B&H Photo notified before review published

[Steve R Jones]

The review is posted for all to see:
B&H Photo-Video-Pro Audio - bhphotovideo.com - Reviews, Ratings and Prices at ResellerRatings

[Admin RR]

Originally Posted by Joe4570

Not really. When a reseller has had four opportunities to correct a problem and has elected not to act, they do not deserve an opportunity to block a publis statement. In the case of B&H, on resellerratings I see a long flawless list of comments that are nothing more than sales slogans, posted by newly registered reviewers, most with only a single review. What I attempted to do is let other's know of my experience and take it for what it is worth as a precaution when they are buying. If the site is not a review site, I think you should clearly state your process so people understand the situation. Your comments are condescending and unprofessional and actually, you sound as obnoxious as B&H Photo.

If I come across as condescending it's because I'm exasperated that you're complaining about something that is designed to help you, and because you implied that there is some massive discussion taking place somewhere about us, one in which you're probably trying to steer people away from using our site, and you won't tell me where that is so I can participate and respond to your and other accusations with the facts.

B&H has no "opportunity to block a public statement". You are in control of your review. If B&H resolves your complaint, and you see fit to update your review, do so if you wish. If not, don't! We don't care one way or the other! Maybe that's the confusion here, that you think merchants have 48 hours to block your review? They can't - the review goes live no matter what, as yours did.

You said, "If the site is not a review site, I think you should clearly state your process so people understand the situation." What does that mean, exactly? I suppose you're trying to imply that we pick and choose which reviews to post, or that we only allow positive reviews. That's complete nonsense. We do not moderate reviews, pre-screen reviews, etc. We don't care whatsoever whether a merchant gets blasted with bad reviews or praised with good ones - honestly we just don't care. It's not our business to care. It's our business to see that real-customers have a place to voice their opinions, and merchants have a place to publicly react to those opinions and to contact reviewers to resolve disptutes. A very small percentage of our revenue comes from merchant advertisers -- therefore, if a merchant wants to bail on us, we just don't care. We're not going to compromise our integrity and the value of our site for any reason.

How this discussion went from "I don't like that I was contacted by B&H and I don't like your 48 hour delay", to "ResellerRatings is phony", I'll never know... You have absolutely no justification for your accusations.

n the case of B&H, on resellerratings I see a long flawless list of comments that are nothing more than sales slogans, posted by newly registered reviewers, most with only a single review.

The vast majority of the 300,000 reviews at ResellerRatings are one-time reviews: a person came to our site, wrote a review, and didn't return. It's not abnormal that a reviewer has 1 review. What you see at B&H's page and indeed throughout ResellerRatings are real reviews from real customers - if they're glowing reviews, then it's because most of their customers are satisfied. Personally, I've heard nothing but good things about B&H at photo sites like photo.net, dpreview and elsewhere and I'm pretty surprised that you had a bad experience with them -- certainly you are in the minority as evidenced by their reviews here and your accusation that their reviews are fake is extremely far-fetched and unjustified. Nothing on our site is fabricated, we don't write reviews, we don't censor reviews, we don't moderate reviews, we don't edit reviews.

Everything at ResellerRatings is authentic and everything we do is designed to keep it that way, from detecting fraudulent reviews written by merchants, to asking random reviewers to email us a copy of their invoice or even their credit card statement to prove that they are legit reviewers. You will simply not find that level of dedication to quality ANYWHERE else. Therefore, you'll have to excuse me when I take massive and deep offense to your baseless, offhanded accusations when we are going so far above and beyond the call of duty to ensure that reviews at ResellerRatings, positive or negative, are legit, to defend customers' right to speak out even though merchants pressure us to remove negative reviews (and we refuse), and to give consumers a place to post complaints that will hopefully get resolved by one of the 250+ Merchant Member subscribers who actively monitor the site.

And BTW, I actually spoke to B&H on your behalf today -- I reiterated to them that our site is not to be misused to strongarm reviewers into changing their reviews. They admitted that they goofed by asking you to change your review before you were satisfied -- they also indicated that they would followup with you further regarding any outstanding issues that you have with them, which I hope they do.

