forums for brides to be

second74

Hi

Something I didn't know, these bride to be forums, if you have negative feedback on a supplier you can only private message someone who is asking about it. Therefore if you are going online looking to see how people found certain suppliers, you will never come across a negative review as it will be taken down immediately. Therefore you will only find favourable reviews.

BKWDR

Yeah its the basis of most online forum boards, with the defamation etc nowadays ...ALSO if the particular supplier has paid for advertising on that site it will be taken down twice as quick

Word of mouth can be king sometimes.

An Bhanríon

BKWDR wrote: »

Yeah its the basis of most online forum boards, with the defamation etc nowadays ...ALSO if the particular supplier has paid for advertising on that site it will be taken down twice as quick

Word of mouth can be king sometimes.

Yeah, I looked everywhere online (including the wedding forums) for information about our venue and could find very little except quite conflicting reviews on Tripadvisor. Luckily in the months coming up to the wedding a few people said they had been to weddings there and that it was a good venue and could be depended on. And they were right.

Word of mouth all the way!

Milly33

Yep tis hard to try and find details. I just found googling worked best, if there is something bad to mention it can be found. Is a shame though even for suppliers to know where they are going wrong that there isn't one

clint_silver

Milly33 wrote: »

Yep tis hard to try and find details. I just found googling worked best, if there is something bad to mention it can be found. Is a shame though even for suppliers to know where they are going wrong that there isn't one

not exactly. if a consumer has done something wrong, is it a shame suppliers dont have a public forum to say "mary jones from cork didnt pay us the agreed fee so just letting you all know what a bad customer she is"?

If a supplier has done something wrong, let them know through your customer relationship with them. If you're in dispute, try to resolve that using proper channels. Then go public with documented proof of the resolution if you still dont get any satisfaction.

Its more than that though, a supplier could do 100 weddings a year, if in one of them theres a dispute over something, that one dispute goes up on the web, its there forever and people say "Oh, I read that theyre not great". yet that one dispute may have been a misunderstanding.

the other 99 are going to be brilliant. but people by their nature dont read that. They only read the one. Yet the supplier may never read that one negative feedback online.

After reading many incidents of feedback, Go and view, always, its the only way to be sure..

Famous incident few years ago, bride rang joe duffy saying a wedding band never turned up. Awful, brides mam on saying dreadful things, what can be done about these cowboys. manager of band heard, got on the radio, turned out bride never booked, she'd only said "I was thinking about booking ye, are ye free" , guy says yeah, in brides head that was it the band were booked, never went back with a deposit or anything. now if anyone listening to that only heard the first bit, their name is muck.
an extreme case, but proof it does happen.
If negative feedback was up here without a suppliers knowledge who may have a different side of the story, business and livelihoods are affected.

Bad publicity? try 5 generations of a company going down the pan due to misunderstanding.

todays indo
http://www.independent.ie/business/world/uk-government-in-9m-payout-after-single-letter-blunder-causes-business-to-collapse-30944222.html

Milly33

No I have to say I think it should be equal. Is a company had a bad experience with a customer I think they have every right, just as the customer does to say well look this is my story and this is yours. Then go fair is fair and see if it can be resolved.

If you are good in business then it is simple as, if not then I am sorry it is your own fault if you get bad press or feedback..

At least that band were able to come back and say well no actually this was the story so then fair is fair, she thought she was right so went on but then the band cleared their name.

Of course it happens where people are wronged but give them the chance to right it and if they have any interest or care if their company is getting a bad name then they will fight for that name..

Example .
Visit website of supplier, email from website. wait 2 weeks nothing back,
go back to website email from personal email address wait no word back,
contact on facebook hear nothing back after leaving comment on page, email again on facebook two days later big fuss oh so sorry I never got back send details and I will, send details wait another week nothing,
send public note on facebook and all what a do about nothing again..
And walla nothing gets down. I would have no problem in naming the lady

I have plenty of examples and do have a black list haha not being mean but seriously it isn't that hard to have a good customer service

clint_silver

Most people are smart about it though, you yourself regularly post good feedback about suppliers that youve found good to deal with (fair play btw). I would try to do same.

