Vivienne Daguerre

I wish XStreet would remove the reviews. I get good reviews, but on one of my products someone rated it negatively and then advised people to buy another item by another maker. Everyone else had reviewed the item positively. This joker was abusing the rating system to promote someone else's similar item and steal potential sales from me, possibly his own as an alt. I find that some customers do take the time to rate something positively that they liked, but most do not. It is a useless feature to me that can be abused.

To solve the issue, I took down the listing and re-listed it. That was before the Lindens put out their TOS for XStreet SL. If you take down a listing and re-list it now, you have broken a rule. Yet, if you try to use XStreet's support system, you may never get a response. It leaves us with no way to defend ourselves against such abuse.

I received a negative review from a customer on another occasion. The person did not read the instruction notecard and did not even contact me for help. I give top notch customer service and have my IMs come to my email. If I get the email and am at my computer, I go into world immediately to help the person.

I went into world, contacted her, explained what the problem was and got her all fixed up. I then did scold her lightly, telling her that she would find that most SL merchants were honest and not out to rip people off, and that most offer excellent customer service as I just did. I told her I thought the rating without contacting me was unfair to me, and potentially damaging. She felt bad, found a way to change her rating to a positive one, and she did so.

The system is abusable. Some creators give money to their friends who buy their item from Xstreet and review it positively. The creator gets his money back, minus the XStreet fee, so these false ratings can be cheaply bought at that.

Another merchant said that she had a negative experience. She had made a fully modifiable item and sold it. A customer bought it and wanted it changed. He did not know how to modify it even though it was modifiable. (The request involved stretching a prim.) He said that he did not want to have to negatively rate her on XStreet. She went and helped him, and likely would have even without the threat. He then wanted a scripting change, holding that threat of a negative rating over her head, making the item behave in an unrealistic way. She now has her item in world behaving in a way she does not like with her name on it, a potentially bad example of her work for all to see. In this case the the rating/review system was used to blackmail her into making a modification she did not want to make.

There used to be an avatar rating system long ago, which the Lindens removed because it was gamed and abused. I don't know why they think this rating system will work any better. It is just a pain in the butt to honest creators trying to deliver good quality products and give good customer service. That would include most of us I would think. There are some bad apples out there to be sure, but I don't think this is the best way to address that problem.

Couldbe Yue

Even when it was privately owned it was against the site ToS to relist.

Assuming you haven't deleted the original ad, I suggest you relist it under the original ad, delete the new listing and then lodge a support ticket explaining exactly why you think the review should be removed. Unfortunately just because someone leaves a bad review and says people should use a competitor may not be enough - however it may be that it could have been the competitor who did it. Only XSL have the ability to work that out.

The bottom line is that there are people who are always going to be unhappy. If you feel really strongly about it then you can either respond to the review in your ad or in the item discussion. Be warned though that if it looks like you're picking on your customer it will give a bad impression to those who see it.

A bad review can kill sales, particularly if you don't have ratings or reviews but unfortunately that's the system we have. In an ideal world people would realise that not all reviews are by real customers, that some people are just venting and the whole thing is just an indicator rather than something to be relied on. Unfortunately it's not an ideal world and we have to live with it.

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Ann Otoole

If someone posts an obviously anti competitive discussion entry (not changable) or review you can report that and they will remove it if they agree it is anti competitive. So sometimes they do act correctly.

Some merchants have kiosks where they openly offer to pay for 5 star reviews. At least LL took that off xstreet rofl.

Camille Serpentine

Vivienne,
The same things could be said of the Amazon.com rating system. I found that all positive ratings didn't necessarily mean a good seller so I read a good variety. But I also know that a few bad ratings don't mean that the seller is bad.

Why let one bad review get you down? It seems you have your recourse of reporting the violation if indeed it is a seller promoting another item on your XLstreet listing. If not, if the person really didn't like your product (yes it does happen) and you're just trying to delete the negative rating so you have all positives.. I'd think twice about buying your products.

Eata

I don't really pay much attention to them. 5 star reviews are usually bum licking, 1 star are usually someone being a prat. Few items are truly worth 5 stars but it's expected as anything less is "bad".

The best review I have, for a L$1800 weapon (which are almost never mod) which says copy only in the permissions and first few lines of the description text...

Sid Nagy

One just can't win them all.

A possibility is to write on the box: "now with even better textures" and replace one or 2 prims so the object will get a new code on the servers and then list it again.

That is if those ratings really matter for you.

I'm more like: who cares in the first place, it is all gamed, like everyting else in SL is gamed as much as it is possible.

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