, but this just underscores my perpetual gripe about the current state of the SL Marketplace review system, which I have enumerated below:

1. Customers can (and often do) leave unwarranted bad reviews for reasons that are not related to the quality of the product itself.

2. Reviews are one of the first things potential customers see when shopping. Review stars show up in the search listings, and original-posting review comments appear in the item listing itself.

3. The only immediate way for a merchant to defend an unjustly-reviewed item is to post a reply to the comment. However, these replies are buried in the interface and require additional clicks to view.

4. Unwarranted bad reviews damage the reputation and business of hard-working merchants because busy customers will often pass over an item as soon as they see a low number of stars rather than reading details. Thus, a customer’s experience can (and often is) unfairly flavored by these unjustified “bad” reviews.

5. When an item receives a review, the review appears on the listing and in search immediately. However, the merchant does not receive a notification that a review has been posted. The only way a merchant knows that a review for one of their items has been posted is by periodically scanning their SL Marketplace listings.

My conclusion: the current state of the SL Marketplace reviews is counter-productive to an efficient customer and merchant experience. It adds computing overhead to the already busy Marketplace servers, as well as the labor and maintenance required by SL in order to police the flagged reviews. Moreover, If the purpose of reviews is to provide feedback to the merchant, but the merchant does not even recieve notification that feedback has occurred, how is this a productive thing? Thus, until something better can be put into place it would be in everyone’s better interest if the SL Marketplace review system would just go away.

What are your thoughts? Feel free to post replies here or in the SL Forums.

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