In theory, it sounds like a brilliant idea. So many vendors have bloated their ratings by purchasing pennies worth of drugs from themselves, and then leaving hundreds of glowing ratings. The new feature lets you see exactly how much cash was spent by each reviewer. I think it's a great way to protect buyers.
However, I know nothing about how accurate these numbers are. Is there a known way that vendors can still game these numbers?
We've been forced to show that as well, though we show price ranges (ie $50-$100) to make detailed sales volume analysis more difficult.
It's not a panacea, though. Vendors can still game this system by creating buyer accounts and purchasing their own expensive products, costing them only the commission fee. Due to the nature of Tor, there is no way to reliably identify duplicate or bogus accounts. You should still use escrow or start with small orders until you trust a vendor implicitly.
If you think you might start worrying and posting threads about whether a seller is reliable 24 hours after FE'ing and hearing nothing back, you probably shouldn't have FE'd for that vendor in the first place.