Customers do have a reputation to uphold. Real-time customer reputation and risk scoring services are a profitable and growing industry. They maintain extremely detailed records of customer interactions with businesses and assign scores to individuals.

Returning a defective product to one store, only buying things when you have coupons or promo codes, or issuing a chargeback at one business can get you instantly flagged as a higher risk at countless unrelated stores who are using the same services. Other factors that can impact your score include your income level, your home address, the devices/software you use, your interactions with websites (for example going directly to the product you want instead of searching and browsing around, or pasting your information vs typing it out is considered suspicious), how much money you spend, inconsistencies in the personal information you've given to different businesses, even your attitude when dealing with employees and how much of their time you take up can negatively impact how you're scored since that lowers your expected profitability (CLV/LCV/LTV) which lowers the tolerance threshold for risk.

At least Yelp is public and companies can see how they are rated. Businesses typically won't tell you that you've been branded a high risk for fraud or chargebacks. Instead they'll just apply different prices and polices to you on an individual basis. They might tell you that don't accept certain payment methods. They might tell you they don't accept returns, will only give store credit, or give very narrow return windows. They may reject your business entirely or limit you to only a subset of the products or services they offer.