Why does everyone want your 5-star rating?

为何人人都想得到你的五星好评?

Post Reports

2025-09-26

18 分钟
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单集简介 ...

The request for five stars — from airport parking lots, orthopedists or even your local liquor store — seems to be filling our inboxes more and more every single day. But do our reviews and ratings even matter?   Host Elahe Izadi chats with feature reporter Ashley Fetters Maloy about review culture, how our feedback can transform businesses big and small, and why our ratings are reshaping our relationship to companies and ourselves. So, if you’ve read this far, make sure to listen to our show then rate and review it wherever you get your podcasts.  Today’s show was produced by Thomas Lu with help from Peter Bresnan and Rennie Svirnovskiy. It was mixed by Sean Carter. And edited by Ted Muldoon with help from Maggie Penman.  Subscribe to The Washington Post here. Check out The Washington Post’s Letterboxd here.
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  • Hey, Ashley. Hey, Ella. Hey, how are you?

  • I'm good.

  • You know, I wanted to tell you a story.

  • So I recently went on a short vacation to Vermont.

  • And the night I got back in my email,

  • I received an email from the hotel saying, we loved having you.

  • Hope you did too.

  • If so, please consider leaving a review on Google or TripAdvisor.

  • Next email.

  • United Airlines emailed me.

  • Saying your feedback we means the world to us how likely are you to recommend United to a friend relative or colleague and I have to tell you like in that moment.

  • I was like,

  • I don't know

  • because The plane touched down and went right back up the pilot did a go around but I got home safe So,

  • you know, I guess ten stars.

  • I'm home safe like fine But the one that really got me was I was another one.

  • There's another email that I received the airport parking garage saying tell us about your recent parking stay and I'm like uh parked there got the car after I've never received quite a stack like that but orthopedic surgeon and my cardiologist both recently asked me for google reviews which felt kind of surreal yeah Ashley Fedders Maloy is a features and culture reporter for The Post,

  • and she says this experience of being bombarded to rate and review is not unique.

  • She's been reporting on the rise in requests for feedback from every imaginable business and service provider.

  • Once I started thinking about that, it was like...