Five Stars for Sale
Stars bought with refunds or extorted with threats, caught in chat, struck from ratings.
The job
Finds review manipulation both ways in buyer-seller chat, with sellers paying for five stars or deletions and buyers threatening one star for a refund. Removes tainted reviews from the rating, protects sellers facing threats and keeps a dated evidence record.
The moment
A seller's 4.8 star rating sits on screen beside a faint ghost showing what the honest rating would be.
The trust and safety lead drags a time slider back to March, and the stars peel off one paid-for review at a time. From the week of 12 May, 212 buyers were offered their money back to delete a review.
Across 1,140 reviews, 212 are tainted, and the ghost settles at 3.9. The tainted reviews are set aside and the seller is warned.
A month later the seller's chats show no such offers, and the honest rating has climbed to 4.2 through real fixes.
What it does
- Open a case
- Quarantine tainted reviews
- Warn or suspend a seller
- Protect an extorted seller
- Send the monthly evidence record
What you see
Star autopsy with an honest-rating ghost and a time slider, plus a two-way case log.
What it moves
The gap in stars between the rating shown and the honest rating across listings, and offers of money for reviews per 1,000 buyer-seller chats.
Built for
- Risk & fraud
- Compliance, complaints & legal
- CX leaders & VoC
- Partners & ecosystem
