Resellerratings.com ratings omit negative ratings for key advertisers?

BillF56970

Junior Member
Nov 4, 2005
5
0
0
I was shocked when I spoke with several of my friends and noticed that positive reviews of stores were being posted to the resellerratings.com website but most of the truthful negative reveiws we attempted to post were not. Furthermore I followed several stores and noticed a culling of negative reviews and artificial jumps in the store ratings as a result of the culling of the negative ratings. One store jumped from 7.5 in the last six months to 9.24 in a period of days; with most of the negative reviews deleted. I guess I should not be surprised, after all resellerrattings.com makes there money on selling advertising and clickthroughs to the stores on their sites. It is a shame to seem them masquerade as a "consumer oriented" site when they are stacking the deck for their key customers, the stores that provide them revenue.
 

GeneValgene

Diamond Member
Sep 18, 2002
3,884
0
76
i dont' know how true this is...

if you notice newegg, RR leaves most of the negative reviews....however, newegg will go head over heels to try to get the poster to change it, and they usually post a follow up message

i have never had a review of mine censored. did you have profanity in yours?
 

StumbleBum1

Diamond Member
Dec 5, 2000
6,084
0
71
I posted a neg review for Asus and it was posted immediately, but when i did the same thing for Newegg it took 2 days and Neweggs reply was also posted at the same time..Go figure HUH!;)
 

Trikat

Diamond Member
May 22, 2003
3,384
0
86
I bet that RR has removed some negative ratings, but it shouln't be that much.
What they do remove is angry customers who couldn't get in on a pricemistake or some other "unfair" circumstances.
 

Wolverine27

Platinum Member
Dec 7, 2000
2,350
0
0
Originally posted by: BillF56970
I was shocked when I spoke with several of my friends and noticed that positive reviews of stores were being posted to the resellerratings.com website but most of the truthful negative reveiws we attempted to post were not. Furthermore I followed several stores and noticed a culling of negative reviews and artificial jumps in the store ratings as a result of the culling of the negative ratings. One store jumped from 7.5 in the last six months to 9.24 in a period of days; with most of the negative reviews deleted. I guess I should not be surprised, after all resellerrattings.com makes there money on selling advertising and clickthroughs to the stores on their sites. It is a shame to seem them masquerade as a "consumer oriented" site when they are stacking the deck for their key customers, the stores that provide them revenue.


Which store are you referring to?
 

Pabster

Lifer
Apr 15, 2001
16,986
1
0
Just like any "ratings" system on the 'net, RR ought to be taken with a grain of salt.
 

mscdex0

Platinum Member
Apr 10, 2003
2,868
0
0
Ok Ok, I guess I'll be first to say it....

I'll take 5 of 'em, how much is shipping? Any experience with those rebates?

;):p
 

afropuff

Member
Dec 2, 2002
91
0
0
I recently complained about Newegg and their UPS policy.

I got an e-mail from the holy customer rep "Jason".

He told me he'd give me a $50 credit towards a new purchase and to "call him" if I use Fedex instead of UPS and he will "give me a break".

He also told me that the new UPS no-hold policy was more of UPS than Newegg's doing. I may change my satisfaction level to neutral...

Seems like it pays to complain *shurg*

-fro
 

Tu13erhead

Diamond Member
Mar 28, 2005
3,238
0
76
Originally posted by: afropuff
I recently complained about Newegg and their UPS policy.

I got an e-mail from the holy customer rep "Jason".

He told me he'd give me a $50 credit towards a new purchase and to "call him" if I use Fedex instead of UPS and he will "give me a break".

He also told me that the new UPS no-hold policy was more of UPS than Newegg's doing. I may change my satisfaction level to neutral...

Seems like it pays to complain *shurg*

-fro

Weird, same thing for me. Did you order the Swans?
 

breweyez

Platinum Member
Jan 30, 2001
2,347
2
76
i have noticed that when you post a review at newegg.com that is not positive....they simply wont show it...no profanity of any kind and they dont show it :thumbsdown:

if reseller ratings has started doing this (or they just delete the neg posts)....is there anyone you can trust???
 

afropuff

Member
Dec 2, 2002
91
0
0
Originally posted by: Tu13erhead
Originally posted by: afropuff
I recently complained about Newegg and their UPS policy.

I got an e-mail from the holy customer rep "Jason".

He told me he'd give me a $50 credit towards a new purchase and to "call him" if I use Fedex instead of UPS and he will "give me a break".

He also told me that the new UPS no-hold policy was more of UPS than Newegg's doing. I may change my satisfaction level to neutral...

Seems like it pays to complain *shurg*

-fro

Weird, same thing for me. Did you order the Swans?

