Not all references and ratings are created equal!
Performing due diligence on small businesses can be very difficult for consumers to do. References and written warranties provided by any business are only as good as the business that is providing them. References are easy to create, buy or manipulate. That is why multiple personal references will remain your best resource for making important decisions.
However, personal references are not always available. In response to this market need, a new group of Internet sites have sprung up that collect feedback from consumers about local businesses. Angieslist, Yelp, insiderpages and Judysbook are just a few. But just like references provided by businesses, some are real and some are not. Business owners, competitors, suppliers, disgruntled employees as well as real customers use these sites to provide feedback. Of course it is impossible to tell which feedback is credible and you never know what the motivation is behind the review. Since anyone with an email can rate any business it is impossible for these aforementioned companies to measure the quality of the feedback. In fact several of these sites give gifts to consumers for writing a lot of reviews. Again, you never know the motivation behind any one review.
TrustFX is different. We believe that unless the rating system is credible the value of the feedback is not very reliable. That is why our system involves both the business and the consumer. This is the only way to eliminate fake reviews that plague other sites that rely on consumer generated content.
Businesses who use TrustFX will give each of their customers a unique key at the time of sale. Customers use the key after the service has been delivered to rate the business. This is similar to the process popularized by ebay with their merchant ratings, except that ours works for traditional off-line businesses like doctors, plumbers and day care centers.
This creates a natural incentive for quality businesses to set accurate expectations with their customers and then to meet those expectations. Businesses with better ratings over longer periods of time will attract new customers who value competency, honesty and fairness. Businesses with poor scores will remove themselves from our directory.
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