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Comment by Beltalowda | Hacker News Reader

> we get 4 stars quite often for things like "Oh it was smaller than I expected" even though the listing says the exact measurements like 4 times.

It's hard to really gauge the size of something from just measurements. One thing that often annoys me about product pages is that have a bazillion images of the thingymabob, but don't actually have a bunch of images where it shows the thingymabob in perspective; e.g. somehow actually holding it, a wider-angle picture of it in regular context (e.g. a painting actually framed on a wall in a regular living room or whatnot), and that kind of stuff.

Anyway, just an aside.

I also see a 4-star review as "excellent", but many of these platforms seem to see anything less than 5 stars as "bad".

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I agree, but we've really tried everything to be honest! We put comparative photos on there, mention comparative sizing (e.g., "This is about the size of a normal business card"), and so on. Still, people get it and think it's going to be bigger/smaller and somehow that's a defect? It's just part of working with retail customers of a physical product, but unfortunately minor things like that have an outsized impact in a sales ecosystem like this that expects perfection in these interactions.

As a customer, it's really hard to write these kind of reviews; people may still end up expecting something slightly larger, because even with the best of efforts it's just hard to judge these things from a picture or video. This is not anyone's "fault", it's just that humans aren't really good at judging these sort of things.

So what review do you leave? 5-star because the product is "as advertised" and otherwise good? Or 4-star because it's not quite what you were looking for? I think both options are reasonable.

The Real Problem™ here is thinking you can automate these sort of things without any human judgement and expect to somehow end up with a reasonable response. There will always be outliers that any human would judge as "yeah, that's just silly" but computers don't care.

A 5-star review should be left. If you are given measurements and the product matches those measurements, the only one at fault is you. A measurement is literally a definitive answer to the size of something. Get a ruler or measuring tape out and visualize it for yourself. Humans aren't good at judging things precisely, that's why we have tools!

My ex was a clothing Seller on Etsy. A 4-star review because something didn't fit right was super stressful for her, because it meant her average rating went down and her seller status might be demoted.

I think a better option is to contact the seller directly if you are dissatisfied with the product. That way you aren't transferring your problem to them.

So it’d be super stressful if you run into people who are like “yeah they did a pretty good job I’m satisfied. Not the most amazing clothes ever but I’ll wear them. 3 stars”?

That’s exactly the type of person I was before I became a dev and learned about these insane algorithms. As someone else on this post said 3 star - good 4 star - great 5 star - absolutely amazing perfect service! went above and beyond

It seems pretty simply. If you get whats advertised, you rate it good. If it isn't, you rate it worse. If it was what was advertised, but you figured out that wasn't actually what you were looking for, the rating for the product should still be good, even though you made the mistake of buying it. That's not the sellers fault in any way.

But isn't a review at least partly subjective, based on how much you like the product? Or at least, it seems to me that's how it should work.

Yes, that is true. But I think it has to be compared to how much you liked this product VS others who do the same thing. Not "I thought this product did X" (but it was never specified for example) and then leave a 4 star review after returning it, or similar cases. Maybe I ordered this thing and thought I would like it, but because of something not-the-fault-of-the-product-itself I ended up not liking it, I don't think the seller should suffer from it.

Ideally there should be two reviews:

- The product is as advertised, built well, shipped on time and with appropriate packaging, and all these other objective things.

- My personal opinion of the product.

AirBnB kind of does that, although it still aggregates in a single score at the end.

Tongue in cheek: at what point is it cheaper to send three sizes (exact and +1/-1)?

> It's hard to really gauge the size of something from just measurements.

I know some folks already hinted at this in the comments, but it's beyond bizarre to me to read this quote on HN. The size of something is literally the measurements. If the measurements are wrong, that's one thing... I'll sometimes cut out cardboard or mask things off in painters tape if I want to know how they fit in a space. Accurately reported measurements should never be hard to "really gauge."

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