Hi Frank,
Thanks for the reply. I didn't mean to sound crass towards you. Your idea is a good one and to be honest, I like the idea of Sitejabber creating a community where those with a higher credibility rating can step in and help each other out, especially if it's the truth.

Unfortunately, the problem is that the lie is still visible.As I said, we want constructive feedback. In fact, on our receipts, we ask the customer, "If you are happy with your order, please consider leaving a review of your experience on one of the many review sites like..."

We will be removing sitejabber from that list effective immediately because while we want REAL comments and reviews about our service, why should we promote sitejabber as an independent body when it's not allowing owners to publicly refute defamatory lies that damage the business?

Sitejabber, you've lost the respect from this user with regards your impartiality. You'll lose more as time goes by when others start to realize that this is a place to publicly lie about your competition, suffer no consequences and know that your competition can do nothing about it but complain.

It's a shame that your own site profile discussion is loaded with negative criticism.

Finally, Frank, thanks for your constructive input. I really appreciate it. Didn't mean to punish your good deed :)

Hi Sarah - thanks for the suggestion. I like the idea of making the comments on reviews more prominent. I will add it to our list of new features to be developed, and if it's okay with you, perhaps you can give me your thoughts again once we roll it out.

Best,
Jeremy

Hi Sarah:

I wasn't attempting to defeat nor circumvent the site's mission statement. I'm sure they're working on a solution. I only floated my idea as something that could help (temporarily) in the UNLIKELY event that a potential customer would find the bogus review and decide not to purchase from your website based upon that one negative (lie) as their SOLE criteria for making a purchase. Being in the business, I'm sure it's a maddening situation for you... I was just trying to empathize and create a band-aid using the tools we have at hand until a solution is reached by the Site Jabber ownership. I'm sure you're feeling a bit like people do when someone calls their baby ugly. I can feel your frustration. I'm just trying help. But it's cool, no good deed goes unpunished. Luck with your business and this problem.

I'm curious. And being the ranking reviewer in this worthless system, perhaps you'll indulge me. Why did Sarah post this comment to a review?

"Sarah B. Says:

"Exactly! Sitejabber have no concept of legitimacy and as we've all seen countless times before leads to something that WAS a great idea, losing it's credibility.

"Sitejabber, you're going to be getting a lot more negative criticism and loss of traffic as your legitimacy fades. No new fancy site design will deflect that."

I was under the impression that she believed that such comments are "hidden", "not public", and "hidden by default" (her words, not mine). So why on Earth bother to post a comment which nobody is ever going to read? Isn't that a bit dumb?

Frankly I'm wearying of hearing how stupid our members and visitors are, that we support a ranking system that "holds zero weight" with anyone, that the public is incapable of thinking beyond the very first thing it reads, and that people don't know how to follow a simple link even if it's placed in bold text and is right in front of them. And using the technique of taking a private correspondence into a public forum in the hope of shaming the other party into giving you what you want, well, that's an old one, I'm afraid, and doesn't impress me either. Fortunately for me I am unassociated with the site and with its owners so I don't have to be circumspect when responding to such insulting behavior.

Sarah is bound by the terms of service of the site, which allow sitejabber sole discretion in matters such as this. If she did not want to be bound by those terms, she shouldn't have joined. If she believes that the terms of service here are unfair, unreasonable or inappropriate then grandstanding in public is not the way to bring about change. But even so, she has been able to make her case without censorship and she's had more than one response from the administration. As she observes, she has now given her feedback. And we've all read it, and if we want to debate the issue in public, then I am certain neither Jeremy nor the other admins will interfere. But even if we do have that debate and decide we would like to see change, this is a private site and the owners are free to run it as they please. It would be a sad precedent if one person, by repeatedly shouting "foul!" in public, could force their personal agenda on everyone.

As yet, we do not even know if Sarah's business has been attacked by a competitor, or not. Even Sarah is unable to tell whether the review in question was written by "an idiot or a competitor". As yet, Sitejabber doesn't have any guidelines in place for preventing reviews or commentary by idiots and I can't imagine how they would frame one, so if it was written by an idiot, I think we may well be stuck with it. But however it all works out, Frank and myself and the other regulars here are here because we have faith that the site administrators are interested in more than making money, and want to create a genuinely useful public service. We give a lot of our time, voluntarily, because as Frank says, we want Sitejabber to work. The ranking system is not meaningless to us, it defines us.

Although I'm unlikely to warm to Sarah given her comments so far, I'm still interested in the debate. Given that it is almost if not entirely impossible to verify anyone's identity online unless you're the CIA, how would Sarah set about providing compelling evidence that a reviewer was spreading falsehoods about her business? Any form of physical documentation can be easily fabricated with today's printers and a little skill in Photoshop. International rerouting provides anyone with a phone number in any country that cannot be differentiated in use from a local one; domain registrars are so sloppy that false names and addresses pass unnoticed; most people, myself included, operate multiple email addresses and possibly multiple identities at those addresses. I think it would be seriously challenging to establish someone's identity with complete certainty. And you can't base a claim on the fact that the accused doesn't respond, there are too many potentially innocent reasons for that. I've been away from this site for months at a time myself and wouldn't necessarily have been aware of correspondence because I use a multitude of email addresses and don't always bother to check all of them. But you can't fairly bring an accusation against someone whose true identity you can't establish, nor should you support an accuser whose identity is likewise uncertain. So how would you frame a fair term of service which covered this situation?

I 100% agree with Sara B

Sarah, you need to calm down.

Positive reviews WILL outweigh the negative ones unless you truly are running a bad company. If you made a customer unhappy then they have a right to voice their opinion whether it be good or negative.

Finally, judging by your "behavior" and ridiculous replies I don't doubt that you have had multiple bad reviews.

Tyler that is not always true. More people deliberately seek out review sites to post negative reviews. Not the other way around. I could have a website with 1000s of customers. All it takes is one customer to order something they did not like or agreed to a policy they later disagreed to and post 1 negative review... and that can be damaging for our business.

Voicing an opinion is not what is questioned here... if it is a valid opinion or complaint. What is being addressed is that anyone can sign up an account with any free email address and file any type of complaint about any website. And the website owner does not have any recourse to address the situation.

Maybe what this site should do is be proactive... and be honest about wanting to help create a better online community and flush out fraud. When people want to leave a review, they have to leave a verifiable phone number. By doing that... it will probably weed out most of the bogus people and secondly, it can be used to confirm if the complaint itself is bogus. If I had a problem with a company and here to file a complaint, which I did... If I was asked for my phone number... that would verify me, but then I should be asked if I want the site owners to contact me about my complaint... and walla... you know if it is a real complaint or not based on their reply. If they say no... then it was a bogus complaint. If they say yes, then the customer is open to a possible resolve. Why

When a site does receive a complaint... then you should allow that site to log in. And view the numbers of those customers with complaints... and allow them to communicate with the customer to come to a resolve... thus making for a better community. No?

Allowing any type of complaint from anyone is not helping the community. You only provide a vehicle for further malicious and more then likely fraudulent complaints.

Joe D.