What a 4.6 From Twelve Orders Actually Tells You

A star rating is a compression algorithm. It takes dozens of experiences — a parcel that arrived a day late, a colour that was slightly off, a seller who answered at midnight to fix something — and squeezes them into one number with one decimal place. Useful, but a lot gets lost in the squeeze. Here is how to get some of it back.

The count is half the number

A 4.6 from twelve delivered orders and a 4.6 from twelve hundred are not the same claim. The first says roughly: this shop has served a small number of people and most were satisfied. The second says: this shop has a process that survives volume. Both can be worth buying from. Only one of them tells you what happens on a busy week.

Read the distribution, not the average

An average of 4.5 can come from mostly fives with a couple of ones, or from a solid wall of fours and fives. The first shape is more interesting: go and read those ones. If they are all about courier delays to a district you do not live in, they may not be about you at all. If they are all about the same product arriving damaged, they are.

What the rating cannot see

Reviews come from delivered orders, so orders that were never delivered leave no star behind. That is why the other signals on a shop page matter alongside the rating — how long it has traded, whether it is verified, whether its policies are specific, and how it answers a question before you buy.

Judging a brand new shop

Every shop starts at zero, and refusing all of them means only ever buying from the shops that got here first. A fair way to judge a new shop:

• Is it verified? Documented identity counts for more when history is thin.
• Are the listings specific — real photos, model numbers, what is in the box?
• Are the delivery and return policies concrete rather than a copied paragraph?
• Does it answer a message clearly and quickly?
• Does it accept cash on delivery, so you carry very little risk on the first order?

Four yeses and cash on delivery is a reasonable first order. That is how good shops get their first reviews, and how you occasionally find a great one before everyone else does.

Two patterns worth walking away from

A cluster of glowing, near-identical reviews written within a short window is worth a report, not a purchase. And a shop that answers every critical review by attacking the reviewer is telling you, in advance and for free, how it will handle your problem.