ResellerRatings Update

[M J]

If you haven't noticed yet, we have just added some new features to ResellerRatings.com

All ratings are now based off a time period, so that you get more accurate results when comparing companies.

Improved the searching from the search box for finding a reseller by name or domain.

A new search page, where you can customize your search, picking a period of 3-6 months, or choosing an individual month. We have also added the ability to limit the results to resellers with x number of reviews, or a rating of x or better.
http://www.resellerratings.com/find.pl

Modified the Reseller Info Page. We are now displaying all 6 ratings on the Reseller Info Page, so that you can quickly see how the company rates in different areas.
http://www.resellerratings.com/selle...seller_id=2102

Added a new page called Rating History off of the Reseller Info Page where you can see how the reseller has been rated over the past few months.
http://www.resellerratings.com/selle...ory.pl?id=2121

[DaNut]

M J & Scott W:

Personally I don't like the change. Sure, it reflects the more recent ratings of each resellers. However IMHO, it's bias toward big companies, also penalize smaller resellers like us, who doesn't transact huge volume of orders, nor have large customer base to rate us on.

Of course, it drops us from your top reseller list; as we didn't have 20 or more ratings within past 6 months (we did, but Scott chose to delete a period of time when he didn't have control of this site.). Yes, I believe it is important to show the recent performance of a particular reseller; but isn't it more important for a reseller to demostrate its excellence & consistancy since day one (6+ years for us)?

Best Regards,
Humphrey Chen,
PCNUT Computers, Inc.
http://www.pcnut.com

[M J]

The purpose of the monthly ratings is to be able to display more accurate data to the public. If we don't have enough reviews there is a possibility that the rating is not very accurate, so we display the rating in grey instead of orange as an indication that the rating may not be very accurate.

The data before March 2002 was not collected in any way that allowed us to predict the time period of the ratings, and we didn't have any way of knowing when or how those ratings were collected.

With the new systems smaller retailers have a lot to benefit. Now we only grey the ratings if you do not meet our prefered number of reviews for the time period. Before we would not even list the rating.

As for the Top Resellers list on the home page, all that is required to be on that list is that your company receive at least 5 reviews each month for the past 6 months.
http://www.resellerratings.com/resel...=3&per_month=1

Even small computer retailers should have more than 5 sales each month, all you have to do is inform your customers that they can rate your company on our site. Not all of them will, but you should be able to get at least 5 a month. There are lots of little ways you can inform your customers that they can rate your business on our site.

[DaNut]

Originally posted by M J
With the new systems smaller retailers have a lot to benefit. Now we only grey the ratings if you do not meet our prefered number of reviews for the time period. Before we would not even list the rating.

As for the Top Resellers list on the home page, all that is required to be on that list is that your company receive at least 5 reviews each month for the past 6 months.
http://www.resellerratings.com/resel...=3&per_month=1

Even small computer retailers should have more than 5 sales each month, all you have to do is inform your customers that they can rate your company on our site. Not all of them will, but you should be able to get at least 5 a month. There are lots of little ways you can inform your customers that they can rate your business on our site.

M J:

Thanks for taking time to respond. However, do you really know what is the average percentage of customers/orders actually rate each company they have done business with? I can tell you one thing, even by informing them about your site; the percentage is very very very small. Otherwise, companies like NewEgg would have 100,000+ ratings by now.

BTW, do you know how many of your top resellers on the frontpage are small mom & pop shops? One perhaps. It strikes me funny that how all the sudden, it highlights most of the button advertisers on the same page?!

[Admin RR]

Humphrey,

The homepage logo advertisers are paying for the ad exposure and nothing more. If some of them are also in the top 10 list, that's probably because the larger companies tend to appear there, and those companies with the best ratings are those that opted for the ads to show off their ratings and reviews.

The new system was necessary to most accurately reflect the current customer opinion of each reseller. All reviews (for all time) are browsable. It doesn't really favor larger merchants - if you only have 1 review in the last 6 months and it's a 10.00, then that's your rating, but it would be greyed out since it's under 20 reviews.

I understand that only a fraction of a reseller's customers will submit a review, but 20 reviews in 6 months is not that many, even for a very small outfit. Newegg mentions ResellerRatings in a ton of places - in customer emails, etc. Be sure that you're asking your customers to submit evaluations.

In the near future we will be taking measures to increase evals. Some things include: prizes for reviewers, an improved registration system to ensure that it's easy for customers to add reviews, an improved survey system that's less tedious for customers to respond to.

I don't want to alienate small businesses - we're a small business ourselves. My ears are wide open to any suggestions, as always!

Thanks,
Scott

[Geotpf]

I noticed something that seems odd with the new format. If a store gets one review each months for five months, and all of them are perfect 10's, then they get a thousand reviews the final month, and all of them rate the store zero, than that store will have an overall rating of 8.33, instead of 0.01, which is what it should be. That is, it averages the totals by month, not factoring in how many reviews occur each month. Here's a demonstation of what I mean:

http://www.resellerratings.com/selle...ory.pl?id=1892

This store's rating of nearly five (4.96), as horrible as it is, should be even lower, due to the 184 people who gave it an average of 0.56 in August. Before the change it's rating was 2.9something. The reason it is that high is that in May 17 people gave it a 7.94 and in June 8 people gave it a 7.19. All the other months were in the threes (except Feb with no reviews), two of which (plus August) had more than 17 reviews.

