vendor feedback policy
 

new feedback section is now open. Here's the rules:


section located here:

https://lateral-g.net/forums/forumdisplay.php4?f=71

leaving this one open if you want to give any feedback. Thanks again.

:thumbsup:

I will say nothing about Greg Weld's wheels.




:lol:

Hey Jody... there's obviously been a lot of drama here lately.

I understand the policy, but what is the answer to the question of how members (mainly prospective buyers of parts) stay away from certain vendors who consistently seem to have problems delivering, paying for parts, communication, etc.? It's quite clear to most who to stay away from, but if all of the issues and disputes moving forward are handled via PM privately, how will we know who seems to be not delivering?

And for the record, you and Scott have done a tremendous job of taking care of business and running the best forum in the best way possible around here. Most will agree with me on that.

I was trying to figure out a polite way to ask the same thing.

X2 on the tremendous job!

Jeff-

we are contemplating a vendor feedback forum, but have not figured out the details. Others sites have them, but they seem less than ideal in my opinion.

Right now, we've had more pm's from members in the past years saying they like the non-drama more than we've had people wanted the feedback.

Seconded!!!

One possible idea; have a vendor feedback forum.

When someone asks about a vendor, require (as is policy) no vendor bashing. Only positive feedback can be posted.

Then, once the OP has made the effort, they can then send a pm to the powers that be here if they like, to inquire if there are any verified claims against said vendor.

In the meantime OP may also get pm's about the vendor in question of course.

It comes down to trusting Scott to terminate a non performing vendor. In my eyes he has proven that he will protect the members best interest. We don't need to see the politics here. You can get that everywhere else. I want to see this site as the positive and fun place it's been for good. This place is special, let's keep it that way.

That kind of makes the whole idea of a feedback section useless.

A feedback section should allow good, bad, or neutral feedback at all times. It has to be open and honest with as little censoring as possible.

If you only allowed positive feedback, what purpose would that serve? A feedback section that only allows good feedback does more harm to people (the ones spending the money), than not having one at all.

Say a vendor (or even a regular member) screws a bunch of people over time and time again, then when he thinks his back is almost against the wall he goes above and beyond for the next couple of people. Those two people will post all great things about their experience, so then more people will give them a shot and the circle will continue

If that seems far fetched, it's not. I've seen that a bunch of times on a couple of other forums.

I don't like the drama anymore than you guys.... But one of the great aspects of these sites is to learn.... Learn what works and what doesn't.... Learn from other peoples mistakes.... Learn from their success... Learn who to trust and who to avoid

If there is someone to avoid doing business with then I want know about it

More complicated but maybe a feedback where it's similar to eBay..... Star or number rating... Very objective comparisons...Short sentence about experience.... If you want more detail then contact me via email

Biggest thing I want to know..."would you do business with them again?"

Ned, that's a good idea maybe... just limit the feedback to that question. Pretty straightforward.

We've all seen what does NOT work on other forums....

I like to hear the negative things as only positive comments seem insincere or fake to me. No one is completely happy 100% of the time.

I ran something like this on a local forum and thought that making people stick to only first hand experiences and with only the facts, that more productive results came from it. Also, the intention of the thread/section was for awareness/resolution and not to discourage or harm the others involved. Posts from people that say their "friend was ripped off", or even first hand complaints that don't specify details were either disputed for more details or closed/deleted etc. Sometimes asking for specifics showed that they weren't totally innocent either. Make it known that the vender has equal opportunity to respond as well. They also needed to be legitimate without being freinds with, or working for the competition. ;)

Feed back like what the have on Newegg is awesome and the legit comments on there have been a huge factor in purchases I've made there. -great feature if you can pull it off.

So Jody, as of right now, what CAN be said about vendors in threads... besides positive things?

The only guideline I see is no vendor bashing threads.

Thanks.

sites like Camaros.net and Chevelles.com have had no vendor bashing rules forever, and seem to still draw crowds. I wish I could say exactly where we'll draw the line, but that can change depending on the thread, the poster, etc. I'll know it when I see it I guess............. :unibrow:

The thread asking for help on how to get his money back from a vendor is fine. Asking for advice, didn't name the vendor, there is nothing wrong with that. Threads asking if anyone knows how to get hold of ABC vendor is fine. A thread asking for feedback on a vendor is fine, as long as it doesn't get personal and turn into bashing. For example, you could say I had a bad experience with them and would not recommend them. That is not bashing. But to go off cussing, calling them a piece of crap, etc. is.

