Bloated sites ratings

[NoRefund]

I was looking to buy a camera and I was amazed how many fraudulent companies are in this business, the first dozen companies are scams ! Moreover, looking them up in different websites (including RR) does not show that off hand. The reason is that these companies know that people are now looking at sites like RR and they are using tactics to fight that, the most common being creation of many made-up accounts and posting good reviews.
I think RR should have an antidote for this behaviour that directly misleads consumers and act as exact opposite to the reason sites like RR exist. I know that some of these posts are removed but this is laborious for the site operators and it is not community based.
(Unfortunately most people look at the store number "rating" and not necessarily read each and every post)
Here are my proposals for fighting this:
1. Have a 'helpful' 'not helpful' 'fraudulent' buttons, so people can report fraudulent posts. In such case the post will not be erased but removed from the site statistics. This should not work if post is already "trusted" by the community (so not to provide a tool for shop owners)
2. Have an 'under investigation' sticker on the company page. For example, look at pricerunner.com method. They have a Stop List and an Observation List this list can be automatically generated from stores that have many fraudulent posts (I guess there are not that many, so manual check for this is reasonable as well)

Many thanks for reading,
NR

To what companies are you referring when you say, "the first dozen companies are scams" ?

ResellerRatings has a wide array of anti-fraud detection methods and tools in place. We also look at patterns and other factors that raise flags and investigate even to requesting billing documentation so that we (and you) know that reviews are from real purchase customers. We accept documentation from customers only - not the merchants.

Fraudulent merchants try submitting fake reviews all the time. Our ongoing system to investigate and prevent fraud, along with our readers who email us with their suspicions and reports, is a huge part of what we do on a daily basis. We encourage you to drop us an email if something suspicious is noted - emailing us provides a more timely and efficient response. You don't have to be a ResellerRatings member to report possible fraud (though we hope you will join ) Anyone can hit my username to email me, or use our contact page:
http://www.resellerratings.com/contact.pl

Administrative notes are pinned to a merchant's reviews page if fraud and/or misuse of our site has been verified beyond all doubt.

We do not remove or delist bad merchants from ResellerRatings because if they were removed, customers wouldn't be able to review and rate them - and shoppers would not be informed or warned by reading those reviews and ratings.

Our Merchant Discussion forum,
http://www.resellerratings.com/forum/index.php, is another great place to share and find merchant information. In addition to customers, those who never completed their checkout, had orders cancelled before being charged, or had other types of non-purchase merchant experiences will post here.

[SiliconJon]

I am so sorry to say I lost much of my faith in RR when CNETPC climbed to the top. There was a point were they were Gold & Platinum rated. There was no way I could believe their ratings were climbing legitimately. I read so many horror stories that echoed the issues I discovered with them on my own . When their ratings were wayyyy down, loads of their "happy customers" seemed to know about RR, despite it not being posted on CNETPC's website, nor any other means that I noticed of promoting RR such as followup communications. It wasn't until their ratings had risen, despite numerous dissatisfied customers, that they linked to RR from their site. If these customers knew about RR before their purchase, they would have been unlikely to patronize their site given their very poor rep. Those clowns were nothing but frauds, as I discovered in a (too many too count)-month long ordeal with them. And when I saw there ratings continue to climb, I knew they were self-inflating their ratings. Logic did not allow any other conclusion given my encounters, as well as so many others'.

But what can you do? Frauds such as them can go to any length to inflate their own ratings, using different computers such as friends, families, public, or even bypassing all that and spoofing ip's or leap frogging. And they have access to all the invoices they need, so many of the orders they review can actual be real orders, just being left by employees posing as customers. How does one counter such encompassing methods?

Also, I recall that some reviews for CNETPC were removed, but I never saw any notes pinned to their account. How would one prove it was that company commiting fraud unless they were careless enough to access from a known related ip, such as from the company network? When a company such as CNETPC can wind up with such a great self-induced rating, despite such a long running reputation of selling defective hardware, and being impossible to get a correction from, I can't believe the system is working properly.

Jon,

If you have suspicions, why not email us about them via the Contact button at the bottom of every page, if not to me directly? By not being part of the solution you're encouraging the [alleged] problem by doing nothing - except complain about it in the forum. We check out EVERY report of attempted fraud and take swift action.

We request documentation from customers only, never merchants. As added insurance we oftentimes request the customer's credit card statement or other billing detail that shows the merchant's charges, which proves or not if the reviewer is a legitimate customer. Of course, we recommend that the sender mask their credit card number or other confidential data. And if one has a bad experience with a merchant does not necessarily mean everyone, or anyone, else will, too.

I question your agenda here - you yourself were unable or unwilling to provide proof of your customer status on at least one of your reviews, called our policies burdensome because you didn't want to bring your review/s into compliance on another violation, then requested that your reviews be removed.

We don't actively monitor reviews as they come in which is why we actively encourage our readers to email us if and when they suspect something. We have in place automated (running 24/7) and human anti-fraud tools. Customer status checks are routinely performed. See our links at the bottom of every page to be informed about how we operate.

FYI, the last time a review was even submitted on CNETPC was over a year ago, on 1/4/05, and it rated the merchant Very Dissatisfied, and I have to assume their website has been down for at least that long.

[SiliconJon]

I care about consumer protection. I only mentioned my opinion because even though I'm not a big fan of RR anymore, I support any improvements in protecting consumers, and that is much of the purpose of RR. My "adventures" in using so many different businesses has resulted in a large number of poor experiences, so I understand how easy it is to get ripped off. I did still care about RR's ability to perform its function accurately in its ability to provide useful warnings against poor resellers, and good referrals to help consumers do business where it is safe; that is why I posted.

