I think most of us just want to be above 99% just because it would bother us to dip below that. It allows for less of a buffer if you get lower. If you aren't in danger of going below 99% then I wouldn't be worried anyway.
My own personal rule of thumb is keeping my approval rate above 95%, ideally above 98%. Below 95% and the number of HITs available to me would drop quite a bit. If I'm working on a batch for a requester I'm not sure about, though, it would take 280 rejections before I'd drop below 99.0%, and that would be half a day's HITs for me at my current level. So I'm personally not too worried about it. There's risk in nearly every HIT we attempt; more for some, less for others. The only way to ensure no risk is to not accept any HIts at all.
My approval rate has hovered between 98.9% and 99.9%, I've never achieved the legendary "fake 100%". I know it's said here all the time, but if you get too gun-shy about rejections you miss out on a lot of good work from new requesters. In your specific case, I tend to avoid requesters that have a track record of rejections. However, my turking money is a supplement to my income. I don't need it in the same way many of you do, so who am I to judge?
The requester is Classify AdImages, in case anyone wants to know, and yes, I read the TO. I'll be writing my own TO review after this round of HITs has been accepted/rejected, but in a nutshell, because of the way they process their HITs, they accept/reject out of chronological order, so they sent me a TON of positive feedback before I ever even got a caution. So, I was going blithely along assuming everything was okay because they were approving everything. I didn't realize they were skipping anything questionable to come back to later. Anyway, the most rejections I'll get from this is 22 and I can tolerate 150 before I fall below 99%. So it's just my feelings that are hurt. And it would hurt my feelings more to lose my house.
I understand this completely. I did a decent bit of a batch which was at the time risky because if they all rejected I would have like 95% approval or lower. I sweat them puppies out until they approved like a week later. I just did as many fast approving jobs that I knew I was good at to build up as much of a buffer as possible. I will say me sweating it out really pushed me to build numbers so it was beneficial in a way as I am now over 3000. From what I understand, unless you do really crappy work all the way around there is work you can do just undesirable work. Until you build your approval rating back up that is.
omg stop doing them, it's not worth it, they're habitual rejectors no matter what they say, their style is to reject a set percentage and feel fair about it like some schoolteachers (15 of the last 16 reviews spanning half a year are regarding rejections, there's nothing indicating change)
Mine is still reject virginized, and I REALLY try hard to keep it that way, almost in an OCD fashion, but otherwise I would say at least keep a 98% approval rate would be the second best option. But when I ever do get that first reject, this is how I am gonna feel...
The thing is: If they reject 2% or 3% (so far that seems to be the average) of my work but they pay me okay for the rest, and I don't get rejections from anywhere else, and I REALLY need the money (not quite there yet but headed there fast): It might be worth it for me to let them be schoolmarmish and take their money . . . . maybe. Still thinking about it.
What script shows you your abandoned and returned rate? I thought I had it before but I don't see that anymore.. dang.
I haven't looked at my abandonment rate but my return rate is 12%. edit: Just installed script. I have abandoned 3%.