Reading a vendor page in two minutes
The specific numbers to read and the specific ones to ignore.
A vendor page on Nexus Market shows several numbers. Not all of them are equally useful. Here is the two-minute read.
Dispute count divided by total orders
Below 5 percent is healthy. 5 to 10 percent is a yellow flag, read recent reviews before ordering. Above 10 percent is uniformly a red flag except for categories where higher dispute baselines are normal (fragile packaging, ambiguous quality metrics), and even for those, above 15 percent is bad.
Finalisation ratio
Orders that closed cleanly divided by all completed orders. Above 95 percent is healthy. Below 90 percent means one in ten orders required moderator intervention, which is worth investigating in the recent reviews.
The last twenty reviews
Not the lifetime average. Scroll to the bottom. Read the review text for the last twenty. If the recent reviews are noticeably worse than the older ones, the vendor is going through something. Standard something: supply source changed, vendor got busier and started dropping details, vendor is dealing with a stealth-quality regression they have not yet fixed. Read the complaint pattern, not the star rating.
What to ignore
Lifetime star average. Individual glowing five-star reviews from unknown accounts. Testimonials in the vendor description. Vendor's own text about how careful their packaging is. None of these tell you anything. The dispute ratio and the last twenty reviews are the whole story.
When to walk away
If any of the above numbers looks off. There are many vendors on any Tor storefront. Time you save by picking a healthy vendor first is time you do not lose on a dispute later. Two minutes on a vendor page saves a week of dispute mail.