It is not difficult to check the quality of a product. To do this, you just need to submit it for examination. For each product there are certain minimum characteristics that it must meet. If it does not meet them, it is subject to return to the seller, and in this case, certain sanctions are applied to the seller.
But in the service sector, everything is much more complicated. You cannot so easily "submit a service for examination" because a service is not a physical, easily transportable object. Also, services are more difficult to standardize than simple goods.
Let's add to the above that, thanks to the spread of the Internet (video communication) and electronic money, some services (consultations, lessons, lectures) have become possible to provide remotely. And when the seller and the buyer are in different parts of the world, this greatly complicates compensation for damages through the court (the court itself becomes quite expensive).
This gave rise to a layer called "infogypsies". That is, elusive sellers of air.
But there is a way to combat them. You just need to build reviews more competently, because you can only evaluate the quality of the service provider based on them.
You need to create an electronic system "Honest Review", the main purpose of which will be to form the most honest reviews of service providers. The work of such a system should occur in the most automatic mode (with a minimum of involvement of third parties).
You can create an electronic system "Honest Review" as follows:
1) all sellers of services providing them via the Internet must, by law, register in this system - "Honest Review". To register, the seller must provide some basic passport data (photo, full name, date of birth, place of birth), but without serial numbers and signatures (so that it is impossible to take out a loan based on this data). If the service is also provided by the seller's partner, his basic passport data must also be registered in the system - this is necessary to protect against the registration of fraudulent sellers on fake passports.
In the profile of the "Honest Review" system, the service provider can connect any electronic sites (social networks, any Internet resources), all connected resources are displayed publicly in the "Honest Review" system. On the connected sites, the seller of services can place advertisements, but with the obligatory indication of the link to his profile in "Honest Review". If the third-party site is not indicated in the profile of "Honest Review", then the seller of services is prohibited from placing advertisements of his service on it. Both the sellers of services themselves (they will receive a fine otherwise) and the owners of the sites (they will also receive a fine) must monitor this.
2) after registration, the seller receives his ID number and can come up with a name for his company (his real name and data are not displayed to everyone) services can create cards of the services sold. By analogy with cards for the goods sold, the service card must fully describe the service. In the service card, the seller must clearly (and, if possible, briefly) write down what he guarantees to the buyer, what is included in the kit of the service provided, what the result of the work performed will be. The service card also indicates the time period for which the service is provided (for example, "The lecture lasts two hours").
3) the buyer selects a service from the cards, chooses the time at which it is more convenient for him to receive it, pays for it. Then his money hangs in the "Honest Review" system. At the time chosen by the buyer, the seller connects with him via the video link built into the "Honest Review" system, shows several fields from his passport (photo, last name, first name, date of birth) - the data must match the data specified in the seller's profile. If everything is OK, then the money is transferred in parts to the seller's account. This is done every 5 minutes of the service provided. At any time, the buyer can click stop and interrupt the service and payment. The seller will also see this immediately (there should be a notification).
4) Each service purchased from the seller automatically adds a positive review to him - "5 stars" with the date of purchase. In this case, the buyer is given the right to change their review to "4 stars" (generally normal, but there are some negative nuances), to "3 stars" (the quality of the service is not high) and to a negative review (minus xx stars) within 12 months. Also, supplement reviews with text comments.
To leave a negative review for a service, the buyer must upload their basic passport data to the system (full name, photo, date of birth and place of birth), this is necessary to protect against fraudsters (more on this below).
After sending a negative review, the money is not returned to the buyer automatically. The seller can, at his own discretion, by agreement, return them partially or completely, and the negative review disappears from his profile (this transaction completely disappears). For this, the "accept seller's terms" button must be provided in the "Honest Review" system.
The more positive reviews the seller has, the higher the trust in him will be (the higher his rating). But at the same time, the seller can buy fake positive reviews for himself - there are plenty of schemes for this on the Internet (how to order services from yourself through fictitious persons). In this case, for each fake review, he will be obliged to pay at least the commission of the "honest review" system, and most often also income tax. That is, in the end, at least 2-3%, and most likely all 10% of the cost of the service. Negative reviews can also be inflated by competitors - they will pay for fictitious buyers in order to discredit competing sellers. In order to make it impossible to post both inflated positive and inflated negative reviews, there must be protection with a clearly configured balance of power.
To do this, one negative review left by the buyer must subtract several positive ones - they must completely disappear from the seller's profile, thereby worsening trust in him, making him less experienced in the eyes of the consumer.
Example:
If the "honest review" commission is 2%, and the income tax is 8%, then after selling a service worth 10,000 rubles, the seller will receive only 9,000 rubles net (the rest will go to paying the tax and service commission).
For the specified parameters, one negative review should hide 9 positive reviews (because the seller can buy 9 fake positive reviews (at 1000 rubles per review) and automatically delete the negative review for the 9,000 ruble profit from the service for which the competitor left a fake negative review) in response.
That is, the balance will always be maintained and even much stronger and larger competitors will not be able to knock the seller out of the market by ordering a lot of negative reviews. It will not be possible to inflate negative reviews or positive ones with impunity.
