Some companies appear to be attempting to use a New York Times editorial piece as a way to somehow discredit Transport Reviews. We encourage visitors to read the opinion piece at http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/27/your-money/on-a-review-site-car-carriers-get-the-last-word-haggler.html?_r=1
The article brings up several issues that are inherent to internet reviews sites and Transport Reviews. However, the article hardly touches on the steps that we have taken since day one to combat the issues. Below we will go through each of the claims or issues brought up in the article in an attempt to help visitors better understand the difficulties and the solutions faced by Transport Reviews.
Background
First, please note that the article was a New York Times internet article, and was an editorial piece by an individual, David Segal. The research of the story was a 5 minute phone call and an individual''s opinion. We have invited Mr Segal to visit us to get a more in-depth look at the behind the scenes of Transport Reviews, however to date he has not accepted the invitation.
With that said, the article brings up issues worthy of addressing, in hopes of shutting the door on auto transport companies that try to use our silence as an opportunity to lie to potential customers.
We were contacted by Mr Segal and agreed to an interview about our practices of letting the company have the last word. (
Why reviewers can't respond to a company response) He was contacted by an upset reviewer who was unhappy with the lies that the company posted in the response.
Claims and Response
Claim: Companies get the last word on Transport Reviews
Response:
True It is true that companies get the last word. There is no conspiracy about why though. We simply have to end the back and forth somewhere. We allow both sides to get their say and then we do not allow further back and forth. The reviewer gets a review and the company gets a response. Simple enough.
More Information
Opinion or Potential Solution of Mr Segal: We should only allow a review with no company response at all.
Response: He is welcome to his opinion. But we believe a response can be helpful to the sites visitors, so we allow it.
Claim: That we generate the revenue of our site from auto transporters.
Response: True. We don't hide this fact. Almost all of the revenue of Transport Reviews comes from auto transporters. As we will address below, doing business with Transport Reviews does NOT affect the ratings and reviews.
Opinion and Concern of many Visitors: Can you trust reviews from a website that makes money from the companies being reviewed?
Response: This is entirely dependent on the website. In case of Transport Reviews we work very hard to keep the revenue side of our business separate from the review side of the business. We work so hard at it that they are managed by entirely different people.
We do not treat or manage the reviews of companies that do business with us differently than reviews of companies that do not. Claims that say otherwise are lies. Many of the rumors that companies spread about Transport Reviews play on this idea.
We recommend
not doing business with any company who tells you lies about Transport Reviews. Check out
Rumor Central for some of the common ones. If they are unethical enough to spread false information to try to look better then they should not be trusted to ship your vehicle.
Other Take-Aways
- The article notes that: "TransportReviews does not hide the sources of its revenue; a few clicks
and you can read all about the bronze, silver and gold opportunities" The article points out that we aren't trying to hide how things work.
- The article humorously comes to the question that Transport Reviews runs into. How do you finance a review website? Websites cost money. Web developers and the administrators that work tirelessly monitoring and enforcing the policies of the site cost money.
- We ran Transport Reviews for the first two years with NO revenue. It wasn't until we had to legally defend our site that we started showing ads. The decision was between shutting it down or paying the bills.
If you have other questions or concerns let us know using the contact us tab at the top of the site.