But questioning my agenda, well I guess that's because I questioned yours when you disabled all my reviews that lacked invoices after I left a negative review for ChiefValue without an invoice number; Touché. I understand the need for invoices, but it felt quite uneasy considering the method in which it occurred. I didn't take it well. Also, I could get CV's invoice easy enough online, but not all of the reviews you disabled (I did try). My paper invoices are by no means easily accessible shortly after the purchase is made, and only retrieved when battle ensues and evidence is needed. It would be easier for me to send you enough personal information to apply for a small business loan. So your actions told me that my experiences were unwelcome since I was unable to provide the required documentation. After feeling I had been audited for leaving a negative review, and having seen a company such as CNETPC continue to climb ranks, I decided that I was done using this site for leaving or reading ratings as I no longer felt it was capable of providing accurate information as what I now see is a site where a legitimate negative review is more likely to get removed than false positives.

In regards to CNETPC, I consider my observation a recognition of a suspicious pattern that contradicts so very heavily what I have learned about the them from my own experience; dealings that conveyed this company will do just about anything, except good business, to take your money and leave you at that. I guess you can call that a hunch, though I wouldn't. And I couldn’t be happier that their site is no more, unless they have done nothing more than move and change names, which is more likely (unless they've been imprisoned). But that doesn’t change what I’ve observed. Granted no one has ever been as audacious as they when it comes to ludicrous behavior unbecoming a professional. It’s a dead horse, but only as far as “CNETPC” is concerned. From spending too much time searching just now, such concerns have been brought up before (infrequently), and aren’t appreciated. I don’t know why you would want such concerns to go unmentioned, so long as they are legitimate, or possibly legit.

Jon,

The reason we exist is to help consumers - we help shoppers avoid getting ripped off by bad merchants and inform them of the good merchants by displaying actual customer reviews and ratings of merchants.

As I believe I had mentioned before, you're always welcome to email me your invoice documentation, and you can make the violations' corrections in your reviews necessary to reenable your reviews, at any time. This would be more effective in your effort for consumer protection as a legitimate customer because your survey scores will then be counted towards the merchants' ratings, and others will be able to read your written reviews.

You're complaining about complying with the same policies that help us ensure fraud is not being committed, and for supplying the same documentation and violations' corrections that we've requested from hundreds of other customers and/or non-customers.

Our automated and human anti-fraud detection and investigation methods and tools are the most respected in the business and have the most integrity simply because we are so consistently vigilant and diligent about preventing fraud. We never remove reviews unless they violate 1-16 of our policies (even though some merchants have tried to bribe us to do so). You won't find our level of anti-fraud detection and prevention at many other reviews sites - we're among, if not the best in the business.

In regard to CNETPC, I took another look at their reviews and any and all reviews which violated our policies have already been removed (if any were missed, email me and let me know the usernames). Also, please remember that if you have a horrible experience with a merchant, it doesn't necessarily mean that everyone or anyone else will. It's also possible that CNETPC was a decent enough company at one time but started to develop problems (perhaps what eventually led to their demise) at the time you purchased from them. If they have reopened under another name, we certainly want to know about it so we can list it and inform others.

[NoRefund]

As for the original post, I tried my search again (for your pleasure- write SONY HC3 in google and click the advertisement on the right hand side) all of the companies that sell this camera under $1000 are fraudulent, I looked them up in RR and they all got 0.x ratings. So the system works. I don't know what changed from my last post. Maybe many reviews were deleted (example is ExpressCameras.com) so this regained my trust in RR for a bit.
Regarding CNETPC they do seem half-decent, if they have frudulent post there they did a good job in writing them.
Regarding @SiliconJon complaint about the order # I had the same case with Monarch Computers, when they saw the bad review the refused to accept it without the order id. Thanks to Lara I managed to get my review posted, but it wasn't nice fighting to get my post up.

[NoRefund]

Look at "Click for Digital" ratings: six months ratings: 5 (not too bad)
ALL of the reviews are bad aside from the following two:

NYKINGIZE (1) "I ordered a Sony DSC-R1 Digital Camera. It arrived quickly and worked perfectly. The accessory kit I bought was also great and has everything I need to take great pictures."
seacretlyevil (1) "I decided on a fuji 3800 and searched for a good seller, had good reviews and recommended through a dealtime search. Click for digital provided me with a good price, ease of ordering, a cursary check if acc. were needed without a hard sell, and super quick shipping (recieved camera in two days ). They were a pleasure to deal with and i'm very happy with my purchasing experience, thank you CLICK FOR DIGITAL. Will do business with them again."

Those two are false postings (will you write CLICK FOR DIGITAL in caps in your post???). They are total of 10 postings (so 8 to 2)
this gives a correct lifetime rating of about 2, but only two posts in the last six month 1 to 1 gives it a score of 5.
If there was a button there saying "report as false post" it would server as a good tool for people to report those kinds of scams.
This company should get a 0.00 in this case.
Thank you.

p.s. Just another example: 42nd st photo "thanks 42nd St Photo. Brett D, JHB, South Africa" ok we get it. they ship to South Africa in 2 days, ok. Can somebody erase that and give this company the right ratings? 0!

[RicheemxX]

Honestly I don't see that either of those co's have bloated reviews and as for using another site like pricerunner most if not all the reviews I saw over there where linked from RR so how would that make them any better?

[NoRefund]

Pricerunner are not better in this sense. I was merely talking about their "observation list" which I think is a nice feature to have, so a store with a rating of '5' can be on the observation list to warn consumers. I am pretty sure "Click for Digital" should be on an observation list of some sort.