"Anonymous yet verifiable" is something that sounds lovely to read but makes zero sense in this context.

It doesn't seem impossible, as long as we're not talking 100% perfect anonymity nor 100% verifiability.

Perhaps make users upload receipt dated within last x days, scratching out some details, and writing their username on it. It would take an admin all of 5 seconds to review and click approve, which would delete the receipt and allow the review through. Perhaps after x amount of verified reviews, just whitelisting the user. So at this point, your IP, username, and date of purchase are known to the review system, so not 100% anonymous.

Reviews without a receipt, or in waiting, are allowed but flagged as unverified or unsubstantiated. Probably allow them to be viewed, but not by default.

And of course, your typical spam preventions, review bombing deletion, etc.

All this will do is make it painful enough for regular users to never use the service (who even gets receipts from a restaurant anymore?) while malicious ones will be able to generate fake ones in seconds to review bomb.

That third party could be compelled to disclose your identity by a court, so not really anonymous then.

In this case the trusted third party is the judge, who is reviewing the transaction and all associated communication.

Judging-As-A-Service is an interesting concept, but in practice it's perhaps best left to the State.

I don't see how you can add all-party anonymity without it being gamed. (Except possibly for the judge - which would might not be a bad thing because it could mitigate some of the corruption possible under the current system.)

I don’t see this case as a reason. It seems the system worked as intended here. Defendant made very specific claims in their review “charged for goods not ordered”, it went to the judge and the defendant could not prove what they said was true.

Just be careful that when writing a review you don’t lie or embellish the facts. As well as making it clear when you are just stating an opinion. “the goods I received were not of the quality I expected” (opinion based) vs “the vendor intentionally gave me bad quality goods” (speculative and not easy to prove).

I don't know how this one would get verified.

"I didn't order this and you charged me too much!"

"No we didn't."

Someone going to go through the paperwork to validate it? What a pain for whatever 3rd party who does this.

Presumably, someone signed a receipt. According to the article, it was done on a Visa payment card.

Home improvement isn't exactly cheap, so I would hope people doing such things would be reviewing their receipts, particularly if they're in the business of constructing homes.

You would be frightened and amazed at the lack of paperwork on every level of construction.

Sometimes the receipts are tracked, but often it's a "well we charged enough to cover our costs and we got what we needed to do the job, all good".