[Russ]

Scott,

I have to agree with Humphrey. The range of happy customers that actually take the time to go to the site and post a review is down around 2%.

For those of us whose primary business is complete computer systems, that would equate to 60 systems a month shipped. Very, very few small vendors are shipping that many systems per month.

I understand the goal, but there has to be a better way to achieve that goal.

Russ, NCNE

[DaNut]

Hi Scott:

Thanks for taking time to respond to my post, I greatly appreciate it!

Originally posted by ScottW
The new system was necessary to most accurately reflect the current customer opinion of each reseller. All reviews (for all time) are browsable. It doesn't really favor larger merchants - if you only have 1 review in the last 6 months and it's a 10.00, then that's your rating, but it would be greyed out since it's under 20 reviews.

However, as Geotpf corretly pointed out; the new system has its flaws. Instead of highlighting vendors that have been consistantly good (or bad) for years, I believe the current system favors bigger resellers who may not have much track record, but rec'd plenty of "current" reviews to put them on the frontpage. Are they all better than us? That is certainly questionable.

I understand that only a fraction of a reseller's customers will submit a review, but 20 reviews in 6 months is not that many, even for a very small outfit. Newegg mentions ResellerRatings in a ton of places - in customer emails, etc. Be sure that you're asking your customers to submit evaluations.

We link your site directly from our homepage, as well as asking our customers to rate us in the order confirmation email. However, the reality is that very tiny percentage of folks will bother or have time to do so; especially when transactions were smooth as it should be. 20 reviews/6 months may not be much for bigger vendors, but it is for most mom & pop shops like PCNUT.COM. We can & have ask our customers to rate us, but we can't force them to!

I don't want to alienate small businesses - we're a small business ourselves. My ears are wide open to any suggestions, as always!

How about lower the minimum requirement, to have the rating be shown in bold/black, as well as listed on the top reseller list?

Best Regards,
Humphrey Chen, aka Da HeadNut
PCNUT Computers, Inc.
http://www.pcnut.com

[kc-computers]

Scott/MJ, I have to agree with Humphrey. We have been a small dealer on the Net for over 11yrs and used to sell on Usenet before the Web existed. We were one of the first dealers doing that and also one of the first to get a Web site when they became available. We were also one of the first vendors to get rated at Resellerratings.Com when it was started in '97. We are also a small company with a large percentage of our sales going to repeat customers who can't vote again or don't feel obligated to vote more than once - I'm not even sure if repeat customers are allowed to vote more than once.

I preferred the site the way that it was before. Recently, we were rated in the Top 15 on the main page and it was based on our stellar reputation since reviews of our company started in '97. I feel that many people appreciate the fact that we have been around for a while with a proven track record and have always had an excellent rating. Newer vendors like Newegg (who has only been rated on RR since 1/01) do not have a proven track record over the years like some of us.

We aren't on the Top 15 list anymore since we haven't received 5 reviews a month for the past six months. As other resellers can attest to, business has gotten lean over the past year for most of us and it can be difficult getting at least 5 reviews from first time customers every month for six months.

We lost quite a few votes during the time which RR wasn't being moderated from ~9/01 until ~3/02. Once I thought that the site was stable again, we started asking our customers to re-evaluate us in case their votes were lost. We asked all prior customers for the past year to evaluate us again and most were entered in July and August of the this year. But we are now getting a bit screwed since we didn't have at least 5 reviews a month for the prior four months :-(.

I really think something needs to change to better reflect the true reputation of us smaller businesses. I would like your site to go back and base ratings since day one of each company. It's a lot easier for a company to perform well for a few months than to perform well for years. Why do you think the public only wants to see ratings based on the past few months? If an ex-criminal such as a child molester moved into your neighborhood, wouldn't you want to know? Or would it be OK for you not to know since he has been free for the past six months and now is deemed 'reformed'? Now I'm not saying that a company can't reform and start doing a better job but there should be some sort of accountability for the times which they may been doing a poor job. If I was buying from a vendor, then I personally would want to see a rating based on the past six years rather than the past six months.

I hope this helps with the discussion and that an acceptable solution can be found.

Kevin Chalker
Owner, KC Computers (www.kc-computers.com)

[Admin RR]

Kevin et al:

I believe our solution will be to offer both a lifetime rating and a six month moving average for each company. The goal of introducing the new system was to ensure that the rating for each company was up to date, and that companies weren't relying on what they did 5 years ago to carry them through today.

Also, if a company made a mistake 2 years ago and fixed it (but got penalized ratings wise) they shouldn't still be paying for it today. There have been some companies that got nailed for price mistakes etc, years ago, that have had to live with an unfairly low rating ever since.

BTW - all comments for all time are still available if users want to page through and read them.