No..just some PC parts that got returned because of the UPS no-hold contract.

I posted on RR.

 

BillF56970

Junior Member
Nov 4, 2005
5
0
0
There were several stores involved. The one that I was following was ibuydigital. apparently it also goes under several names including Central Digital. Deletion of all the negative responses sent this company past B&H in rating. Shocking and disappointing.
 

teddyv

Senior member
May 7, 2005
974
0
76
I wouldn't be surprised if there weren't something else at work here (with the same result.) Years ago I had a dot.com for a client (ever briefly) that made money the same way, as a clearing house for vendor and product reviews and ratings. To boost ad sales they started a new "premium" program for advertisers that bought x-amount of ad space. This program basically assigned a grunt to the advertiser and allowed the advertiser to contest negative reviews - the grunt would send out an e-mail to the reviewer and if there was no response in 12 hours the review was removed. Seems somewhat neutral and fair until you realize these were often batched at 8pm Saturday nights.
 

esquared

Forum Director & Omnipotent Overlord
Forum Director
Oct 8, 2000
24,095
5,229
146
Originally posted by: teddyv
I wouldn't be surprised if there weren't something else at work here (with the same result.) Years ago I had a dot.com for a client (ever briefly) that made money the same way, as a clearing house for vendor and product reviews and ratings. To boost ad sales they started a new "premium" program for advertisers that bought x-amount of ad space. This program basically assigned a grunt to the advertiser and allowed the advertiser to contest negative reviews - the grunt would send out an e-mail to the reviewer and if there was no response in 12 hours the review was removed. Seems somewhat neutral and fair until you realize these were often batched at 8pm Saturday nights.

:Q
 

rivan

Diamond Member
Jul 8, 2003
9,677
3
81
Originally posted by: esquared
Originally posted by: teddyv
I wouldn't be surprised if there weren't something else at work here (with the same result.) Years ago I had a dot.com for a client (ever briefly) that made money the same way, as a clearing house for vendor and product reviews and ratings. To boost ad sales they started a new "premium" program for advertisers that bought x-amount of ad space. This program basically assigned a grunt to the advertiser and allowed the advertiser to contest negative reviews - the grunt would send out an e-mail to the reviewer and if there was no response in 12 hours the review was removed. Seems somewhat neutral and fair until you realize these were often batched at 8pm Saturday nights.

:Q

Not even neutral and fair batched at ANY time, with a 12 hour response time. Not everyone checks their email once a day, much less more than once. 12 hours, suspend the review, possibly, but not remove it entirely.

 

BadThad

Lifer
Feb 22, 2000
12,099
47
91
Originally posted by: teddyv
I wouldn't be surprised if there weren't something else at work here (with the same result.) Years ago I had a dot.com for a client (ever briefly) that made money the same way, as a clearing house for vendor and product reviews and ratings. To boost ad sales they started a new "premium" program for advertisers that bought x-amount of ad space. This program basically assigned a grunt to the advertiser and allowed the advertiser to contest negative reviews - the grunt would send out an e-mail to the reviewer and if there was no response in 12 hours the review was removed. Seems somewhat neutral and fair until you realize these were often batched at 8pm Saturday nights.

ARRRGGGGGG

Man, RR is an important website. I sincerely hope they can maintain their integrity.
 

aboothman

Senior member
Mar 21, 2004
352
0
0
Ya, I would not be surprised myself. Kinda sucks, since I read mainly the negative reviews, unless I am looking for specific info. THat is more for a particular product tho.
 

Injury

Lifer
Jul 19, 2004
13,066
2
81
Something tells me you won't see a store go from the 2-3 range to the 7-8 range.

As long as the RR are a bit better than 6 or so, I'm not too cautious.

99 times out of 100 people only leave ratings when they are angry, so a bit less than perfect ratings can't be taken as the best sampling of the demographic.

PS: This is NOT a hot deal.
 

ScottWRR

Junior Member
Apr 28, 2003
3
0
0
This thread is total bunk.

First of all, ResellerRatings publishes a list of very specific policies at http://www.resellerratings.com/terms.pl that all reviews must comply with, positive or negative. We do everything we can to leave ALL reviews intact. If a merchant complains about a review, we check the review to see if it violates any of our published policies. If it does not violate any policies, it stands. If it does violate a policy, we temporarily deactivate the review, we contact the reviewer to ask them to bring the review into compliance, and we then reactivate the review once it has been updated to comply with our policies.

In no case do we just remove negative reviews as we see fit. There is not enough money in the world to get us to compromise our integrity. Merchants have tried advertising with us in the past, hoping we would remove their bad reviews in exchange, and quickly found out that wasn't the case and stopped advertising.