So you know, here are some of the merchants that advertise at ResellerRatings and also have terrible ratings -- they participate in the Merchant Member program because they want to work to improve customer satisfaction and ultimately, their ratings -- clearly, we are not playing favorites whatsoever:
eCost.com - ecost.com - Reviews, Ratings and Prices at ResellerRatings
uTekPC - utekpc.com - Reviews, Ratings and Prices at ResellerRatings
MacMall - macmall.com - Reviews, Ratings and Prices at ResellerRatings
DigiCombos - digicombos.com - Reviews, Ratings and Prices at ResellerRatings

Honestly, if we were the bad guys, this thread would have been zapped to hide our "wrongdoing" in 5 seconds. I also wouldn't be taking so much time to respond to you, I'd just ignore you. Fact is, I take great offense to your accusations -- I just don't know where you're getting this stuff. We've built our reputation over more than 14 years - suddenly you find out about us and within a short time and without knowing anything about our past, you start making negative assumptions about us that have no basis in fact. We've been trusted and recommended for years, and you need to educate yourself as to our extensive and established reputation before taking pot shots at us -- below are a few of the tens of thousands of forum posts, blog posts, articles, recommending our site and thanking us for saving people from scams and bad merchants:

Resellerratings.com saved me from a digital camera scam*|*Floppyhead - Digital Media and Home Theater Computers

ReSellerRatings Lets You In On Online Retailers' Dirty Little Secrets | digital camera, Geek Tip, online shopping | geeksugar - Technology, Gadgets, & How Tos.

Fake Reviews: ResellerRatings Cracks Down On TheCellShop.net's Review Bribing

Try visiting www.resellerratings.com - CNET Digital cameras Forums

Always check resellerratings.com....: Canon SLR Lens Talk Forum: Digital Photography Review

reseller rating - CNET Digital cameras Forums

Canon Digital Photography Forums - View Single Post - Anyone order from broadway photo.com?

Canon 5D Scam?!? - Photo.net Canon EOS Forum

Texas Sues Broadway Photo for Bait & Switch Scams » Photography Bay | Digital Camera Reviews, News and Resources

Re: PING Dillon - Broadway Photo Sucks?

[Admin RR]

Quick link to your review:
B&H Photo-Video-Pro Audio - bhphotovideo.com - Reviews, Ratings and Prices at ResellerRatings

[ddevox]

I registerd just because of this thread. I love your site and always check it before ordeing from a site for the first time. So clearly you guys are doing something correct.

However, I still am a bit concerned by the issue the OP brings up. The 48 hour waiting period before someones review gets posted is fine by me and makes sense. But to allow the vendors to see the review before the public does? that doesn't make sense.

That is saying to the resellers "go ahead and screw customers. Then we'll tell you about the few of your customers that actually take time to write a bad review and you can 'buy them off' before the review is shown to the public." It seems almost contradictory to the entire concept of your website.

And while you're correct in saying that notifying the resellers of the bad review before it is posted will motivate the sellers to rectify things is correct; your conclusion that this is good for the consumer is incorrect. This is what I believe the OP is trying to say. This system you have set up does not promote the resolution of the underlying problem which is that of a reseller misstreating a customer. Your system instead promotes resellers to continuously treat all their customers poorly while then kissing the *ss of and rectifying the few orders of customers who take the time to publicly condemn them.

So while your system does accomplish your goal of rectifying the orders of the individuals who post, it does not solve the underlying and far greater issue of a crappy reseller. This is contradictory to what I believed reseller ratings was attempting to do.
Take the OP as an example. If his issue was resolved and he had removed or modified his review because of unique actions on the resellers part intentioned sollely at not recieving a bad review, then I would never have had the chance to read about his issues. So, I then (and many other people) go purchase a product from this same resseler, and we end up with the same hassle and issues as the OP. Maybe a couple of us go to post and get our issue resolved, but the majority end up having to deal with all the hassle. So as you can your system does not solve the underlying problem and is therefore not good for the consumer.

To me it sounds like you assume that the public reading your website is stupid and can't think for themselves. We all know that there will always be isolated issues. I've even seen bad reviews of newegg!! (I don't work for them just happen to have had flawless and perfect service from them over and over and over again and think they are the epitome of a quality and good reseller. If they can do it then so can everyone else.) However any search on reviews of Newegg will yield hundreds of nothing but positive reviews.

