Reviews not visible if not mutual
Answered
I was recently badly let down by a seller who simply disappeared after I had accepted her proposal. After several failed attempts to communicate with her, including through the PPH support, I requested a refund and found an alternative. I was very surprised at the seller's behaviour/lack of professionalism because she had a good bank of top reviews.
When my refund was processed I was, as usual, offered the opportunity to leave a review. Of course, I left a 1 star review explaining that she had simply halted communication and vanished, hoping that this would mean the next person would be aware she didn't always finish jobs well as the other reviews would suggest. However, I now see that 'your feedback will not be visible on Gemma B's profile until they submit their own review of the completed work'.
Surely this is both a terrible and, frankly, hugely misleading review system..? So only reviews that are replied to are visible on the seller's profile? All they have to do is reply only to the positive ones and future potential buyers will have a completely biased picture of customer feedback..Does my review even have an impact on her rating?
Very disappointing and I would suggest very much not in the long term favour of PPH building a quality user base. Would anyone like to try and explain the perceived logic of this system?
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Official comment
Many thanks for your suggestion. I will pass it on to our product team.
Please let me know if I can help you with anything else.
Comment actions -
Hi Michele,
Despite the fact that the initial post was published 2 years ago, please allow me to clarify one very important bit. No matter who submits a review first, the submitted review is neither published to the user's profile nor the user who was reviewed knows what the review is about, until the reviewed user reviews back. This is only when both reviews are published at the same time and users read the received reviews for the first time. Once the first review comes in, the reviewed user is informed over both email and workstream that they need to submit their review as well, so that they can read the review they got.
Once 30 days have passed and only one review has been submitted, it gets published.
I hope you will agree that this is fair, as otherwise reviews wouldn't be objective.
All the best,
Yannis Sliman
Product Manager @PeoplePerHour -
Hi Yannis,
thanks a lot for your replying. The process seems fair to me and will keep on using People per Hour.
My fear was that one of the two counterparties had the chance not to leave feedback and therefore no feedback would appear on both profiles. That would be an incentive for people that did a bad job not to leave feedback at all.
But as I see that the feedback is published after 30 days if it is not mutual that is totally changing things and allowing to understand the real quality of a freelancer (and not just the ones where he would know he did a good job).
Best,
Michele
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Hello YannisS,
I reviewed my buyer, review was not published but his rating dropped slightly he knew already that seller has given him bad review, although not published. He asked me "why are you giving me bad review" I was shocked why he knew before it is even published. So even though it was not published on his profile, the mathematical calculation was performed already and was visible in his profile and in response to that he gave me bad review...
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I just had a rubbish expereince where a bookeeper did not invoice me and after a month he was still not able to fix the issue i did not pay him but could also not review him. he works on the basis that he will only invoice if it all goes well that plus this mutal review policy means us as buys are being tricked and not getting a fair review of the sellers so after working with people per hour for some time i am going to look elsewhere and see if i can find freelancers with real reviews
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Hi London,
I'm sorry you had a bad experience. In such cases, you can report the freelancer by visiting their profile and clicking on "Report this profile" at the bottom left of the page.
Rest assured that we take immediate actions, if need be.
All the best,
Yannis
Product Manager @PeoplePerHour
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