ResellerRatings Trust & Ethics Policy

"Since 1996, ResellerRatings has upheld the highest standards of quality and ethics. That's why our ratings and reviews are trusted to power organizations where only the best will do, including Google Shopping and Bing Shopping."

1. Accept Reviews From Customers, and Only Customers

For more than 10 years, we've been developing a robust system to automatically and reliably screen for fraud (retailers writing reviews or hiring people for reviews) and multiple review submissions from the same person. It works very well and most instances of fraud are painfully obvious to our system (a lot of computer, network, location, email address, invoice number, and other data is provided to us when reviews are submitted).

When fraud is suspected but uncertain, we contact the reviewer to obtain proof of their transaction, in the form of a credit card billing statement (with credit card information blacked out). This is a level of dedication that you simply won't find elsewhere.

We have a responsibility to the thousands of shoppers going through ResellerRatings. We manually look at review submissions when we suspect fraud, or are tipped off when users contact us. This catches the small percentage of fraud that our automated system may not -- we're particularly offended by retailers who think they're being clever by gaming our site and take heavy action against them. As a result, they're very sorry when their actions get publicly exposed -- a lesson to any retailer contemplating fraud.

2. Earn the Trust of the World's Most Respected Authorities

Google. Bing. The New York Attorney General. These are names that are associated with quality, authority, and authenticity. Each one of these organizations has trusted our ratings and reviews in various ways.

Google displays our ratings and reviews throughout Google Shopping, and within sponsored AdWords ads:

Bing displays our ratings and reviews in Bing Shopping, and Bing chose ResellerRatings as their first and currently the only provider of ratings and reviews.

The New York Attorney General's office asked for our help to expose retailers who wrote reviews for themselves, pretending to be consumers. We helped expose a number of disreputable retailers, which the Attorney General fined.

3. Do Not Play Favorites for Any Reason

We do not allow retailers to pay for positive reviews, or to solicit reviews from customers the same day the order is placed (a common tactic -- asking a customer to write a review while taking their phone order). We receive tips about this activity daily and we remove affected reviews and warn the retailer -- plus, our system automatically detects these same-day reviews.

We do not remove reviews simply because we're asked to do so. Not for any amount of money or for any advertiser or sponsor, ever. There are many ratings sites out there that either delete bad reviews from paying sponsors upon request, or post paid recommendations for sponsors, and you should be aware of them. ResellerRatings does not. Reviews are only disabled if they don't comply with our published terms (for instance, if a non-customer writes a review) and even then, we contact the reviewer and ask them to bring their review into compliance where possible.

4. Always Be a Responsible Authority

Someone wise once said, "With great power comes great responsibility." From our modest beginnings in the late 1990's, ResellerRatings has grown to be the trusted voice of authority when it comes to verified, consumer reviews. We did that by an unyielding commitment to honest, integrity and fairness. Over a decade later, we are visited by over 30,000 eager and informed consumers a day! We feel a great sense of responsibility for the community we built. We know we are not the ONLY reviews site on the internet, but we do know we are the BEST reviews site. You won't likely find this level of dedication anywhere else. Our own employees, friends, family, and millions of shoppers like you rely upon reviews at ResellerRatings to guide their purchases -- it's of the utmost importance to us to maximize the authenticity and reliability of reviews for everyone.

We do not edit, censor, block, or moderate reviews of any retailer for any reason. If you write a review, it gets posted, subject to our terms of use policy.

5. Do Not Spam Our Users

Creating an account profile at our site lets you edit your reviews later if you choose to, and lets a retailer send you a message to help you or resolve any issues you may have. It also makes it much harder for retailers to write fake reviews, and much easier to detect it when they do. We won't spam you, send you marketing emails, or sell or otherwise provide your email address to anyone.

6. Retailers Cannot Hide, and are Encouraged to Participate

Retailers cannot opt-out from ResellerRatings. Retailers are added to our site by customers, and cannot be removed unless the retailer has zero reviews and/or is out of business.

Reviews can only be written by real customers. It's FREE for retailers to flag reviews for violations in our terms of use. It's FREE for retailers to post public replies in response to reviews.