Where Is My Review?

By Lei Lydle Founder and Editor Last Updated: 11/12/2005 5:00:33 PM

I just received an unsigned email from a Subscriber regarding the reviews. This Subscriber was complaining that a review she submitted had not been posted.

I could not reply to this Subscriber directly because she did not include her reply email address. If my unsigned Subscriber is reading this, all answers below apply to the review you submitted.

Following are the reasons reviews may not be posted:

1. Your review was in regards to a meeting or encounter you had with the vendor prior to your wedding but you did not actually HIRE the vendor for your wedding.


Why don't we post these types of reviews? This review system is for posting reviews about the vendors you hired and actually used for your wedding.

The purpose of meeting with vendors before you hire them is to evaluate them and decide if you like them enough to provide services at your wedding. One would expect that you will choose one vendor over another because there was something about the other vendor that you didn't particularly like - maybe you didn't "click" on a personal level, maybe you didn't like their pricing structure, maybe the vendor was late to the meeting due to unavoidable circumstances etc. These are reasons not to hire the vendor for YOU personally but NOT for everyone.

While YOU may not "click" with a vendor, many other brides might just love them. While the pricing packages may not be right for you, they may be perfect for another bride's budget. Just because a vendor was late for your meeting doesn't mean that vendor will be late for every meeting with every bride. We ALL have bad days. We are ALL late for work occasionally. Things happen and it is unfair to post these types of personal comments that may affect another bride's decision to even contact the vendor. Other brides could be missing out on the vendor of their dreams because your personal opinion unrelated to actual purchased services was posted in a place for thousands of people to read it.

For these reasons, we generally do not post comments related to pre-wedding meetings unless they are "glowing" reviews that resulted in the hiring of the vendor.


2. You did not include the required contact information that we need to verify you as an actual customer.


Did you know that wedding vendors frequently post on popular bulletin boards such as TheKnot and others? Yes, there are some very clever wedding vendors posing as "knotties" and I know it for a fact because they talk about it at networking events.

You simply cannot trust everything you read on un-monitored bulletin boards - the good or the bad. I KNOW vendors go on those boards and post negative things about other vendors. They also post positive things about themselves. You may think they are brides but they are not.

For this reason, we have this monitored rating and review system. We need to be able to verify your identity as a customer of the vendor you are reviewing. We require and keep private one of the following: phone #, email address or mailing address. If you do not provide at least one of those forms of contact information we will NOT post your review - no matter how good or bad it is.


3. You posted a negative review that did not adhere to our guidelines for negative reviews.


Negative reviews are tricky because of slander and libel laws. We are a very small company made up of 4 recent brides and one groom. I am the only full-timer here and everyone else works in their "spare-time". We all work on this site because we love it and we love helping brides. We do not have the money to fight off lawsuits from potential slanderous posts.

That being said, we DO post negative ratings of vendors. However, we may or may not post the comments that go along with that rating and that is completely up to our own judgement of the wording of the comments.

However, we keep ALL comments in our database and every negative review about a vendor is a mark on their record with us. If you see a 1 or 2 star rating without a comment, don't worry about what the comment was - you can be sure that it was extremely unfavorable and you should keep this in mind when considering that vendor.

Our Preferred Vendors get 3 strikes before they are out. These vendors are businesses we have worked with and/or have researched. We request references and check the Better Business Bureau for complaints. We have worked with many of these vendors for YEARS and they have excellent records.

For this reason, we are not going to post one super negative review about a Preferred Vendor without seriously researching the facts of the situation. And we are certainly not going to post the review if it is from someone who did not provide us with verification contact information and who did not actually hire the vendor.

However, our system is not "biased" towards our Preferred Vendors. It is important that you continue to submit negative reviews of vendors - even our Preferred Vendors. We do keep the negative reviews on record and if the vendor gets 3 negative reviews within a 2 year period then we will no longer allow them to be a Preferred Vendor on our site. In extreme cases we may remove a vendor after 1 negative review - but that has to be an extreme circumstance. We have had several vendors over the years that we had to remove from our Preferred List and we will continue to monitor all of our Preferred Vendors.

It is important to understand, negative ratings and reviews and/or postings on free for all bulletin boards can REALLY hurt someone's business.

Wedding vendors are people just like you and me. They work long hours, they have families and they sometimes make mistakes. We are not in the business of putting people out of business and we have to give our Preferred Vendors the benefit of the doubt. We simply wouldn't have ANY vendors if we posted every little thing that people write here :-)

We want to help brides find the best vendors and we believe that these ratings and reviews from VERIFIED customers can help.

0 Comments

Submit Comments...