As for Newegg and other companies "going head over heels to try to get the poster to change it", isn't this a good thing? In other words, if you have a bad experience with a retailer, don't you want that retailer to bend over backwards to make you happy? If you are not satisfied with a retailer, post your review to ResellerRatings and a concerned retailer will make it right. You're complaining about this benefit?

BillF56970: You've made serious accusations. I want specific company names so I can rebut every one of your false statements. We work day in and day out to fairly represent consumers and tell merchants to "go to hell" when they want us to remove legitimate reviews and I do not take kindly to your remarks. If you want to find a ratings site that removes reviews upon request out of fear of losing ad revenue or being harassed by the merchant, there are plenty out there - we are not one of them.

Scott Wainner
President/CEO
ResellerRatings.com

 

ScottWRR

Junior Member
Apr 28, 2003
3
0
0
Originally posted by: BillF56970
There were several stores involved. The one that I was following was ibuydigital. apparently it also goes under several names including Central Digital. Deletion of all the negative responses sent this company past B&H in rating. Shocking and disappointing.

I read the thread more carefully and noticed the above post. In no case did we ever remove negative reviews for ibuydigital.

I should point out, too, that we receive many fraudulent review submissions, both positive and negative, either from merchants trying to boost their own rating, or disgruntled customers trying to bash a merchant by submitting many false reviews. When these false reviews are discovered, they are removed. However, this was not the case for ibuydigital - having just now checked all reviews ever submitted for their company, active or inactive/deactivated, we did not remove any negative reviews.

ibuydigital has a good rating because they have received such a large number of "Very Satisfied" reviews. If we find that any of these reviews are fraudulent, they will be removed. However, there has been no manipulation on our part. A merchant's rating can go up in one of two ways: either the merchant receives many good reviews, or we remove bad reviews. In this case, the merchant received many good reviews. In your first post you accused us of favoring advertisers: ibuydigital isn't even an advertiser.
 

nealh

Diamond Member
Nov 21, 1999
7,078
1
0
Scott:

I for one want to thank you for offer an expalantion regarding this issue. Your passionate reply leads me to believe that integrity come first. Thank you

As a frequent internet buyer, I do not post my ratings good or bad (this is my fault and I should change this) but I do use your site to make buying decisions based on the ratings

I would hope never to find out, the ratings are fixed, altered or changed except for fradulent reviews

 

Greg04

Golden Member
Jun 11, 2004
1,224
1
76
Originally posted by: BillF56970
I was shocked when I spoke with several of my friends and noticed that positive reviews of stores were being posted to the resellerratings.com website but most of the truthful negative reveiws we attempted to post were not. Furthermore I followed several stores and noticed a culling of negative reviews and artificial jumps in the store ratings as a result of the culling of the negative ratings. One store jumped from 7.5 in the last six months to 9.24 in a period of days; with most of the negative reviews deleted. I guess I should not be surprised, after all resellerrattings.com makes there money on selling advertising and clickthroughs to the stores on their sites. It is a shame to seem them masquerade as a "consumer oriented" site when they are stacking the deck for their key customers, the stores that provide them revenue.


WHAT EXACT STORE DID THIS OCCUR WITH?

 

Spuffin

Senior member
Aug 28, 2000
307
0
0
Originally posted by: afropuff
I recently complained about Newegg and their UPS policy.

I got an e-mail from the holy customer rep "Jason".

He told me he'd give me a $50 credit towards a new purchase and to "call him" if I use Fedex instead of UPS and he will "give me a break".

He also told me that the new UPS no-hold policy was more of UPS than Newegg's doing. I may change my satisfaction level to neutral...

Seems like it pays to complain *shurg*

-fro
Just today UPS tried to deliver a package to my apartment with an order I placed at Newegg and left a note saying they needed my signature in person. There is no way I can be at home tomorrow to receive the package so I called UPS to schedule a pick-up. No big deal, right? Wrong. Newegg will not allow UPS to hold the package. Newegg's site did not mention UPS for holding packages but they did mention FedEx:
Due to fraud concerns, Newegg.com does not give FedEx consent to hold packages for customers to pick up at their local FedEx facilities. We humbly apologize for any inconvenience, but we feel that this precautionary measure is necessary to safeguard your purchased items. Similarly, Newegg.com will not request that a package be re-routed to an alternative location once it is in transit to the shipping address specified on the original order.

UPS suggested I write my leasing agencies office on the failure to deliver notice with my signature and the driver may be able to leave it there. I wish I would have known about this before, as I don't think I will ever be home when UPS delivers.