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MerchantCircle.com Encourages Companies To Delete Bad Reviews
Posted by Scott on 28th March, 2009 | 24 commentsStraight from their blog. (heard about this at Sugarrae.com)
“Other sites give complete control to customers and their reviews. We give complete control to you, the business owner. Don’t like a review? Delete it.” -MerchantCircle.com
Wow. That about says it all. Yeah, other sites, like ResellerRatings.com, do give complete control to customers and their reviews and that’s a very good thing because it means that ResellerRatings actually has value. ResellerRatings doesn’t neglect merchants, however: we offer tools to let them contact customers to resolve complaints (since customers can edit their review at any time if they become satisfied), to post public reply comments, be notified when customers post reviews, and a whole host of other ethical tools and options. ResellerRatings NEVER removes a review upon request or pressure from a merchant. To do so would create a joke of a website, one that serves no purpose other than to stroke the ego of merchants. Reviews are only removed from ResellerRatings if they were submitted by non-customers or other similar reasons as listed in our public TOS, not because a merchant asks.
Yet, ResellerRatings is very important to merchants, because we rank very high (usually page 1) when you do Google searches for merchant names or merchant names + the word rating or reviews. So it’s win win for us and our policies. ResellerRatings helps consumers, and it encourages merchants to sign up and participate in order to satisfy any customer issues, even though 70% of the reviews at ResellerRatings are positive. There’s no need to compromise ethics on a ratings site and indeed wreck the site’s usefulness, to earn the business of merchants.
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Saturday, March 28th, 2009 at 9:47 pm and is filed under Web Business. If you like this post why not subscribe to my full text RSS feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
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That statement is enough to totally discredit whatever ratings service / site who offers this to sweeten their deal. Consumers need to made aware of these services so that they can make informed choices as to which ratings service is honest
There was something similar going around for Yelp. It was covered on digg I believe. They kept contacting my friend to have his restaurant as part of monthly plan to have the ability to edit any of the reviews posted for ~$200/mo which means they have 0 credibility.
Yelp is different because they didn’t come out and publicly say “hey merchants, come delete your bad reviews” like Merchant Circle did on their blog. I also think there was confusion about the Yelp issue — I think Yelp was offering merchants the ability to feature a positive review at the top of their page, which would bump all their reviews (including negative/positive) down one review, rather than offering to remove bad reviews. But that’s just conjecture. If your friend was contacted he’d know first hand what was promised.
I wasn’t aware of what Merchant Circle is doing and how they deal with online reputation management.
The thing that bothers me is that, in my experience, a lot of companies are not knowledgeable about the Web, would not spot what was going on, and so could get taken by something like this. On the other hand, the website may just confuse them enough that they simply leave.
On that note, I don’t understand why Merchant Circle seems to be doing well, at least last I heard it is. But its still a shame though regardless, I agree with your assessments, and the value is totally lost when the seller is able to delete their “bad” reviews.
-Jean
Merchant Circle just plain sucks. It’s a total waste of time. MC crosses the line into fraud practices. They should be shut down. Most of the information on the site is totally INCORRECT and BOGUS. They can’t even get the addresses corrected on the businesses listed how are they going to monitor honest, valid comments about a business? I’ve been trying for 8 months to correct my address on MC site. It’s STILL wrong. I’ve emailed them and left numerous phone messages, of course nobody answers the phone or returns messages either email or voice mail. This is absolutely, without a doubt the WORST site I have ever encountered.
Yeah they’re doing great, because they’ve optimized their SEO for merchants, so merchants find their listing, assume consumers are finding it, and feel compelled to participate especially since MC offers to let them delete consumer ratings at will. IMO Yelp is better for local, is very helpful, has a super strong and loyal community, and will dominate MC.
It does seem like Yelp is the option that will win out in the long term, from all angles. Exposure like this definitely doesn’t do MC’s cause any good, they’ll have to expend lots of energy to bury this!
Bit of an own goal there! Does completely discredit the whole site.
Reminds me of Gerald Ratner!
Merchant circle’s policy leaving complete control to the business owner has been very helpful to me. I have a unstable man stalk & harrass me, I have had a restraining order against him to stay away from me physically, but I would have to go to court again to get an online restraining order. Because any consumer, or false consumer/stalker can write anything they want against a company anonymously, my business could of been hurt by some of his false alligations online. With the controls in place at Merchant Circle I have been able to control my site and defend my self.
Thank You Merchant Circle!
Their “let the merchant delete reviews” solution isn’t the right answer to your problem.
If this had happened to you at ResellerRatings, you would have been able to flag the stalker’s reviews as violations of our terms of use. We would have contacted the user to obtain a copy of their invoice or credit card statement as proof of their order and if not provided, we would have removed their review.
If the stalker had posted any personal details about you (your name, address etc) the review would have violated our terms and would have been removed.
Or, you could have sought a legal remedy against the user and presented us with a court order to remove the review.
