Are they buying paid reviews?

[blueskull]

Well, another company we all are familiar with is buying paid reviews . They didn't see the boycott PCBWay thread?
I'm okay with their 6% off products and amazing service, but the paid review thing adds nothing but distrust.

[ZeTeX]

Would be funny if you left them 2 stars just because they wanted to give you free items for a review lol

[Jeff_Birt]

The same crap goes happens on EBay. I bought a SVideo to VGA converter that was total garbage and left a bad review. The seller sent me a message and said if I changed it to a positive review they would refund my money. I filed a complaint with EBay because they were buying positive reviews, they went ahead and refunded my money and EBay washed their hands of it. If the review process is not honest it is worthless. Personally when I read reviews on the website of the person selling an item, especially technical items, I expect to find a few that are negative. If you read them the people leaving most of the negative reviews were obviously clueless. There will be a few with legitimate problems and if the company tried to solve the problem I figure they are a good company to buy from.

A few years ago I was a volunteer moderator on a forum for a CNC related product (one of which I owned). When someone seemed like they were having a particular difficult time I  made sure to let my contact at the company know. If it was someone they had not heard from before they would be sure to contact them via the forum or phone etc. about 90% of the time the people who were on the forum really giving bad reviews and creating a big stink were con artists trying to get something for free for shutting up.

[XOIIO]

Do they do paypal? I need anything I can get right now. I'm surprised tequipment is doing it though, I wonder if mjlorton knows about this.

[ataradov]

Got the same email. Gave them one star. That stupid review site required registration, but they took disposable email address (mailinator.com). And judging by how many attempts it took to come up with a dummy name, the quality of reviews there is really questionable. Who in their right mind will take a name "qwertyuio" or "asdfgh" on purpose?

[rdl]

Got the same email. Gave them one star.
...

Did you get the goodies?

Their email does not specifically state that a 5 star review is required.

[ataradov]

Did you get the goodies?

It happened 10 minutes ago. EDIT: I mean the email, not the goodies. Not that I need movie tickets anyway. EDIT2: It looks like you have to email them after you left the review. That's not happening, for sure.

Their email does not specifically state that a 5 star review is required.

It is titled "Give us 5 stars" and contains the text "We would be very grateful if you could leave us a 5 star rating for our service". How much more specific can they get?

[rdl]

Yes, they obviously would like a 5 star review. Who wouldn't?
However,

By providing us with your feedback, we will send you 2 free Fandango movie tickets and a $25 dollar Restaurant.com gift card.

No mention of 5 stars there.

[System Error Message]

i got the exact email from them too, and i wouldnt mind leaving them 5 stars though their bribe is useless to me as im not in the US. They have good discounts, good service and their products arrive here well packaged and intact from those cranky customs who throw and break stuff.

I wouldnt say they are buying reviews, i think they are just encouraging people to review. Usually people who are happy dont leave a review and people who are unhappy leave reviews.

its not like with ebay where those greedy bastards want to rip off and scam more people so that 5 star review on there is biased. Even for amazon i dont look at 5 and 1 star review, i always look in between so whenever i review a product on amazon i never give 5 stars because a 5 star or 1 star review to me on amazon is fake, but the 2-4 stars arent.

[ataradov]

Also, who cares about this review site? Has anyone ever heard of it? Actually used it?

[EEVblog]

Also, who cares about this review site? Has anyone ever heard of it? Actually used it?

That was my first question.

[Srbel]

Yes, I can hear you Clem Fandango! xD

[DimitriP]

Also, who cares about this review site? Has anyone ever heard of it? Actually used it?

That was my first question.

Well, according to "them"
"Hundreds of thousands of Shoppers visit ResellerRatings every month to check out real reviews of shopping experiences before they buy!" 

Obviously they have an over inflated opinion of themselves.!!!
Tequipment will be better off getting their web guys to show all recent reviews on their own website instead of building up somone else's business. They'll figure it out,eventually.

As for the review website with the superiority complex, Digikey has 10 reviews, newark has 14 and mouser 41 reviews. Yeah..... I rest my case.

[zl2wrw]

I got one of those "we will pay you to review us" emails too.

Has anyone reported their email from TEquipment to the Reseller Ratings abuse department?

According to http://www.resellerratings.com/trust-and-ethics it appears that paid reviews are verboten - quoting:
"No Favorites. We do not allow retailers to pay for positive reviews. We receive tips about this activity daily and we remove affected reviews and warn the retailer."

2x movie tickets and a $25 restaurant voucher is worth what? something like $50 USD?
So, TEquipment, how about you give each customer a $25 USD discount, keep the other $25 USD for yourself (increased profit! ) and fire the marketing agency that told you to "buy" positive reviews?
(sounds like a win-win to me  )

[DimitriP]

fire the marketing agency

   

[tequipment]

Guys we want honest reviews! If you feel we gave poor service or service less than 5 stars leave that review.

We ask for a 5 star because we hope we gave 5 star service.

Best Regards,
Evan Cirelli
TEquipment.NET

[DimitriP]

Reviews. It's a product that companies sell. When I am in an unfamiliar neighborhood and looking for a restaurant, a search with reviews is useful.

When I'm spending $100-$500-$2000 on a piece of equipment I'd ask here before I believe any review hosted by a marketing company.

Like Jennifer S says: "Buy from people, not the internet".

If I have a problem, you are getting a call back, not a bad review , unless someone there was having a really bad day everytime I dealt with them.

Decide if you are "the internet" or "people". "The internet" gets reviews and use "internet  methods" for coaxing customers to leave them and be positive. People,  use "people methods" to get customers and when treated right, they get return customers.


/rant off

[strangersound]

I've noticed Amazon is loaded with reviews that were "free stuff for review". A lot of which is the import knock off stuff, like el-cheapo "GoPros", etc. I don't trust just the stars anymore, I take the time to read the reviews. The policy must be to have a disclaimer because most of them usually state when it was a free product sent to a reviewer, but it skews the star rating system. I want real regular people who bought the product to tell me what they think. When you get something for free, it just automatically skews the bias, afaic. I know there's reviewers that don't let it, but these are the minority, imo.