Pretty much any thread that calls out a vendor by name is going to go south. Most all of you have seen this happen over and over. We want to protect our members. I think Scott has been great at removing vendors that he felt didn't take care of our members. It's never been about the money here, though we've been accused of that in the past.

We're still looking at options, but for now the threads have increased beyond our comfort zone so for now we're just not going to allow them on the forum.

Sometime the customer can be tough to deal with Too.Some customer's will just keep bitchin until you want to give UP.

Yup! There's a boatload more ungrateful, disrespectful, a-hole customers than there are bad vendors. Some customers are not going to be happy regardless of what you do.

Jeff-

Feedback Forum
 

Maybe it could be set up like Ebay, each vendor can be rated on customer service, delivery time, and quality of the product. A short comment limited to 100 characters can be left to described the transaction, then other member can review each vendor and choose whom they would like to do business with based on other members reviews.

As someone that started one of these threads a while back about a negative vendor experience, I have a thought. Perhaps instead of having a policy like this which is going to be difficult, and subjective, to enforce, why don't you have a policy instead that prevents the "piling on" that many people do? That doesn't mean that the thread has to be locked necessarily to prevent the piling on, but as moderators you can be proactive as to stopping it.

If people cannot post their experiences for fear of being blocked of banned from the site, or even just 'called out', then I fear that we lose the ability to share those experiences to educate future shoppers.

Personally, I wish I had seen more threads about vendors in the past, for some reason I only recall seeing those for the last year, perhaps 2. Perhaps the problems only started more recently such that there wasn't as much to report before that. Whatever the reason, it seems to be a more recent phenomena.

My vote, if I'm allowed one ;) , would be to allow the forum users to share their experiences, but to put a policy in place where the experience need to be fact based. Then warn people (and have as part of the policy) that piling on is strictly prohibited. If someone has an experience they feel the need to share, they should start their own thread that must abide by the same policy. I usually don't feel that the initial post in these threads is so bad, but the follow on is where they tend to go downhill quickly...

Could some variation of that idea work?

Big businesses are using a method called Net Promoter Score or NPS lots of stuff out there on the web about it. I use it with many of my clients as the customer experience is becoming a massive differentiator and profit generator when many companies sell the same thing or near enough to it

NPS basically asks "would you recommend x company to friends or family" you score out of 0 to 10. 10 being absolutely without question. 0 being not a snowflakes chance in hell. NPS is then a formula that says


How to Calculate Your Score

NPS is based on the fundamental perspective that every company's customers can be divided into three categories: Promoters, Passives, and Detractors. By asking one simple question — How likely is it that you would recommend [Company X] to a friend or colleague? — you can track these groups and get a clear measure of your company's performance through its customers' eyes. Customers respond on a 0-to-10 point rating scale and are categorized as follows:

Promoters (score 9-10) are loyal enthusiasts who will keep buying and refer others, fueling growth.
Passives (score 7-8) are satisfied but unenthusiastic customers who are vulnerable to competitive offerings.
Detractors (score 0-6) are unhappy customers who can damage your brand and impede growth through negative word-of-mouth.
To calculate your company's Net Promoter Score (NPS), take the percentage of customers who are Promoters and subtract the percentage who are Detractors.


NPS is % of promoters minus % of detractors

You'd be surprised how many companies have a negative NPS

This would be an easy exercise for us to set up on here. Set up a vendor NPS section and simply allow people to select a score from 0 to 10. To prevent abuse maybe limit people to 3 scores per vendor. Such they can score multiple transactions or if they want to do more than 3 due to more transactions they have to PM a mod to get permission

Now this is simply a rating system but allows 3 categories of feedback that can be equally compared across vendors

The follow on question which could be optional is "why". That is why did you score the way you scored. And maybe this needs mod vetting before it's published to prevent bashing...your call

But I think as a simple start an NPS approach is a simple but effective rating system that could be easily implemented he

Bingo!

My thread about Air Ride's customer service was closed because the administrator needs to verify my story? I said I'm unhappy, that makes it true. My thread was about MY situation. Protecting vendors isn't going to make any of them more accountable for their business practices, good or bad. Censoring any of this is wrong. We can read anyones rants or raves and make up our mind about what we believe.

If I was censoring it I would have removed the thread. ;) The info is still there for all to read, just wanted to stop posts until I could get hold of the company and see if I could get this fixed for you. That is the main goal isn't it? It was not about verifying your story.

I re-opened the thread for now.

I guess for me I just don't understand why this is such a big deal at all.

