CanadianMOM - The Mail Order Marijuana Forum

Hello members,

I have been asked several times lately if we trash or do not approve negative comments on the site under the products. I'm assuming it's some sort of a hot topic at the moment? Maybe on Reddit?

We approve them all EXCEPT for extremely vulgar language (good or bad review lol) or super simple ones on our blogs just to snag the KT Coins.

I find it sort of hard to believe that some sites only approve good or glorious ones.

I was just approving a few and thought I'd show a quick snapshot of our approve/trash ratio.

That's always one of my check marks of a site. If it's nothing but glowing reviews, I'll pass on it thinking it's just shilling.

It's an interesting topic really. I do quite a bit of shopping online and many times have to rely heavily on what consumers say. I'm always wondering how accurate they are. I think that maybe companies should show their approve/deny ratio. That would be interesting but again, maybe that can also be manipulated haha.

Here's a business idea for someone. Have a company that looks after the comments or reviews on the actual site to show credibility. It's an interesting idea and I think one that would take off.

I would assume that consumers in this market would feel a hell of a lot better knowing that every comment on the site was not manipulated and or cherry picked.

King Tuts wrote: Tue May 14, 2019 1:52 pm It's an interesting topic really. I do quite a bit of shopping online and many times have to rely heavily on what consumers say. I'm always wondering how accurate they are. I think that maybe companies should show their approve/deny ratio. That would be interesting but again, maybe that can also be manipulated haha.

Here's a business idea for someone. Have a company that looks after the comments or reviews on the actual site to show credibility. It's an interesting idea and I think one that would take off.

I would assume that consumers in this market would feel a hell of a lot better knowing that every comment on the site was not manipulated and or cherry picked.

Most companies/entrepreneurs who are in it for the long haul to build their brand/rep will take their reviews very seriously looking at them from an unbiased perspective (shoes of the customer), while some sellers will take negative criticism/reviews very personally the more prosperous ones will make sure to vet the negative reviews first to make 100% certain you are not removing/hiding legitimate feedback that you should instead of deleting it should be learning from to make improvements moving forward.

I do selling on eBay, as an example you are not allowed to edit/modify your feedback received page(s), if a customer leaves you a feedback that is not positive you must first reach out to the customer to try to have them willingly remove/revise the feedback. eBay has done years of market research on this subject, when it comes to having feedback revised they put in place limits you're allowed 5 revisions per 1000 sales I believe. The reason they put a limit to customer approved revisions in place is because they found given the opportunity sellers would exploit the revision system by continuing to use deceitful sales tactics intentionally selling counterfeits as real etc (one example) then when the odd customer actually notices/complains only then the seller steps in to provide a refund which automatically prompts a negative feedback to be removed as if it never happened. So by not putting a feedback revision limit in place bad sellers are able to continue selling counterfeit/bad products/practices consistently while maintaining a 100% positive feedback rating simply by refunding the small % of customers who notice/complain.

In the shoes of the seller if the customer enters a feedback which is downright false, sometimes intentionally so but sometimes unintentionally/ignorantly, again it is best to reach out to the customer to try and understand their reasoning whether you believe them or not. After reviewing the facts if you feel the customer is trying to extort you or their negative feedback was untrue you may then escalate to eBay mediator who will make a decision.

I have been a seller on eBay for 9 of the last 12 years now with multiple accounts & 10s of thousands of transactions, generally only 10-20% of the sales will leave you a feedback. Customers are enticed with the photo's/description/prices, they see the 5 star reviews & fantastic testimonials & it gives them more comfort to place an order thinking "everyone before me says they loved it" etc.

The business of "MoM's" is not exactly legal or regulated so right now for many operators there is no concerns about them getting a low score from the BBB nor do they feel they have any enforced legal ethical obligation to the customers.

I actually like the idea of having a 3rd party mediator company similar to the BBB for MoM's, as of right now many customers who get conned or receive product not as advertised etc, they will just write it off and keep it in mind for their next purchase/move on since your only alternative would be to publicly complain/call out a "criminal" who has your personal information often over a few hundred dollars is not worth it.

A 3rd party mediation/review company similar to how eBay provides a report function as well as enforces feedback revisions would be a way for unhappy customers to express their complaints without fear of repercussion from the original bad dealer, this would help to weed out the bad business practices being used by some companies not being brought to light.

My 2cents and I would be happy to discuss the idea further with anyone seriously interested in that idea

Sweet! Coming from some serious experience! I also believe that dhgate, aliexpress... and places like this also manage the reviews as it sits under one roof, like a mall.

A very interesting subject to me, as anything to do with sales/marketing, is something I really enjoy learning about.

Love the screenshot of the approve/deny ratio. I looked in our review plugin but didn't see an ability to see that or I was going to share ours! I can see that we've got 2,200 reviews on our site and 5 didn't get added and they were just because they were either incoherent or customers requested them not to be placed on the site after they had already submitted them. Of the 5, 4 of them were 5 stars and one was 5 stars.

