A watchdog listing of the 10 worst?

spokane valley, WA(Zone 5a)

could we have a listing of the worst rated companies? Just for fun?

Murfreesboro, TN(Zone 7a)

We get that question from time to time at the helpdesk. We don't do a "Bottom" list for a couple reasons:

1) The liability: the Garden Watchdog is a completely free feature and companies are not charged to be listed, and no one has to pay to read the reviews. There is no way we can afford to operate it if we also have to routinely defend it from lawsuits, which would probably occur if we created a "blacklist".

2) We've never been able to see a constructive or positive reason for creating a list of the worst companies. Our take is that anyone who is considering buying from a particular company should read the reviews to decide for themselves whether that company looks like a safe bet. If a company's feedback is mainly negative then it's "buyer beware" - and if they proceed, at least they are forewarned and forearmed.

When we launched the GWD back in 2001, some companies predicted it would become nothing more than a lightning rod for disgruntled customers, and would reflect a negative, skewed opinion of most companies. The general assumption was that only people with a negative opinion would bother to post a comment.

Happily, their dire predictions proved wrong. The GWD now has almost 45,000 comments submitted; of those, over 70% are positive, about 11% are neutral, and under 18% are negative.

Having said all that, you can browse a category and sort it by ranking. That will at least tell you who's tops (and who's not) for any given category ;o)

Nichols, IA(Zone 5a)

I found that companies I was ready to drop have improved, so I still order from them. Watchdog was a very good idea!

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