Stay away from Monarch!

[GA400]

Originally Posted by Ballast

Yes, they tried to hide their incompotence with stories and trinkets to change my review to be more favorable.

Theres a interesting thread over at OC's regarding Monarchs performance of late.
[EDIT] Their using the premise that this occurrence is a recent development, unware this has been going on since 2003.

http://www.ocforums.com/showthread.php?t=479359

http://www.ocforums.com/showthread.php?t=481395

I also welcome anyone to check out those links as well, (the second one is still active the first closed) you will see the huge strides Monarch has made to improve the problems we are very open about that caused many of you troubles in the past few months. I welcome you also to feel free to PM me there or E-mail me with ANY problems old or current, we want to hear from you. I know you don't know me yet..... However I ask for a little blind faith when I tell you my words are genuine. Monarch knows there was/is problems we have been working very hard and making a LOT of changes. Our phone system has undergone a complete overhaul as well as some other equipment and/or personnel in other departments. All I ask is that you give us a chance, let us prove it to you. Let us win you back!!


As for these 37 reviews, First let me say, RR had to put that note, we all count on this site for truth and you deserve to know what was happeneing, secondly; I caution you to not put to much into this, I can not legally speak to this issue other than to say I can assure you it was not us, and the person was not trying to help us but rather harm our name. Think about this, is it a real stretch for someone who posts in over 20 forums several times under diffrent accounts to also make these false posts to make it look like it was us knowing RR policy and what would happen? There are several threads out there where we address this issue.

[Admin RR]

and the person was not trying to help us but rather harm our name

The fabricated reviews were posted in a covert way to prevent us from detecting them. They were not posted in an obvious fashion so as to readily appear fraudulent. If we hadn't detected them, Monarch's rating would have gone up substantially.

[GA400]

Originally Posted by Admin RR

The fabricated reviews were posted in a covert way to prevent us from detecting them. They were not posted in an obvious fashion so as to readily appear fraudulent. If we hadn't detected them, Monarch's rating would have gone up substantially.

I am not looking for a fight, I had not intended to post again here. However; "substantially"??? how much did our rating change once they were removed? Just a couple of points. Monarch repsects that you feel there was some fake posts, however there is no proof of this; there SURLY isn't any reason for a resellerratings admin to come on a forum and spread speculation and conjecture. I am deeply saddened to see this.

[Admin RR]

There's no conjecture here. If you look at my post above and read the admin note on your own reviews page, you will see that at no point in time do we accuse Monarch of posting the fabricated reviews. In fact we explicitly state, "The party responsible for submitting those reviews is unknown." We are simply putting the facts out there, stating that we did identify and remove 37 fabricated "Very Satisfied" reviews that were not posted by legitimate customers.

GA400 said, "Monarch repsects that you feel there was some fake posts, however there is no proof of this".

On the contrary, there is substantial evidence that the posts are fake. I'm happy to provide that evidence here:

1) When our system detected the 37 fabricated reviews (using a variety of factors), we contacted each of those 37 reviewers by email to obtain proof that they placed an order with Monarch. Not only did we not receive proof of transactions (in the form of email or faxed invoices) from any of the reviewers, but not one of the 37 reviewers even replied to our emails.

2) Each review used its own ResellerRatings account, each with a unique email address. All email addresses used were "freemail" accounts (yahoo.com, gaweb.com, inbox.com, hotmail.com, gmail.com, etc). Every account was activated by the user, who clicked on our activation email link.

3) Although 93% of our website's overall traffic comes from broadband users and only 7% from dial-up users (according to Google Analytics), 95% of the reviews were posted from dial-up accounts with dynamic IP addressing, and the same ISP's were used for most of the reviews (level3.net, 1dial.com, cptelecom.net, etc). Our system obviously blocks reviews sent from the same IP, therefore these dial-up IP's initially got through our system. Of course, we have tools in place to detect this type of fraud as well, so using dial-up addressing is not going to fool anyone.

If these reviews were posted in an effort to "frame" Monarch, there are easier ways to so than by creating 37 different freemail accounts, logging into 37 different dynamically addressed dial-up network connections, and clearing browser cookies before posting every review. It would have been easier and far more obvious to post every review from the same computer without clearing cookies, to submit all reviews from the same internet connection, etc. That would have been easily detectable and easily identified as fraud. But the way that this was done was to prevent our system from ever detecting these fraudulent reviews.

If you were a disgruntled customer (or a competitor) and your goal was to harm a retailer, which approach would you take: to covertly submit 37 "Very Satisfied" reviews, hoping that the merchant reviews site would discover those covert reviews and punish the retailer and further hoping that your plan wouldn't backfire by actually increasing the retailer's rating if the false reviews were never discovered, or would you covertly submit 37 "Very Dissatisfied" reviews to lower the retailer's rating?

Also, you could benefit from getting your story straight. First you said:
"and the person was not trying to help us but rather harm our name"
...then you said, "Monarch repsects that you feel there was some fake posts, however there is no proof of this." If you think the reviews were written by legitimate customers, then why would legitimate customers be trying to harm your name? First you agree that the reviews are false, then you state that there is no evidence of that.