If a customer is not happy with service from a company then they are not happy. I as a customer want to have a drama free experience. I understand that the story is one sided sometimes but I think that alot of times you can see from the story who's at fault. If you can't hear the story of experiences you can't really make a decision for yourself. I have personally purchased products from site sponsors even after hearing bad stories because I have heard enough good things that I can understand a bad experience or two. I just feel that every company is going to have good and bad experiences with customers. How they make up for the bad is important. If you only hear posative things and are only allowed to say posative things you know that you can't really make a good decision on who to go with. It also takes away from the really good vendors who have very little bad to say about them because people know they are only hearing the good.

what is wrong with having a thread telling about a bad experience? if you don't want to read it and don't want the drama then stay out of it but for me it takes away from an educated decision on who to go with for things all the way around.

because they almost always turn bad. In many cases what the original poster said was flat out untrue, but the vendor still gets slammed. If the thread is long how many read the entire thing to see who was right, or just read the beginning and think the vendor sucks?

We have no problem with feedback. You can post feedback of your experience with a vendor right now, good or bad. But once it turns into piling on bashing, or if you can't stick to the simple facts and start getting personal it will be locked.

What about a star rating system to monitor vendor performance without any text field?

This is just one convenient example I found:

http://cache.lifehacker.com/assets/i...8748f1910a.jpg

If a below averaging rating is logged, could it trigger an Admin investigation alert?

I agree, you guys run a great site which allows people to share their cars, knowledge, and passion. With regards to the vendor issues, I think there has been drama for sure and it seems like more drama recently than I have seen in the short time I have been a member on this site. I think people can offer their experience(s) as long as it is done in a mature and intelligent manner. As far as two people or however many people jabbing back and forth, I don't think their problem will be solved by airing it on an internet forum open to the wide world.

I think Jody and Scott are trying to curb the drama before it turns into episodes of the Kardashians or Housewives of wherever...just my opinion.

Jody and Scott are always trying to what is best for all involved. They are not protecting or hiding someone for their own interests, its for all combined.

I think your attitude towards them sucks. The vendor has more at stake to loose so we definatly want to have their side discussed also. If the customer is totally wrong then they just move on with their life, no biggie. But if the Vendor was bashed with lies then they still take a hit even though they are innocent, which affects their income and taking care of their employees and families.

BUYERS BEWARE is the best policy, do your homework and take action responsibly. It does not take long to find out which businesses are above the board around here.

As for dealers, if multiple people have a problem with you , its probably you.

Scott and Jody keep up the good work.

I'd have to agree about people posting things that aren't true, they do it all the time and for many reasons. From my experience, some are even competing companies or friends helping out. If it isn't justified or legit, it's not fair to the company IMO.

One thing to consider Jody and Scott...

If you guys are the only ones hearing both sides of the story and deciding the real truth and which vendors stay and which ones go, in essence you are vouching for ALL the vendors that are sponsors on the site... You are by defacto giving your endorsement of everything that vendor does

In other words if I spend a lot of $$ with a sponsor and then they screw me or I have a terrible experience, I' not only pissed at them but I'm pissed at you because you vouched for them by being the sole judge of their business ethics

For me, that's kinda sticking my neck out more than I would want...

Right now there is some tie to the sponsors by having them sponsor your site but not nearly as much as if you guys are the sole "judge" of the company

I can't speak for Scott, but I don't look at it that way Ned. The site vendors pay for the privilege of being able to use the site to post info on their products, run sales, new product introductions, etc. We do not try to censor any feedback, good or bad about a vendor whether they are a site supporter or not. If you search you'll find where we've locked threads that have had both sides say their piece, or have turned into a bash fest. There have been a few that are deleted, but few and far between.

I've always felt that mistakes happen. If a guy starts a thread about waiting too long for a part and the dealer or manufacturer comes in and explains what happened, maybe they completely drop the ball. We will usually lock it once it's resolved, but the thread and issue still remains on the site. Also, the fact that it was resolved and that the vendor/manufacturer handled it. That's good for both sides in my opinion.

As far as who gets to decide what's bashing or not, how to or if to moderate a thread, that will always be up to the site staff. There's no way we can set up a poll for these threads and let the members vote as to who's right or wrong, etc. :lol: I know that's not what you mean exactly, but I don't see a lot of good coming out of letting some of these threads run their course. We've had far more pm's and emails over the years saying they appreciated us locking them down than we've had getting mad because we did lock them. And no, they weren't from the vendors that were the topic of the threads. :P

We are looking at alternatives for a vendor feedback forum. As it stands you're all welcome to give your feedback, good or bad, as long as it's your first-hand experience and you stick to the facts and don't get personal. As far as vouch for the vendors, we don't necessarily know their business practices when they sign up. We will however intercede for any of our members if there is an issue, and we've been extremely successful getting the problem handled. If a vendor shows they cannot take care of our members, then we remove them. It is really that simple.

