Merchant Ratings FAQ

What is the BizRate UK Smiley Scale™?

Outstanding Good Satisfactory Poor

The BizRate UK Smiley Scale is a simple and intuitive way to visualise a lot of rigorous research about a store’s capabilities, so shoppers can tell at a glance the good stores from the not-so-good stores when they’re comparison shopping.

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How should I use the ratings?

The Smiley Scale, combined with price information, can quickly help you find stores with the level of service quality you like for the price that you want. For instance, if you’re interested in saving money and are not in a hurry to receive your item, then you may choose a store with a lower price, even though it doesn’t have the best On-Time Delivery rating. Whereas, if you are in a hurry to receive your item, you may be willing to spend a little more at a store with an excellent On-Time Delivery rating. The Smiley Scale allows you to choose a store based on what’s important to you.

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What does the "BizRate UK Certified" seal mean?

A BizRate UK Certified store has a proven track record of dependability and customer satisfaction. To become BizRate UK Certified, a store must allow BizRate UK to place an invitation on its customers’ receipt page asking them to rate their purchase experience. BizRate UK then follows that rating up with an email to the customer making sure the goods were delivered satisfactorily and on time. If the store meets the following criteria from these surveys, the store will receive the BizRate UK Certified seal.

• Must continuously solicit feedback directly from customers via the BizRate UK survey. The store must participate in BizRate UK’s free customer survey program, allowing BizRate UK to collect feedback continuously and directly from its customers as they check out and after the date of fulfillment through follow-up e-mail surveys. This way, BizRate UK collects detailed, timely feedback from real verified customers at check-out and after fulfillment and can be sure that all customers are allowed to rate their experience.
• Must maintain store ratings of Satisfactory or better on all quality dimensions of service.
• Must have received at least 20 customer surveys in the last 90 days.

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What does "Not Yet Rated" mean?

"Not Yet Rated" means that BizRate UK is in the process of evaluating the store but has not yet collected enough customer reviews to issue a rating. BizRate UK requires a minimum of 20 surveys in the past 90 days to ensure a statistically significant rating of a store’s performance and not the opinion of just a handful of customers.

As soon as enough valid reviews have been collected, a rating will be calculated and displayed.

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What does "Being Re-Rated" mean?

Stores can be re-rated for a variety of reasons, including:

• BizRate UK has detected a significant amount of suspicious reviews or other unusual activities that make the prior ratings appear unreliable.
• The store’s site or operations have undergone significant changes.

Once enough valid reviews have been gathered, a new rating will be calculated and displayed for this store.

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What is the number of reviews?

The number of reviews is the lifetime number of individual consumer reviews that BizRate UK has collected for a particular store. BizRate UK does not consider anything less than 20 reviews in a 3-month period to be a statistically relevant number and therefore does not post scores for stores below this threshold of reviews. These stores are clearly designated as: "Not Yet Rated".

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How are BizRate UK’s reviews and ratings gathered?

BizRate UK combines consumer feedback from two different sources to create the most comprehensive and reliable store ratings available anywhere.

1. BizRate UK Certified Ratings
   Many stores are designated as "BizRate UK Certified". These stores have agreed to allow BizRate UK to collect feedback directly from their customers as they make purchases. To do this, BizRate UK literally sits at the receipt page of tens of millions of transactions each month and invites real customers to share their experiences and give feedback immediately after a purchase. Of course, a transaction is not complete until a customer receives his or her goods, so a follow up e-mail is sent to make sure that the store delivered the goods as promised. This continuous process ensures that BizRate UK is able to collect timely, detailed and accurate feedback about both the ordering and fulfillment process of every BizRate UK Certified store. No other ratings system comes close!
2. BizRate UK Members Ratings
   But isn’t it important to have ratings for every store, not just the ones that participate in the BizRate UK Certification program? Yes! That’s why BizRate UK has put together a panel of active online shoppers who have volunteered to provide store ratings and reviews. Their reviews, combined with the reviews written by visitors to the BizRate UK website allow BizRate UK to have reliable and up-to-date ratings for stores who don’t participate in the BizRate UK Certification program.

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How can I rate an online store?

Click on any store's Smiley Scale ratings or "read reviews" link and you will have an opportunity to "Write a Review at BizRate UK" regarding your purchases at the store.

Alternatively, every time you make a purchase at an online store look for the BizRate UK survey invitation on the receipt page. Simply click on that invitation and you’ll be presented with the BizRate UK survey. In it, you’ll be asked to evaluate the store for the purchase you just made. If you do not see a survey invitation on a store’s receipt page, it means that the store is not yet participating in BizRate UK’s free BizRate UK Certification survey program. BizRate UK encourages you to ask the store to join the program and help all online shoppers make more informed, confident decisions.