I like the idea of a 3rd party managing them to then verify that your site actually is using all reviews legitimately. I think that's a good business idea for a plugin that would do that, could make a lot of money! Because we can totally delete them and edit them at ease if we wanted to and the only one that would know that it didn't get added would be the customer who submitted it and didn't end up seeing it on the site.

King Tuts wrote: Tue May 14, 2019 10:56 am Hello members,

I have been asked several times lately if we trash or do not approve negative comments on the site under the products. I'm assuming it's some sort of a hot topic at the moment? Maybe on Reddit?

We approve them all EXCEPT for extremely vulgar language (good or bad review lol) or super simple ones on our blogs just to snag the KT Coins.

I find it sort of hard to believe that some sites only approve good or glorious ones.

I was just approving a few and thought I'd show a quick snapshot of our approve/trash ratio.

Left my review
Can only say good things!

i wish more people would take advantage/use our comment system. We've deleted one, because it was a duplicate post.

One thing that is slightly frustrating to me that is kind of popular across mom sites is the fact that generally you can't add comments/reviews on strains that aren't in stock after you make a purchase.

Understandable as you want to remove product you don't have to avoid confusion but speaking for myself I try to take a bit of time using the product before I make an accurate decision on how I feel and post about it; only to find that you can't let your feelings be known because the product is out of stock. Then I forget to check later when product comes back and I'm able to voice myself on that specific product.

I would feel pretty stupid if I just had one vape session, wrote up a review quickly and then cast my thoughts without fully grasping the entire scope of the product. That just seems cheap and contrived to me.

Ghost Drops wrote: Thu May 16, 2019 8:46 am i wish more people would take advantage/use our comment system. We've deleted one, because it was a duplicate post.

Man, I've been trying to write up a little review for my first order for a while now I'm sorry My comment above kind of echoes a bit of that though too. Not sure if I am able to write a review on the site for products that are not in stock.

Now, if all this chatter is about specifically comments on blog posts, I'll feel like an idiot and walk away casually

I don't recall a Cheapweed order but thanks haha!

In the beginning, we did show items that were out of stock but after much research, asking and reading, it seems as though the consumer wants to know what we have available and that's it. That was what I found anyways and I think that there was an actual thread on here one day about that very topic. It kinda sucks in our Rewards System situation, as our members get real rewards for commenting on the products they have bought.

It's nice to see some of you guys mention and show that you do not manipulate the consumer's comments or reviews. I think buyers and potential will appreciate that I cruise around a few online Cannabis communities and they rely on each other's opinions quite heavily!

Thanks for jumping in and chatting about this one

I dont know how much work it would be, but would there be a way to move out of stock products to another category/part of the website that you customers who've bought said product can still leave their thoughts/opinions?

Nobody wants to wade through pages of OOS product obviously, but like I said, sometimes shit gets forgotten about.

King Tuts wrote: Thu May 16, 2019 11:53 am I don't recall a Cheapweed order but thanks haha!

In the beginning, we did show items that were out of stock but after much research, asking and reading, it seems as though the consumer wants to know what we have available and that's it. That was what I found anyways and I think that there was an actual thread on here one day about that very topic. It kinda sucks in our Rewards System situation, as our members get real rewards for commenting on the products they have bought.

It's nice to see some of you guys mention and show that you do not manipulate the consumer's comments or reviews. I think buyers and potential will appreciate that I cruise around a few online Cannabis communities and they rely on each other's opinions quite heavily!

Thanks for jumping in and chatting about this one

Is it not possible to just hide the out of stock strains? Tag them as OOS, and hide them but allow people to find them through a search function so they can still review and receive whatever reward there may be.

The purpose of comments or reviews is not to "get points" but to let others know what they thought on products available. Yes, points happen to be a plus for the buyer of the product getting commented on but that's not the real intention. That being said, I would say that 80% of the products we now have up will always be re-stocked, so if you are a member ann item happens to be out of stock that you have purchased, take a look back in every once in a while and see if it's back You can always comment on it in the future.

That's how and why we are set up the way we are.

itsjustasalad wrote: Thu May 16, 2019 9:37 am One thing that is slightly frustrating to me that is kind of popular across mom sites is the fact that generally you can't add comments/reviews on strains that aren't in stock after you make a purchase.

Understandable as you want to remove product you don't have to avoid confusion but speaking for myself I try to take a bit of time using the product before I make an accurate decision on how I feel and post about it; only to find that you can't let your feelings be known because the product is out of stock. Then I forget to check later when product comes back and I'm able to voice myself on that specific product.

I would feel pretty stupid if I just had one vape session, wrote up a review quickly and then cast my thoughts without fully grasping the entire scope of the product. That just seems cheap and contrived to me.

Ghost Drops wrote: Thu May 16, 2019 8:46 am i wish more people would take advantage/use our comment system. We've deleted one, because it was a duplicate post.

Man, I've been trying to write up a little review for my first order for a while now I'm sorry My comment above kind of echoes a bit of that though too. Not sure if I am able to write a review on the site for products that are not in stock.