If your system is setup such for a fear that an isolated instance will hurt a reseller, then again I say your system is flawed. You should expect and want resellers to provide the same level of service as, per sey, Newegg. Resellers that do provide a constant and good level of service will recieve plenty of good reviews so that the public can weed through and see what are isolated instances and make their own decisions.

Either way, I don't intend to be offensive in anyway. As I stated in opening I greatly enjoy your site and think you guys are doing a wonderfull job. Maybe this is nit-picky, I just happen to have an opinion on it and didn't think you would mind me sharing as that is what this site is all about.

[Admin RR]

Take the OP as an example. If his issue was resolved and he had removed or modified his review because of unique actions on the resellers part intentioned sollely at not recieving a bad review, then I would never have had the chance to read about his issues.

Reviewers can edit their reviews at any time. That's true in the 48 hour period, and it's true for infinity. People's opinions change. Events unfold over time. Let's say there was no 48 hour delay, and a person posted a bad review today at 2pm live on the site. At 4pm, the merchant contacts the customer and says "we're sorry about that, we want to refund your money as you've requested". At 6pm, the customer says "wow that was fast", and edits their bad review into a good one. 5 days later, you visit ResellerRatings to check out that store's reputation, you read the good review, and you never even know about the original bad review. So how does the 48 hour delay change that scenario in any way?

Point being: unless you hang out at ResellerRatings on a reviews page and refresh 10 times a day, you're not going to always see the original reviews. You're seeing the reviews at a snapshot in time.

Merchants are much more likely to bend over backwards and scramble to correct a customer's issues in a 48 hour window when the review hasn't been posted yet, than they are after the review gets posted, as well.

It sounds to me like you don't want reviewers to be able to edit their reviews. You want to know about the initial experience that a customer had with a store, and you don't want that store to be able to make things right by the customer. If a customer changes their initial bad review into a good review, then they have become satisfied, which means that you're dealing with a merchant that cares about your satisfaction. What's more, you can read the person's review. They can certainly say "I wasn't happy at first, but then the merchant did x y and z and now I'm happy." Again, that's true for the 48 hour delay, or not.

To me it sounds like you assume that the public reading your website is stupid and can't think for themselves. We all know that there will always be isolated issues. I've even seen bad reviews of newegg!! (I don't work for them just happen to have had flawless and perfect service from them over and over and over again and think they are the epitome of a quality and good reseller. If they can do it then so can everyone else.) However any search on reviews of Newegg will yield hundreds of nothing but positive reviews.

You're making the very incorrect assumption that 48 hour delay = good reviews. In reality, 48 hour delay = merchant more likely to resolve complaints. All of the reviews for the stores below are subject to the 48 hour delay, click through to see the results of that. A merchant either provides poor service or good service - the delay doesn't change that:
eCost.com - ecost.com - Reviews, Ratings and Prices at ResellerRatings
uTekPC - utekpc.com - Reviews, Ratings and Prices at ResellerRatings
MacMall - macmall.com - Reviews, Ratings and Prices at ResellerRatings
DigiCombos - digicombos.com - Reviews, Ratings and Prices at ResellerRatings

[michaels39]

If a merchant is disreputable and poor in customer satisfaction,no amount of delay in reviews is going to change them.They'll inevitably establish a pattern of repeated bad reviews that will be plain to anyone.All the delay does is give merchants who really want to make things right a chance to remedy a problem.No business is perfect,it's how they handle the mistakes,and the frequency of those mistakes,that becomes obvious in the reviews here.

[Admin RR]

Originally Posted by michaels39

All the delay does is give merchants who really want to make things right a chance to remedy a problem.

My point exactly. The delay is irrelevant from both the reviewer's perspective and consumers who are coming to ResellerRatings to read reviews. But it matters to merchants that care, because they strive to satisfy customers in that 48 hour window.

[Socalgal]

Another point I'd like to make is that a customer can (and should) relay all the facts of their entire experience, not just the latest instance or the final outcome.

If you had a problem or complaint and the merchant corrected it, or if they made it worse, or if they dropped the ball down the line such as on an RMA or warranty rebate, append your written review with updates so as to relate the entire chain of events. No one is suggesting to anyone not to post the history of a transaction, but that you rate the merchant according to your most current opinion.