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Where can I see a store’s ratings and read its reviews?

Anywhere that a store is listed on BizRate UK, you can click on its Smiley Scale rating or on its "read reviews" link and you will be taken to its Customer Reviews page. To search directly for any store’s reviews, click on the Store Ratings link on the BizRate UK homepage. From there, you can search for an individual store or compare between stores in each category.

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How are BizRate UK’s ratings calculated?

BizRate UK takes great care to ensure the most rigorous, reliable and up-to-date ratings possible. Accordingly, BizRate UK takes the latest feedback from its point-of-sale survey network and combines it with the latest feedback from BizRate UK Members to arrive at Store Ratings.

The equation that determines each store’s rating is calculated as follows for each dimension of service:

Of course, since store ratings often change over time – Holiday season is not the same as summertime, for instance – time is also a very important element in BizRate UK’s calculations. BizRate UK only uses data from the latest 90 days when performing the calculations to arrive at a rating. That means that the store ratings on BizRate UK are never more than three months old!

It should be noted, that while each individual feedback point for all sources is weighed equally in BizRate UK’s ratings, the stores participating in the BizRate UK Certification program generally have the most reliable ratings because they allow BizRate UK to solicit feedback from actual customers immediately after a transaction and through follow-up e-mail surveys after fulfillment, when the experience with a store is freshest. Thus, the BizRate UK Certification program truly represents the "gold standard" of customer satisfaction ratings of stores. To find stores in this program look for the "BizRate UK Certified" medal on their site or on BizRate UK.

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What are the quality ratings and what do they mean?

Eight of the fifteen quality ratings are determined at the point-of-sale or "checkout". These are collected by asking a store’s customers to evaluate their purchase experiences immediately after completing the online transaction. The remaining 7 quality ratings are determined after the product is expected to have been delivered. Here are the explanations of each rating:

Our Travel Reservations category maintains a slightly different set of quality ratings that have been custom-designed to better evaluate these online businesses.

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How often are store ratings and reviews updated?

BizRate UK gathers additional feedback from customers and updates the store’s ratings and reviews daily.

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How does BizRate UK stop ratings manipulations and fraud?

BizRate UK has been in the business of having the most reliable store ratings on the Web since 1996. Over the years, BizRate UK has put in place many ways of detecting and eliminating fraudulent ratings and, while its exact methods can’t be published, you can be confident that BizRate UK’s large numbers of reviews from a variety of sources, sophisticated consistency-checking algorithms, and powerful analytic tools and systems guarantee that BizRate UK is the leader in ratings fraud detection.

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Many sites have store ratings, what’s the big deal about BizRate UK’s?

BizRate UK is the only comparison shopping company with ratings as a focus. Thus, its methodology, sampling techniques and comprehensiveness of sources are unsurpassed. And with the colourful Smiley Scale, BizRate UK’s ratings are extremely intuitive and easy to use too. It’s no wonder that BizRate UK is the company that the press and respected organisations look to when trying to assess online store quality.

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Do stores pay to be listed in the Store Ratings section?

No. To maintain the highest possible levels of objectivity and independence in its ratings, BizRate UK does not charge stores for evaluation or listing on the BizRate UK website. BizRate UK is dedicated to providing shoppers with unbiased information to make more informed and confident online buying decisions.

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What do BizRate UK Certified stores receive for participating in the program?

BizRate UK Certified stores receive a "BizRate UK Certified" medal for display on their site and medal acknowledgement on the BizRate UK and Shopzilla websites — showing their participation in the Web’s most rigorous monitoring program, and signifying that they care about providing a satisfactory customer experience. Additionally, all participants in BizRate UK’s point-of-sale survey program receive free real-time research based on survey results to help them to better serve their customers’ needs.

To learn more about BizRate UK’s FREE BizRate UK Certification program, contact us.

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What stores are eligible to be BizRate UK Certified?

Any online store can apply to participate in the free BizRate UK Customer Certification Program as long as the store:

• Sells products/services over the Web
• Has full online ordering capabilities
• Agrees to be independently evaluated by its customers through BizRate UK’s survey process.

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How can I join BizRate UK’s online research panel?

To ensure the high integrity of BizRate UK’s data, all members of the BizRate UK research panel are required to be online buyers. Online buyers are given the opportunity to join the BizRate UK Online Research Panel after they’ve completed one of the BizRate UK surveys. To join, simply fill out a survey following your next purchase from a BizRate UK Certified store and click on the panel information tickbox. More information will be sent directly to you via email.

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