Abuse of Reseller Ratings by HardwareCooling.com

[rickwagner99]

Last week, I posted a negative review of a vendor, HardwareCooling.com after they hadn't responded to an online purchase in 2 1/2 weeks. Strangely enough, the NEXT day I get a call from these guys offering to ship my product, knock off shipping ($6.99), if I'd rerate them at all 10's. I told them NO, and to just refund my money. The owner was quite insistent that I update my ratings.

Low and behold, within an hour after the call, there are suddenly 11 new ratings, JUST enough to scroll my negative rating off the screen. This seems like a patent case of fraud and abuse of reseller ratings, but what is to be done? Any ideas?

Look for yourself at http://www.resellerratings.com/seller4079.html

-edit - I updated the url since after the fakes were removed there is no 2nd page-

[NeoStarO1]

HI Rick, Welcome to TechIMO and Resellerratings. Have you reported this informaiton to the resellerratings yet? They can possibily do an investigation into the ratings.

[jkrohn]

Hmm, all of those posters that posted after you registered the 14th or the 15th. That does look suspicious.

IMO one of two things happened.
1) They did them all themselves.
2) They sent an email to past customers to get them to do it. Possibly with an incentive.

I'll shoot scott a PM and see what he says.

Jkrohn

[Mike]

I'd recommened e-mailing Scott. He usually checks e-mail more often.

Something is definetely a bit shady. E-mailing past customers and asking them to do it isn't a very good business practice. (To get the bad eval off the page).

[rickwagner99]

Thanks for the quick responses guys. I emailed using the general form through "contact us", but that was it. I poked around and can't find who you guys mean by Scott. If you can provide a pointer I'll be happy to email him.

Thanks!

BTW: Digging deeper this isn't the first time these guys have had a cluster of ratings suddenly.

[jkrohn]

I sent him an email for you.

The scott we are referring to is the guy who started/runs this site.

Jkrohn

[Admin RR]

Thanks for bringing this to our attention. Normally we are able to identify and remove fraudulent reviews and we do so on a regular basis (it's a big part of what we do) but sometimes we need tips.

[rickwagner99]

I've used and trusted ResellerRatings for years, but I never really knew what happens when problems occurs. Thanks so much for looking into this Scott.

[Mike]

Scott: What happens when something like this occurs? Besides the removal of the fraudulent reviews, of course.

[butch81385]

bad emails to the company saying how disgusted we are with them?

if i were you i would have told them that i accepted the deal. waited for them to ship it, then give them all 0s... but thats just me and i dont like people trying to bribe me...