In any case, having operated ResellerRatings for 15 years, we’ve never had one complaint from a merchant of “stalking” or “harassment” so your scenario is not one on which a site’s policies should be built. Allowing merchants to delete bad reviews *completely* invalidates that site as a source of consumer opinion of businesses and misleads consumers, since consumers don’t know about their “merchants can delete reviews” policy and assume that a merchant circle business provides a good service because they have good reviews. It’s unethical and wrong.
I appreciate the ability to delete any reviews that needs to be deleted, especially if you have a disgruntled ex-employee. They are the ones that gives a company the bad reviews because you had to fired them and they need to make themselves look better.
What’s the point of that? I mean site like this will have no credibility - those reviews will be on par with all those “clients testiomonies” posted on websites selling low quality crap - the will not be genuine opinions but rather selecte promotional material. No thank you.
There needs to be a middle ground.
While customers need to dictate what service they are receiving for others to know, it is currently possible for customers to write negative reviews just because they don’t like you. It may have nothing to do with the work/service/product you provided, but they may have gotten cut off by a company service van on the way home from work and then feel they have to let others know about it because it really pissed them off after a crappy day. Now that company has a negative image in the eyes of other readers just for something that may happen on the road most days. Or maybe they dislike your company because your service man smelled like smoke when he showed up to service an electrical outlet. The job was completed for the price stated, on time, and was done correctly. But the customer disliked that the guy’s shirt smelled like smoke and his teeth were yellow stained and thats all they write about in the review, nothing about the work done.
While business owners shouldn’t be able to just delete negative comments, they should be able to bring it to the attention of the site’s moderators(if they disagree with it) so as to give their side of the story and see if it warrants removing the comment. Sounds like ResellerRatings may do exactly this.
I believe ratings sites are a great tool for both businesses and consumers, but there needs to be a more middle ground that gives everyone a fair responsible say.
I have a person who worked for me for three weeks… accepted his paychecks each week without question. The last week he worked I get a phone call from him saying that if i don’t pay him $20.00 per hour he will Kick my A** break my legs and arms etc etc. Then goes to court house and files a fraudulent lien… Continues to call with verbal threats that I have recorded and reported to Police who were very concerned and are now assisting me in obtaining a restraining order.
He goes to Merchant Circle and trashes my company saying I don’t pay my employees and my company is crap Blah Blah Blah. He has been paid and I have all the cancelled checks to prove it. he has been told by me and the police if he has a problem take me to court but stop the harassing calls and threats. Now he calls blocking his phone number “like I don’t know who it is”he called at 1:23 am this morning and 4 more times later. This freak needs help.
I have requested that Merchant Circle Remove my listing with no luck. They are impossible to get in touch with unless you call a 900 number and pay OTA. I used the online form numerous times to remove it with no luck.
Does anyone know how to remove the listing.
Thanks for your time
This article is irrelevant. Merchant circle allows business other then STORES to get themselves online. The ResellerRatings site they compare Merchant circle to is NOTHING like merchant circle. So what they allow people to delete bad reviews, it is still a great site for finding local contractors and service businesses in your area. ResellerRatings is just for retail stores which I agree should not be allowed to delete reviews ie. for poor products and bad transactions. But a local plumber who fixes grandmas shower and charges a good price but gets a bad review because she didn’t feel that way should definitely be able to delete the review.
Your logic couldn’t be more flawed. Yes, merchantcircle is local and ResellerRatings is online/stores/retail. But the premise is the same: customer reviews of businesses. In no circumstance EVER, should a business be allowed to pick and choose which reviews to allow, local or online, it does not matter. You think a plumber should be able to reject a bad review and an online retailer should not? Your argument fails.
LOL
I dont think my logic is flawed. But its cool man you work for or are affiliated with reseller ratings so I understand your position. To me its like comparing apples to bananas…
I’m all for these kind of sites connecting merchants and consumers but I believe that the original reviews should remain but with a followup. It should also no longer count negatively towards the merchant (if the issue has been resolved).
Some very nice ideas here. I enjoyed the article and thanks for the wonderful information.
“I’m all for these kind of sites connecting merchants and consumers but I believe that the original reviews should remain but with a followup.”
I think this is right. Thanks for sharing this information!
Best regards,
Studenten!
I’ve had a couple of reviews taken off of MerchantCircle and I did notice what the author pointed out in the blog right after my first was removed. It got me so upset that I have now made it my mission to rewrite my review every few months just to make sure no one else falls in the same trap as I did with that company. This may seem extreme, but they were a terrible company and removing bad reviews is just the icing on the cake.
This is ridiculous and I agree that this site holds no credit because of this.
It has nothing to deal with disgruntled employees or anyone trying to “stalk” you as a business owner. It has to deal with businesses hiding the fact that they don’t have very good service and tricking potential customers.
Although this particular page isn’t one of the first that comes up in a Google search of “Merchant Circle” I’m very glad that there are a couple on the first page that criticize Merchant Circle for this.