Vendor Ratings Forum
 

In the advent of attempting to have some sort of ratings system we have decided to create a Vendor Ratings Forum where various vendors can be rated via a voting process only. There is no posting in this forum. As in the past any negative posting anywhere else on the board will still be removed from the board for legal purposes.

Please do not vote if you have not purchased anything from said store. If you went in, looked around and left this does not count and you should not be voting as you have not had the full experience and can not really rate a store based on looks alone.

LINK TO VENDOR RATINGS FORUM: http://www.canreef.com/vbulletin/forumdisplay.php?f=138


Note to potential consumers of products sold by companies posted in the vendors rating forum:

These polls are meant as guidelines only and are not to be taken as gospel when purchasing a product from vendors. Your experience may vary/caveat emptor/buyer beware. Canreef thanks its sponsors, for they keep the board running. However we do not automatically endorse anyone. It is up to you to do the research.

If you have questions or doubts on a vendor feel free to solicit information via PRIVATE MESSAGE ONLY (ie. post a thread calling for PMs on a certain vendor).

Thanks
Canreef Staff

PS: For those of you that voted in the previous version of the vendor ratings forum, I apologise as that was only a "draft" and wasn't supposed to be released to the public. You will have to revote as they have all been reset.

How about Blue World Aquarium & Aquarium Enthusiasts?

Gold, Ocean City, Elite?

Red Coral Aquariums...

King Ed ? :biggrin:

I did think this was only going to be for Vendors on the forum. I don't see links to all the vendors that have been added to the list, and the ones that are in the vendor forums, aren't on the list yet.. :question:

Are you guys not seeing the second page? Half of those should have polls already. I'll add the new ones :biggrin:

:lol:

:rofl: I even put a sticky saying that there were TWO pages to the forum. You guys are just too excited about voting :razz:

:redface: oops...

So its true, you guys don't read my stickies! And after all the effort I put into posting them.....*sigh* :sad:



:razz:

I read SOME... I read the "Please Read Before Voting!!!!!!" but completely missed the "two pages" one.

I think it is unfair to have anonymous ratings for a vendor. Customers should be held accountable for their actions and comments (as should vendors of course). I could easily coordinate to have inaccurate feeback left for vendors/competitors which would be unfair and potentially negatively impact their reputation.

How can I review who has left feedback for me???

If you feel that there has been unfair voting, please contact a staff member. We can review who voted and how they voted. We will be continually monitoring this section for just this type of abuse, and should we see multiple votes from the same IP/posting computer, they will be removed.
If multiple members live in such a location as to share their computer, they will need to average their vote. Abuse of this section will result in it's removal from the board, with no further vendor ratings offered.

I like the idea but a rating system with no customer accountability is not very reliable making it too easy for people to be unfair while hiding behind their anonymity. For example the mods would have no idea who bought something from whatever vendor or if they even did. As an example of this I've had one negative rating so far but in actuallity I have never had any customer tell me of any complaint after their purchase that wasn't resolved to their satisfaction.

Greg just because you have never had a customer tell you that they were unsatisfied with your services doesn't automaticly that there are none (Even though in my experiences you were fantastic :mrgreen:). I mean really your at 15 VERY satisfied customers to 1 unsatisfied, this polling system is just what you need. In actuality its weeding out bad vendors which leaves you with more buisness right?
Levi

Can we vote more than once? say if our satisfaction changes in the future?

No, were going to reset the polls every 6 months or so

Great idea!

It is a testament to the quality vendors when they want to find and fix even one unsatisfied customer. :) Some are less vigilant in their customer focus. And nobody can please everybody...

How do you know vendors aren't reviewing other vendors....not that I think they would or anything....although a few are questionable...

I think it should be a PUBLIC poll where we can see who voted how. That would be much more fair. I think negative votes should definately have to prove their case. If I have a grudge against an employee for example...I could easily leave a negative vote, and never have to explain myself.

Exactly, or a grudge against an owner who only talks to you if you are spending money...:lol:

I thimk this a good start. Really if your in the business of selling things expect to have some negatives. If your service is good people will say so. Anonymity guarantees an honest answer. I think most 99.9% of the people on this forum are honest. Considering the amounts of money being spent at these vendors I sure would like to see some opinion about the vendors performance. If I was interested in ordering from a vendor that might have a less than stellar performance, I would be inclined to ask more questions before I order about return policies and DOA polices. Gives vendors a chance to improve their service in deficent areas and ultimately more business for them. This is not a perfect system but consumers have a right to voice too.

