vendor feedback policy

[Northeast Rod Run]

Originally Posted by compos mentis

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.

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.

[DRJDVM's '69]

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?"

[Flash68]

Originally Posted by DRJDVM's '69

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....

[Scorpner]

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.

[fleetus macmullitz]

Originally Posted by camcojb

We used to have a no vendor bashing policy here. Sort of an "unwritten rule". Many automotive sites have the same. We are now instituting the written version.

Any vendor bashing threads will be locked. If you have a problem with a vendor from this site (the list of vendors is on the left side of the page) please pm me directly. We want to help and protect our members, and will do whatever possible to accomplish that. We have had a lot of success in the past with this.

Unfortunately the majority of vendor bashing posts only tell part of the story. It's the old adage "there's three sides to every story". One guys side, the vendors side, and the truth is often somewhere in the middle. So to keep the site professional it's just easier to not allow the bashing.

Thanks for your understanding.

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.

[camcojb]

Originally Posted by compos mentis

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.............

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.

[coolwelder62]

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

[Ketzer]

Originally Posted by coolwelder62

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-

[daveybtv]

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.

[carbuff]

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?