The rating system here puts authors in an unreasonable position

I’ve had one of those buyers you know the kind; completely irrational and demanding. The guy has a database problem and is blaming it on my theme! I tried my best to work with him and wasted an hour of my time on it. Yes, an hour on something that wasn’t even my problem in the first place.

And why, you might ask, would I do that? Because of the rating system. I know that this prick is going to rate my theme one star if I don’t do exactly as he says. I really, really want to tell this guy to go screw himself but I can’t risk a four star rating.

Who’s with me on this? We are put in a completely unfair position here. The review process is rigorous and surely that means that all themes here are of a decent standard. Why do we even need ratings?

Now don’t get me wrong; I honestly don’t mind supporting the average buyer as they are reasonable and grateful. 99% of my experience with support is very positive. It is just that 1% that are completely unreasonable that piss me off because they have so much power to mess up a themes rating and thus its sales.

Oh and the buyer is now looking for a refund. Apparent he wants it “RIGHT NOW !!!!!!”.

I simply don’t give support to those “kinds” for a while now. As soon as I understand he is obnoxious and hard to work with, I stop replying. That person will rate the theme 1 star whatever you do.

turkhitbox said
I simply don’t give support to those “kinds” for a while now. As soon as I understand he is obnoxious and hard to work with, I stop replying. That person will rate the theme 1 star whatever you do.

It’d be fantastic if there was some safeguard for authors with regard this situation.

Maybe this – Ratings can be disputed – for example:

Envato could, by author request, review certain email correspondance or item discussion and if Envato found the buyer incapable or unwilling to rate fairly then the rating in question could be deleted.

Could this work? Or does it go against the democratic nature of ratings in general?

To be honest I think the ratings should be scrapped

I never take into account ratings when I buy an item. Looking at the comments is much more useful.

Or at least could the authors get a breakdown of the ratings?

Or we should change the rating system into fav system? If you like it, fav it, else, don’t do anything.

So, which mean, if you have 50 purchases and you have 40 favs, it means something. But if you have only 20 favs, it doesn’t look ugly too

Further, it is easier for buyer to fav rather than choose the 5 options ( 1 – 5 stars ), I guess, they may fav more

kailoon Great point here. Also some guys buy HTML version instead of WP and give an item 1 star just because they didn’t read the description (not all guys but some definitely do). It’s not fair too, I think.

kailoon said
Or we should change the rating system into fav system? If you like it, fav it, else, don’t do anything.

So, which mean, if you have 50 purchases and you have 40 favs, it means something. But if you have only 20 favs, it doesn’t look ugly too

Further, it is easier for buyer to fav rather than choose the 5 options ( 1 – 5 stars ), I guess, they may fav more

+++++++++++++++++

+1 !

kailoon said
Or we should change the rating system into fav system? If you like it, fav it, else, don’t do anything.

So, which mean, if you have 50 purchases and you have 40 favs, it means something. But if you have only 20 favs, it doesn’t look ugly too

Further, it is easier for buyer to fav rather than choose the 5 options ( 1 – 5 stars ), I guess, they may fav more

I think that’s a great idea. A lot of online rating systems have gone that route.

If we were to keep the 5-star system, however, a full-fledged review system might help alleviate some of these issues as well (something like that on Amazon). If a user has to write a review explaining why they left a 1-star rating, it’ll become apparent to other buyers that their objections are unfounded. It would also give the author an opportunity to respond to criticisms. Allowing buyers to give low ratings without justification or the opportunity to rebut or dispute those ratings is the real problem.

The obvious issue with this is that it’s already hard enough to get buyers to rate themes – asking for a full review will only lower the rate of review. So for that reason I still think Kailoon’s suggestion is the better solution here

turkishbox is right, those kind of people will give you a poor rating, no matter what you do.

The purpose of this rating system should be to give the buyers a little guidance, but that’s not what it’s doing.

It basically shows if the author offers good support, and if any of ‘those kind of people’ purchased the item before.

Support is voluntary, which makes this whole rating fake.

Even if it wasn’t, the problem is you can’t measure support quality with that kind of scale, it is a subjective impression, and different for every buyer.

I think the following facts make the rating obsolete:

• very high quality standards – you can’t buy crap here
• refund system – if it doesn’t work you’ll get your money back
• the documentation has to be very extensive
• there is a demo or a screenshot for everything – nobody is buying a pig in a poke