Does a person have to pay ?????????

Does a person have to pay to rate a company on ebay. Two of us had very unpleasant experiences with Violets4You............he notified me today that she has about 20+ new positive comments but we have never heard of the users who are posting???????? Can any non paying member come on and rate the companies we have added? Thanks so much.

I have just answered my own question. Twenty eight people just joined DG to put in a good word for Violets4You. This is great news..........

Right, you don't have to be a DG subscriber in order to leave feedback for a company in the Garden Watchdog.

I think a lot of people discover Plant Files or the Watchdog and use those features, but never really get to know the rest of the site. That's why you'll run across unfamiliar names there sometimes, it's probably people who enjoy having those reference resources but don't know about or aren't interested in the rest of the community. Their loss of course!

They must have joined because I went to their profile page and they don't have any information listed such as threads started, etc...............but would their names show up like that if they weren't a subscribing member?
Thanks
PS>>>>>>>>>>>maybe DG needs to think twice about people have trial 5.00 runs just to build a company's name up when they care not to participate on the site anyway............at least if they want to leave comments they ought to pay 20.00.............
I shouldn't be saying anymore............just thought it was a weird experience to see.

Gail, their names will show up on their home page if they are just a free member and not a paying subscriber.

edited to say: It will just show a signed up date but nothing underneath saying they are signed up until or through a certain date.

This message was edited Oct 17, 2007 4:04 PM

Westover (not sure what the full user ID is) just told me that...............thanks Lin..............he said it was discussed on the AV forum but I have not been posting much just because I have been sick..................I missed the post on the AV forum...............

If you see that a whole bunch of people just recently signed up and left feedback, it could be that the vendor has started encouraging people to come to Watchdog and rate them--some companies I've ordered from have that on their website, and others include it on the packing slip they send with the plants. So it's possible that the owner of Violets4You just started doing something like that, so people who might not have been aware of Watchdog before all of a sudden were encouraged to come use it.

I just hate to see Dave's site get so involved with ebay............that is just a business all its' own..............I don't have anything against ebay but i just choose not to shop on ebay for anything. We get better trades on DG from good growers who are members than we do from a lot of professional vendors.

Maybe we shouldn't rate any sellers on ebay...........and this wouldn't happen again. She went to a lot of trouble just to try and negate her negative feedback from everyday users of Dave's Garden. They would look really silly just sending in feedback on Garden Watchdog when no one has even heard of their user IDs...........

We are positive these people didn't just voluntarily come to Dave's Garden and put in 28 ratings in a matter of days.....................maybe it just all takes care of itself because it is so evident to subscribers of DG what is really going on with the ratings anyway............

We're not involved with eBay.

If you made your purchase from this vendor via eBay and left feedback for her there, you probably shouldn't have doubled-up and left feedback for her here. We can't stop you from doing that, nor do we engage in any type of screening process before feedback is published to the Watchdog (it is the user's responsibility to know the guidelines and follow them.)

We monitor trends and activity in the Watchdog, and if we determine that feedback has been deliberately falsified, we will disclose it as such. In this case, the vendor asked her customers for feedback - and there's nothing wrong with that, as long as she didn't coerce or entice positive ratings (it doesn't appear she did.)

Ok..........thanks
gail

There's also a notice when you're putting a company into the Garden Watchdog about what to do if the company is an eBay seller:

Oh...................I didn't know and don't know if she sells outside eBay..........not that I know of or that anyone (even in Canada ) has told me about. My understanding was that she just sells on ebay but one reviewer said that she sold at shows. They must be in Canada because I belong to the Corpus Christi AVSA group. The president goes to every convention practically in the USA and she said she had never heard of the owner of Violets4You. Her name is Marjorie Bullard and you will often see her pictures on First Class and on the AVSA site.

I need to read the rules about Garden Watchdog..............hate to admit that I have never read them.

gessiegail, I agree it looks suspicious when you see a lot of members sign up in a few days timespan and the only thing they do is leave feedback for one dealer.

Personally, I tend to disregard posts by people under those circumstances and give more weight to opinions of people that have left other feedback or have been members for a longer time whether they are members or subscribers.

I agree they should be only vendors that sell outside of Ebay which has it's own feedback system in place. Otherwise it is just free advertising for them to be listed in the watchdog.

Unless there is a check on the IP addresses of the members it would be simple for any seller to sign up under multiple names and give various locations in order to boost their ratings.

Unfortunately there will always be people who will want to take undue advantage and It would take some heavy duty monitoring to prevent it.

Cool! I knew it is possible to screen such things but I had no idea how complicated it would be to do so or that your expertise extended into that type of programing. You are always amazing me!

GOOD!

I saw the exact same thing happen on the "other" forums - someone complained in a thread about how poorly they had been treated by a company, and all of sudden, all these 'new members' showed up to talk about how great the company was. They simply went to a number of computers (different IP addresses) but it was pretty obvious, pretty quick.

Just changing IPs won't cut it - if someone is paying attention. That's part of why we really encourage discussions about a vendor - especially if it's constructive criticism - to stay within the confines of the GWD. Here's a short compare-and-contrast of the GWD vs. forums for these types of discussions:

1) Within the Watchdog, the reviewer (and company, if they choose to respond) are bound by the stated guidelines to restrict and limit the scope of their discussion. Each party can state their case, and readers can decide for themselves whether the customer was reasonable (or not), and whether the vendor reacted appropriately (or not.)

Within a forum, the subject matter is wide-ranging and conversations can take all sorts of turns...back-and-forth conversation is encouraged and expected.

2) In the Watchdog, we have the ability and authority to review where the post (and poster) came from, and launch an investigation, and disclose fraudulent feedback designed to help or harm a company's reputation.

No one expects to be scrutinized or have their post reviewed for authenticity in a discussion forum ;o)

3) In the GWD, the company can respond to feedback, in whatever way they feel is appropriate.

If a vendor tries to defend themselves in a forum discussion, their efforts turn into a flame war or the vendor exploits the situation to create a self-promotion opportunity. Either way the thread eventually gets deleted.

Thanks for the clear explanation, Terry. It seems to me that even if the vendor isn't trying to "exploit" the situation, simply defending themselves (by describing the typical size of plants they send, explaining packing or shipping methods, or whatever) can end up crossing the line into self-promotion. I hadn't thought of that before when I wondered why there wasn't more discussion and/or warnings about particular vendors on the forums.

Gosh! You guys stay busy!! (but I already knew that)