You think? I would think quite the opposite! :)

Great idea.

Vendors could PM poster to sort out problems if they wish, other users could PM for details and whole thing isn't public.

The system is not perfect. Giving out names will start wars and vendettas on Canreef, usually dragging personal stuff with it. I say give this a trial for a couple of months. The sys admin is watching closely for abuse. I will add one thing vendors who have more 15% negatives, (it is not just about gripes from one person but from many and it is a service problem)...should make it a practice to follow up the orders they just sent.

I think it's pretty useful as it is. If you expanded the scope of it to reduce anonymity or add some qualitative information to the feedback it would be more useful but a much, much larger undertaking.

IME people enter some situations with unrealistic expectations. With a few years retail experience under my belt I even notice myself doing it sometimes. It's just they way people are.

Exactly what we don't want. And I may want to post that I was unsatisified with a store, but I don't want to rehash out the whole issue. I'm not going to give my opinion if it means some vendor is gonna keep bugging me via PM or thread to be more satisified. Just accept that I wasn't, you can't please everyone.
Anonymity is the only way we feel we can get honest responses. Most people we spoke to would not be comfortable giving a bad rating if their name was attached. They would just say nothing, which would skew a rating to show only good replies.
Honestly, if a vendor has 50 "very satisifed" and 1 "very unsatisified", I'm gonna order from them.

We would expect that only people who have dealt with a store would rate it. I might look into random sampling, to verify that a vendor has dealt with a "rater"...

I think this is the best way to do it. Is it perfect? Absolutely not but I think it the lesser of two evils.

A lot of people are shy and/or anti-confrontational especially other cultures and won’t participate if it is not anonymous. I know people that have been members on CR for years and years that have never posted and only became members just so they can PM and buy stuff from the buy & sell forums.

What was stopping people from vendettas and grudges in a PM? They are basically anonymous, only the person receiving them can see them not the vendors or anyone else. At least this way it is monitored to some extent.

If anything I would think this may be more accurate than starting a thread, “PM me with your experiences with vendor X”. A lot of people might not take the time to reply with positive or negative feedback.

IMO :lol:

Kindly remove wickedfrags.com from this vendor rating forum until controls are in place to ensure people leaving comments are accountable for their comments.

Like some others, I have spent considerable time time trying to establish an online feedback system on canada.frags.org which I provide a link to in my signature attached to every post I make (you can click on it below...)

Individuals who leave any type of feedback on this system (either above or below the average feedback rating) can be traced back to their username, IP address and network card from the computer they used. I can then find out if they are in fact a customer or simply a loyal customer of another sponsor, again, should I see fit under the circumstances. Thanks.

Will do.

Thanks!

I think it's great....I have to agree with Aquattro...I may not like the service I had with a vendor and I am not about to continue to hash it out in public with that vendor. I would hope that people would be honest, can't ask for more than that. I think for the mod's this is the easiest way (as they do have day jobs and LIVES other than Canreef) and does provide the members of Canreef with "something" to work from without dragging arguments into it.

And again, buyer beware....if you read the stats, post a thread asking people to PM you with personal experience with "such and such" vendor...you can't ask for more...it's more than we had a week ago!

Thanks to the Mods for putting something in place to help!

What? We do?? Damn! I need to get one of those life thingys! *sigh* :razz:

Oh whoops...that's right. Amend that last post to say "and all but Christy have day jobs and LIVES":lol:

well I have a day job now but I'm still working on getting a life :razz:

Christy, can you remove the vendor rating forum for Engineered Aquariums as well. Although I like the idea I don't think it has been setup appropriately.

I have worked very hard making sure every customer I've had is 100% happy. To the best of my knowledge I've never had an unsatisfied customer and yet someone has voted stating they are very unsatisfied and I'm completely powerless to correct this. If a customer was unhappy I would do everything in my power to change that even if it meant a full refund. I highly doubt that this voter was a customer bur rather some random member with some kind of grudge regarding an unrelated issue.

The major problem with the system is that anyone can vote, only customers of that vendor should be able to vote. This seems like cruel and unusual punishment towards us vendors, I don't think we all need to suffer as a result of one bad egg.

Thanks,
Steven Phelps

On another note, I welcome feedback from actual customers. If you have any issues or concerns with any of my products please contact me directly. After that if you are still unsatisfied feel free to post publicly.

What I might suggest to vendors is that they email out a satisfaction/performance survey to each customer they sell to or deal with, surely this cannot be too much to ask. Or is it? This also provides proof that they asked if the customer was happy or not.