[GA400]

Originally Posted by Admin RR

............
If you were a disgruntled customer (or a competitor) and your goal was to harm a retailer, which approach would you take: to covertly submit 37 "Very Satisfied" reviews, hoping that the merchant reviews site would discover those covert reviews and punish the retailer and further hoping that your plan wouldn't backfire by actually increasing the retialer's rating if the false reviews were never discovered, or would you covertly submit 37 "Very Dissatisfied" reviews to lower the retailer's rating?

Which looks worse in the long run? I am not the type of person to do harm to others, I know it is your business to keep an eye out; and I respect the enormous task this must be. However based on other factors NOT listed on RR, seems to me that the person got just what they wanted. We are at a complete loss as to why a resellerratings rep who represents a company that is SUPPOSED to be unbiosed is attacking us here, however that is not the reason I am here.

Monarch is just trying to do good by our customers and those that we DIDN'T do right by in the past few months. In the large picture these 37 posts are not the issue. The truth is we had nothing to do with these posts; having said that there is things that Monarch did do and didn't do that were not up to the level you nor we are accustomed to from Monarch. That has changed and I am trying to get the word out that things have changed, and that we want to hear from you as every customer's feedback and opinion is very important to us and is essential to us improving ourselves.

[Admin RR]

There is no logic in covertly submitting positive reviews in order to "frame" a retailer. That logic would only hold water if the reviews were submitted in an obvious manner so as to make it look like the merchant submitted the reviews, not in a secretive manner so as to bolster a merchant's rating without the ratings site being able to detect the fake reviews.

Monarch is just trying to good by our customers and those that we DIDN'T do right by in the past few months. In the large picture these 37 posts are not the issue. The truth is we had nothing to do with these posts; having said that there is things that Monarch did do and didn't do that were not up to the level you nor we are accustomed to from Monarch. That has changed and I am trying to get the word out that things have changed, and that we want to hear from you as every customer's feedback and opinion is very important to us and is essential to us improving ourselves.

That is a responsible approach.

[GA400]

Originally Posted by Admin RR

Quote:
Monarch is just trying to good by our customers and those that we DIDN'T do right by in the past few months. In the large picture these 37 posts are not the issue. The truth is we had nothing to do with these posts; having said that there is things that Monarch did do and didn't do that were not up to the level you nor we are accustomed to from Monarch. That has changed and I am trying to get the word out that things have changed, and that we want to hear from you as every customer's feedback and opinion is very important to us and is essential to us improving ourselves.

That is a responsible approach.

That is all we are looking to do, things go wrong sometimes; the indicator is what the response is once someone (or company) makes error; no one is perfect. We care about each and every customer; we have made many changes and improvements. Just let us prove it to you.

Additionally, we are not trying to "spam" or dominate these forums here, I would rather not keep "bumping" this thread. Please feel free to e-mail hf@monarchcomputer.com or PM me. Thank you to RR for allowing me to say my peace, and getting the word out via your forum.

[michaels39]

I see very little evidence that Monarch is trying to improve.What I do see is a steady decline from ratings in the 9.0 range to a present 4.9 in less than a year.I see complaints from customers here and in their own forum of poor support,a severe lack of communication,extremely long waits for refunds,and a growing number of problems with systems.More than often,pleas for help go unanswered in their forum,except when other readers offer advice.And if a customer's complaint there is too uncomplimentary,it's quickly removed.
If Monarch wants to win back customers,actions speak louder than empty words.When a customer is investing thousands of dollars in a new system,"blind faith" and a 4.9 rating just doesn't cut it.

[GA400]

Originally Posted by michaels39

I see very little evidence that Monarch is trying to improve.What I do see is a steady decline from ratings in the 9.0 range to a present 4.9 in less than a year.I see complaints from customers here and in their own forum of poor support,a severe lack of communication,extremely long waits for refunds,and a growing number of problems with systems.More than often,pleas for help go unanswered in their forum,except when other readers offer advice.And if a customer's complaint there is too uncomplimentary,it's quickly removed.
If Monarch wants to win back customers,actions speak louder than empty words.When a customer is investing thousands of dollars in a new system,"blind faith" and a 4.9 rating just doesn't cut it.

I am sorry you were not treated with the best service that you deserve. Please e-mail me with your order # and the situation that has left you with this bad impression, also I offer you to look at the link provided by the poster here or any of the other 20 forums where we have fixed many many problems for poeple. Their is plenty of customers talking about how much better things have gone for them on recent orders; don't take just my word for it, hear it from the customers yourself.

[Ballast]

Why is there only real action taking when its address in a public form? This has not been a occasional problem,as the rating from 2003 to the present clearly show. I know that you “Sterling” will get things done, but why should you need to? Do it right to being with. Its all smoke and mirrors otherwise. I mean, come on four mouths for a refund and my CC's involvement before Monarch refunded my money. Thats just ludicrous.