Companies/supliers cant print stories about bad customers. noone would deal with them. they just let them go if theyre smart.

My point is that suppliers don't always know the negative feedback is out there unless they know how to look for it. no right of reply so to speak.

If a company just doesnt reply, thats their own bad, their business will suffer. Im with you on that.

BKWDR

clint_silver wrote: »

If a company just doesnt reply, thats their own bad, their business will suffer.

True, in the case you describe Milly, after all that trying i dont know why you would bother trying to book them further. If they don't reply to you after all that , they don't deserve your business. I'd just leave well alone, i don't think it warrants plastering bad reviews about them not replying to emails. Let other decide that themselves.

Toots

Guys I'd appreciate it if you didn't name individual websites. While it's fairly well known that certain websites will remove negative feedback on any suppliers that advertise through them, the company themselves may not admit to that, and could claim that statements like that are libelous, which could get Boards.ie in trouble.

Milly33

Oh no don't worry I wont make the black list public haha.. No I was just using that as a example of how not to do business. Jes no I didn't follow them up she only gets a few chances..

Toots

I think it's a tough one to call. Speaking from experience of modding this forum for the last few years, it can be very hard to determine if reviews left on these forums are genuine.

You'd often get new users whose first post would be singing the praises of their band/florist/baker/venue/jeweler/dj/travel agent. Now it could be that this person was just after getting married and is completely buzzing about it, delighted with various suppliers, and wants to sing their praises from the rooftops, and that's fair enough. But it could equally be a wedding supplier, or one of their friends, signing up just to shill.

In fact, we discovered that there were a few different suppliers who were actually asking their clients to go on to this site in particular, and post good feedback about the them. To me, that's really cheeky, because they were obviously trying to get advertising on Boards without having to actually pay for it. And not only is it underhanded, it's also unfair on the companies who HAVE paid for ads or an official rep account.

Similarly with negative feedback, it can often be the case that a new user has had a bad experience with a supplier and is posting an honest review of their experiences, but sometimes suppliers will sign up new accounts to badmouth their competitors.

For this reason, we had to introduce what we call the "2/20 rule" whereby if a user wants to post feedback on a supplier, they must be an active member of the site for more than 2 months, or have a post count higher than 20. We've found this has been hugely helpful in preventing shilling or non-genuine feedback.

Sometimes we see situations where a client has a falling out with a supplier for whatever reason (one that crops up fairly often is when a client cancels and is annoyed because they think they should get their deposit back), or perhaps a client had a bad experience, or the service was poor. But in their anger, the user goes completely overboard and goes out of their way to post anything and everything they can, in order to put people off booking that supplier (often across multiple sites). Often in these situations, the negative aspects are very exaggerated, and sometimes make claims that are untrue.

For the record, we don't delete negative feedback about suppliers who advertise with Boards, just because it's negative, even though we often get PMs or reported posts asking us to do it. Sometimes suppliers screw up, sometimes clients just don't have a a great experience, or sometimes it's both. Nobody gets it right 100% of the time. People are allowed to post genuine feedback. The only instance where a negative feedback post would be modified or deleted would be if

A: It contained unsubstantiated claims that would damage a supplier's reputation: ie suggestions that they might be going bust, doing something dodgy, etc.
B: It's potentially libelous, slanderous, or could land Boards in legal trouble.
C: The user who posted it has less than 20 posts, or has not been an active member of the site for more than 2 months (as I said above). This also applies to positive feedback.

Personally, I'd never look for reviews on those websites that are known for deleting negative feedback about companies who pay them.

The best thing to do is view sites where there's both positive and negative feedback about various suppliers, ask friends and family, do your research, and view their work before booking. When you're happy to book, pay deposits by credit card wherever possible, and make sure that there's a proper contract signed by both you and the supplier.