Silk Road forums

Support => Feature requests => Topic started by: Fred Flintstone on May 05, 2012, 10:33 pm

Title: Purchasing Stats - Changing how Refund Rate is calculated?
Post by: Fred Flintstone on May 05, 2012, 10:33 pm
Up until yesterday, I had a 0% refund rate. I was refunded for a package that never arrived which cost $136.15, and it increased my refund rate by a hugely disproportional rate. My understanding is that to calculate refund rate you do this: Refund Rate = (bitcoins refunded) divided by (Bitcoins spent)

I have been here for 10 months and a large portion of my orders were made when a bitcoin was valued between $15 and $30. So, a $140 refund when bitcoins are worth $5 each is equivalent to a $840 refund when bitcoins are valued at $30 each.

Here are my purchasing stats before the $140 refund:

Total transactions: 62
Total spent: $5979.40
Refund rate: 0%
Auto-finalize rate: 0%
Member for: 10 months

Here is are my purchasing stats after a single refund (out of 63 total orders) for $136.15:

Total transactions: 63
Total spent: $6115.56
Refund rate: 7.26%
Auto-finalize rate: 0%
Member for: 10 months

A 7.26% refund rate does not in any way reflect my true refund rate. If the refund rate were calculated based on $, it would be: $136.15/$6115.56 = 2.22% refund rate

Or if refund rate was calculated by your total number of purchases (which has obvious flaws and doesn't take purchase size into consideration) would be: 1/63 = 1.58%

I really don't want a 7.26% refund rate to scare away sellers or require that I finalize early. I have never screwed anyone over or asked for a refund which I did not think was fair. I imagine that this has happened to other people, especially those in my position who have been here a while and spent a bunch of money back when bitcoins were more valuable. I am not sure if it would be possible to implement a refund rate based on $, especially retroactively for all prior sales. I just wanted to bring this to everyone's attention and see if anyone had suggestions regarding a better way to calculate refund rate and hear from sellers as to whether or not a 7.26% would scare them away from doing business with me and/or require that I finalize early.
Title: Re: Purchasing Stats - Changing how Refund Rate is calculated?
Post by: spd on May 06, 2012, 03:07 am
I don't think the higher-than expected refund rate is caused by bitcoin fluculations - it's just that more recent transactions count more than earlier ones. 

I had 9 perfect transactions, around $800 spent, and got refunded $15 - and my refund rate jumped from 0 to 15%!  Should have been 2% just going by money spent.  But one successful $25 transaction after that, and it dropped down to 9%. 

It did cause me to get my next order cancelled, but after talking to the vendor, and explaining the situation, he took my order and things went fine.  Probably a good idea to message a vendor first and explain your refund rate if it's your first time ordering from them.  I'd hope most vendors could appreciate how this could happen, and take the fact that you've spent a lot of cash and been here a long time into account. 
Title: Re: Purchasing Stats - Changing how Refund Rate is calculated?
Post by: Fred Flintstone on May 06, 2012, 03:20 am
Okay thanks spd, that is good to hear. I guess I will just have to buy a bunch of drugs in order to lower my refund rate, which shouldn't be a problem ;)