Well said Jody. :thumbsup:

But by having a strict "no vendor bashing policy" where the customer cant come on here and give their account and opinion of a vendor, you are essentially censoring them... the goal to keep the online drama to a minimum is great, but opens the doorway for others to fall into the same abyss that other customers have experienced.

By locking the thread and taking everything "behind the scenes" is in some way censoring the customer from letting everyone know their experience with the vendor.

The hard thing is that there are always 3 sides to the story and keeping the online drama to a minimum is unquestionably better for the greater good

Its a sticky issue and I dont envy you guys having to deal with it. You guys do a fantastic job with this website, and I dont want any more drama than you guys. Its a tough thing to deal with because there is no real easy answer, or a solution that fits every scenario and makes everyone happy

Best I can think of is the "star" or feedback number type system.....even that is filled with pros and cons.

Is it really Lateral G's responsibility to be the middle man? When companies advertise on TV, is the TV station required to disclose their consumer approval rating? Do they mediate bad service? There are plenty of other examples.

With that being said, I do like the rating system idea bases on a handful of questions. No commentary or definitely no outside commentary. Just not sure it's easy to implement.

As Stuart said, buyer beware, ALWAYS.

we have "no vendor bashing" period. We do NOT have "no vendor feedback". Is that a better explanation? There is a difference between "bashing" and a posting about a negative experience.

Locking a thread is usually reserved for a few reasons. Original poster asks that it be locked, like the one today. Or the problem has been solved; leaving it open almost always ends in someone bringing it back from the dead months later to complain about so and so. If it's locked they can start a new thread, much easier for everyone to see what's going on instead of multiple stories in one thread.

The last reason would be the thread has gone so far off track that it's better and easier to lock it. I will say, there's been several of these that I should have locked but instead spent a long time editing the "comments that couldn't stay", plus edit the quoted "comments that couldn't stay" where another member responds to that, and on and on.

No matter what we do you have to realize that you are not going to make everyone happy. I see your point and others who've responded. We're not ignoring them, just looking at all the options.

For now, the way it's going to be is no vendor bashing. You can of course post experiences or feedback though, whether good or bad, as long as it's your experience and you keep it civil and honest. I really don't see that as any type of censorship, all we've said is that if it gets out of control we're going to step in and edit/lock it up.

There are many sites on the Net that "anything goes". This isn't one of them. :) I'm willing to give it a shot and add a feedback forum, see if everyone can keep things civil.

Probably,the one's who like the non-drama are the ones who are not owed parts, money/refunds,etc. I can pretty much assure you if they were the ones messed over the wouldn't be so quiet. The one's here starting the complaint threads lately were quiet and non-dramatic up to a certain point as well at one point and time. All this to say, I feel we really need a vendor feedback forum. I love it here and this is a very high quality site. I live on this site believe it or not. You guys are great and I really don't think you all need to change anything else about the site.

Amen,
Reading the posts in question saved me from sending the person in question over 15k.

Jody/Scott, thanks for running things so well here. Everyone has an opinion, unfortunately they aren't always expressed as elegantly as someone like, let's say, Todd. :lol:

I understand the no bashing rule and think it's a good one. If I am reading your post correctly, LG is going to allow members to post about repeated trouble they might be having with a vendor if appropriate, as long as they/we don't go down the path of saying their moms eat kitty litter, or something of the sort. Correct?

I know that I have come to rely on many of the members here and their suggestions/opinions, and I do place a high value on their specific opinions when it comes to vendors and typically ask if they would buy from that vendor again. I can do this with or without a specific vendor section.

If you do open up a specific section for vendor feedback, I hope that as part of the rules, the customer must be required to submit their documentation of phone calls and emails, etc before being allowed to air their grievance/s. Anyone who has owned or worked a retail establishment knows that you really can't please everyone. I would also hope that others not involved with that vendor (never ordered parts with them, had service performed, etc) would not be allowed to post---not sure how that would be managed---pipe dream perhaps. If that were possible, maybe those threads would be more constructive. I for one do like to see the vendor/s respond publicly when it's an appropriate environment for them to do so.

Glad I don't have to figure it out, but glad you guys are going down the path. Many of us have talked about this lately and are glad you guys are addressing.

Doug