Now, if all this chatter is about specifically comments on blog posts, I'll feel like an idiot and walk away casually

ahhhh yeah, i see what you are saying. we tend to private the sold out products so they dont clutter up the shop seeing as we go thru many different strains.
what products did you want to leave a review on ( i could make public again)
will start to leave products up a couple weeks after they sell out, so people can leave them after proper time with the product. thanks for the suggestion

King Tuts wrote: Thu May 16, 2019 12:11 pm The purpose of comments or reviews is not to "get points" but to let others know what they thought on products available.

That wasn't the hidden agenda behind my comment, but I get what you're saying I don't go on reddit and do a review and expect any mom to compensate me for that, just the same as leaving a review for a product on a site I don't expect any compensation unless it's explicitly stated. Can't think of a single moment where I've written any type of review that wasn't an essay (or in an effort to get those juicy points). If you ever see me doing something like "good stuff 10/10" yeah that's me just being a lazy ass; not necessarily for free stuff but straight up lazy feels.

Good point though, after sitting back and re-reading everything, about removing out of stock stuff. It's unnecessary to have people review things you currently do not have. That's totally valid now that I think of it too

Trying not to take what you said as a jab, because I really don't think that was your intention. Just that you started your comment regarding capturing points in exchange for reviews/blog posts.

Ghost Drops wrote: Thu May 16, 2019 8:46 am ahhhh yeah, i see what you are saying. we tend to private the sold out products so they dont clutter up the shop seeing as we go thru many different strains.
what products did you want to leave a review on ( i could make public again)
will start to leave products up a couple weeks after they sell out, so people can leave them after proper time with the product. thanks for the suggestion

KingTuts made a good point above too with regards to taking down product when it's out of stock. Reduces clutter, and I am in no way disagreeing or trying to say otherwise. Merely a personal opinion/thought that quite frankly may not represent the majority population of consumers.

Even moving things to a particular area such as "out of stock" at the bottom of the page, still gives a brief impression that there is more stock. Just some ideas I have. Sometimes they're good, most time's they're just obscure and useless.

It's not necessary to re-open them right now (Tom Ford Pink Kush & GMO Cookies) as I'm sure you'll have them again in the future. Best just to let sleeping dogs lay I think; was just speaking my mind.

Not a jab, just another little window into how and why we do things

We leave our out of stock strains up and let people comment on them. We just change the place of them once they go out of stock to be at the end of our cannabis section so all of our in stock strains are first. We allow customers to also add their email address to the product page to get notified the moment we place that strain back in stock which lots of customers use and is a handy feature.

We do get some inquiries though like: Hey man, why so many strains out of stock? But we have around 25 in stock at the time which is plenty to choose from but then they see 60-70 out of stock. Just people not understanding the grow cycle of strains and keeping them fresh and how they come around etc.

ShamrockCannabis wrote: Fri May 17, 2019 3:46 am We leave our out of stock strains up and let people comment on them. We just change the place of them once they go out of stock to be at the end of our cannabis section so all of our in stock strains are first. We allow customers to also add their email address to the product page to get notified the moment we place that strain back in stock which lots of customers use and is a handy feature.

We do get some inquiries though like: Hey man, why so many strains out of stock? But we have around 25 in stock at the time which is plenty to choose from but then they see 60-70 out of stock. Just people not understanding the grow cycle of strains and keeping them fresh and how they come around etc.

Interesting for sure. I'm sure once they get the why you do what you do, they would appreciate it. Nice and easy with it being at the end of the list as well as a courtesy for those just wanting the in stock stuff to look at. Cool idea to be on an email list if you get an out of stock item back!

You guys cool with approving most comments? Good or bad?

All reviews get posted, the good and the bad. Thankfully they’re mostly good

On thing that is annoying though is our review plugin auto populates the customers first and last name in the name field and lots of times customers leave their last name up. So every day I’m editing off last names to protect their privacy. No way for that to be changed in the plugin so that’s a little annoying but other than that we’re happy with how our plugin functions.

ShamrockCannabis wrote: Fri May 17, 2019 4:26 am All reviews get posted, the good and the bad. Thankfully they’re mostly good

On thing that is annoying though is our review plugin auto populates the customers first and last name in the name field and lots of times customers leave their last name up. So every day I’m editing off last names to protect their privacy. No way for that to be changed in the plugin so that’s a little annoying but other than that we’re happy with how our plugin functions.

We had that issue at the beginning. I might be able to help with that one f you want. Holla in a DM and I can ask my people what plugin they use that shows their user name and not real name... If you want

ShamrockCannabis wrote: Fri May 17, 2019 4:26 am All reviews get posted, the good and the bad. Thankfully they’re mostly good

On thing that is annoying though is our review plugin auto populates the customers first and last name in the name field and lots of times customers leave their last name up. So every day I’m editing off last names to protect their privacy. No way for that to be changed in the plugin so that’s a little annoying but other than that we’re happy with how our plugin functions.

same as what KT said, if you want, hit me up and i can let you know what we use and it only shows usernames.

Much appreciated guys! Don't want to undertake fully switching review plugins at this juncture but if I do then will definitely check in with you both first and see what you're using.