This "Honest Review" system is designed to sell services, not goods. Because goods can be easily exchanged back for money. But this will not work with services. It is impossible to return the service. And this will encourage many fraudulent buyers to leave dishonest negative reviews for sellers so that they return their money even after the work has been done normally. That is, they will try to save their money and get the work done for free. To protect against such dishonest buyers, the system has protections:
a) to leave a negative review, the buyer must upload their passport data (this will help to avoid registering fake accounts, duplicating accounts). After registering an account, it becomes tied to a specific person for life.
b) all reviews left by the buyer (positive and negative) with the cost of each order are recorded in their profile. And the seller, before agreeing to provide services, can look at the buyer's profile - whether it is worth doing business with him, or there is some inadequate person there that is better not to deal with.
The algorithm of the system:
the buyer bought a service, after its implementation, he had some complaints. He leaves a negative review in order to receive compensation. The negative review immediately erased a bunch of positive reviews from the seller and requires a solution. The seller reads the buyer's complaints and then has three options:
1) he will ignore the buyer and decide to buy fake positive reviews with the money received from him - thereby restoring the deleted reviews. But if the service was really of poor quality and the seller knows about it, then the buyer can leave negative reviews on other sites, make a video on YouTube, etc. That is, still spoil the seller's reputation.
2) the seller will begin to negotiate an option with partial compensation - will return part of the cost of the service, justifying why exactly this amount. In this case, the negative review disappears, the positive reviews it has hidden are returned. This transaction completely disappears from the seller's profile.
3) if the buyer does not agree to the second option (i.e. there is something really crazy there), then the seller can return the full cost of the service. In this case, the negative review also disappears, the positive reviews it has hidden are returned. This transaction completely disappears from the seller's profile.
More nuances:
After leaving a negative review, first of all, the positive reviews of "stars" already posted for the same service are hidden. If there are none, then for other services of the same cost (to maintain a balance, according to the above formula). Only "5 star" reviews are hidden. Reviews "4 stars" and "3 stars" should not technically be hidden (participate in this scheme), because they already contain a partially negative review (a small part of it). But theoretically, if necessary, 2 reviews "4 stars" can be equated to one "5 stars" (i.e. 2 times more "4 stars" reviews should be hidden than "5 stars" reviews).
The main thing for the "honest review" system is to accurately calculate the balance mathematically - how many positive reviews should be erased by one negative one.
If the seller received a negative review for a service for which he does not have enough positive reviews to deduct, then positive reviews are deducted from his other services (the proportion is calculated based on their cost).
If the buyer canceled the service in the middle (i.e. did not transfer the entire payment), and then left a negative review, then such a review deducts twice as many positive ones.
The system is convenient for both the seller of services and the buyer.
It is well suited for such service providers as a plumber, hairdresser, car repairman, computer technician, equipment repair, room repair, home craftsman, sewing services, photographer, lawyer, doctor, section coach, teacher, tutor, consultant.
In the specified feedback system for buyers, three options could be made:
1) all the reviews left by the buyer (negative and positive) are displayed in the buyer's profile. The cost of the service for each review is also indicated. In this case, negative reviews do not erase positive ones.
2) everything is like in the previous option, but negative reviews left by the buyer are erased from his profile after 3 years.
3) everything is like in the first option, but negative reviews erase positive ones in a certain proportion (the same as for the seller).
But only the first one is the most efficient. Below is an explanation.
In the first option, the following happens. Some sellers will naturally want to buy fake positive reviews for themselves. At the same time, there will be buyers who often leave negative reviews, and for whom it would be extremely profitable to get a positive review for free (by leaving the same for the seller). After all, in this way, positive reviews will cover the negative ones. And you can continue to leave negative reviews more often.
As a result, there is a demand for fake positive reviews on both sides, and a market is formed. The law of supply and demand begins to work, which sets the market price. As a result, the buyer will not be able to get positive reviews for free.
When creating a fake positive review for a seller, the tax amount is burned from the cost of the service. This tax is credited to the seller's pension, not the buyer's.
Therefore, when creating a fake review, the seller will most likely ask the buyer to also pay part of the tax, but this will not be a 50/50 ratio. But somewhere around 75/25 or 90/10 in favor of the buyer.
But all the same, it will not be free for the buyer. Therefore, attempts to cover negative reviews with fake positive ones will be unnecessary additional expenses for the buyer.
In the second option, everything will be like in the first option, but the negative reviews that disappear over time will encourage buyers to leave fake negative reviews more often in order to knock out an additional discount (after all, the negative reviews will disappear in 3 years anyway).
In the third option, it would be like this. Erasing positive reviews with negative ones in the seller's profile is a way of punishing him for poorly performed work. But even in this case, the buyer also remains punished in rubles (he has no guarantee of returning the money spent on a low-quality service), plus a negative review will hang in his profile, which can confuse and even scare off some future sellers.
That is, it is important to understand that reviews from the seller and the buyer are not equivalent. They have completely different strength and importance. Reviews are more important in the seller's profile than in the buyer's profile. A buyer who has no reviews (none) will easily buy any services. But a seller who has no reviews will sharply reduce the likelihood of selling his services.
Therefore, the option when fake positive reviews are needed by the seller will arise much more often than the option when fake positive reviews are needed by the buyer.
The seller selling services usually does this in one narrow area, so reviews for such services can be summed up (negative ones are subtracted from positive ones). And based on the results in his profile, you can determine the final quality of his services.
But the buyer, as a rule, does not buy services in only one area. He buys a wide variety of services. Reviews for such services cannot be subtracted from each other. Therefore, all that remains is to simply display all the reviews together. Based on the total reviews in the buyer's profile, you can only see whether he behaves adequately, whether he is trying to pick on each seller by leaving exclusively negative reviews in order to get something for free or at a big discount.