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I just had a look through my gifts, roughly 300 of them over the many many years I’ve been doing exchanges, and came up with some stats:

~1%: so bad I refused them. I didn’t ask for an EPH, technically they filled the letter of my request by writing the characters I’d asked for but there was nothing I liked about the stories and a lot I hated.

~10%: Disappointing. Didn’t hate these, but there wasn’t a lot to like either. Badly written, lots of typos, characters felt off.

~60%: Pretty good! Enjoyed them as I read them, left an enthusiastic comment. Basically, I had a nice time but I never really thought about them again.

~25%: Stunning! Loved them a lot, left enthusiastic comments, and in some cases have left multiple comments as I’ve gone back and reread them. These get reread, recced, and thought about a lot.

~4%: Incandescent. Perfection. Still talking and thinking about them years down the line. Downloaded and saved in my “favorites” folder. Reread often because I think about them so much. Loved and treasured.

I think on the whole I’ve been pretty lucky, or maybe I’m just easy to please?

Ooh, that's the dream!

You made me curious! Not enough to go back through my entire gifts page but, of the last 25:

* they are split exactly 50/50 whether I even remembered getting them at all (this may have as much to do with other shit going on at the time as fic quality. but it does say something about how much I care about what's on my gifts page...)

* Of the assignment-fills:
3 were very bad and only just barely not EPH-qualifying, but they aren't DNWs and I think they were all sincere attempts so I didn't refuse them.
6 were bad but not standout bad.
11 were perfectly fine, enjoyed them, left a sincerely enthusiastic comment, but not standout in any way or enough my thing that they're any sort of favorites (but some of them *were* deeply beloved by other people so I consider that a good outcome anyway).
4 are favorites.
1 was transcendentally good.

So the odds of something really good are about 1 in 5, the odds of something notably bad are a bit under 2 in five, the odds of fine but unremarkable are a bit over 2 in 5, and well over half were fun to get. Not quite as good as yours but not super far off. But definitely not high enough that it would be worth doing exchanges if I cared about getting a good fic enough to give a crap about a replacement for a bad one.

My own attempt:

In an effort to eliminate bias due to things like "I duped a really good writer into writing for me multiple exchanges in a row", I rolled a number to randomly pick 1-2 gifts off each page of my gifts and looked at 10 gifts over multiple pages.

OK, just ok: 2
Decent fill but missed the mark, will not be rereading: 2
Good: 5
Transcendental: 1

Not bad, I guess!
I have received pretty terrible gifts but I guess not often enough to be caught in a semi-random sampling of ten works.

I did this version also:

Terrible, contemplating refusing it: 1
Bad: 2
Pretty good but I won't reread: 2
Good, I have reread/relooked at them and will do so again multiple times: 3

I have no memory of receiving this gift: 2

Fun exercise! For me:

5% Bad, but never EPH- or rejection-worthy bad.
15% Meh. Didn't quite hit. Mostly technically sound but ODAO.
40% Good! Same as you. Left happy, glowing comments, but probably won't reread.
25% Excellent. Have reread and recced.
15% Exceptional. Still think about them years on, have written or considered writing sequels to, have befriended the author due to the fic, have printed out snippets for my "writing inspiration" wall, etc. 15% feels like a lot of weight on this end of the scale, so either I have really good luck, or am just accidentally baiting great writers. Notably, all but a couple of these have been treats, so I'm leaning towards the latter case. It probably also helps that my fandoms tend to be smaller and older.

Part of me wants to do this exercise but I'd have to do it logged out and from another browser. Rather than rejecting and dealing with anons poring over why I rejected/if I deserved an EPH, I muted the authors or added the titles of the fics to AO3 Savior. I can't even see a third or so of my gifts which was the entire point of making them vanish.

. ...well I guess we know you're at ~30% bad enough to reject at least. Are you really unlucky or just much much pricklier than everyone else in this thread?

DC

I have to assume it's the fandoms. There are several exchange-popular fandoms I've stopped requesting because all the writing on the scene just feels deeply meh to me.

I got a gift recently that I thought was pretty bad only for it to vanish on reveals because I had already muted the author. I laughed.

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