This is a very difficult area of discussion.
This is a free membership Bulletin Board, because it is a free membership Bulletin Board it requires Sponsors to pay the bills, oh yes it costs money to maintain this Bulletin Board.
This Bulletin Board runs a fine line between its Membership and its Sponsors. Without its Sponsors there is no Bulletin Board. The Staff do not have the time or background to investigate any of the complaints that get lodged here. The Membership can quickly manifest a problem into something that would have any Sponsor questioning their sponsorship.
The Staff can not take sides and represent either the Member or the Sponsor, there are other avenues that the member should follow such as.

The BBB (Better Business Bureau) is an organization set up to help protect the buying public. They actually offer method of reconciliation between Retailers and Contractors and the Buying Public.

You can also set up a polls within this Bulletin Board to get an effective answer to:

Where do you shop?
Which of these products do you use?

Or you can set up a Bulletin Board without Sponsors. One that is supported only by Memberships only.

Tom R

Tom, thank you. I think you've hit it on the head. We are looking at options for a poll, with a rating system. No comments are accepted, just a 1-5 rating. I know every vendor I've dealt with personally will hit a 4 or 5, and those that hit all 1's like the one in this thread may, we are willing and happy to see them advertise elsewhere.

Honestly, there are very few boards that run as smoothly or with as little controversy as Canreef. As a mod on another fish forum, I can attest to the fact that when things are going this well, its because of the hard work the mods & admin are putting in behind the scene to catch things before they get out of hand.

So instead of coming dowon on fellow hobbyists who VVOLUNTEER their time here to make Canreef our online reefing home, do as the others suggest and post a "Please PM me with reviews of X vendor."

I have tried, in the past, to warn fellow reefers if a particular vendor was not a good LFS to deal with through PMs. However, if nobody knows you're planning to do this, then nobody can tell you about good or bad experiences.

Just my $.02

Anthony

I think this would be a wonderful addition to this site.

This really does work.

I asked fellow members to pm me their frag vendor experiences & my inbox quickly filled with replies.

1 had amazing reviews all across the board.

1 had mostly good reviews.

1 had mostly bad reviews.

I chose accordingly & was very pleased with the result.

Plain & simple.

.

Constructive criticism is appreciated from the members of canreef also, no need to start a big flame war over an issue that in reality requires a final consensus of both staff and mods right? I have to agree with Brad though Ephraim, to say that your not going to shop with any of the vendors because of a single one (That I'm sure you know the identity of and if not shoot me a PM) is like saying "One store in Calgary treated me wrongly so I'm never shopping in Calgary again". All of the vendors are competitors not a giant team hell bent on bad service towards the canreef populace. If anything having more vendors creates competition and better service (As I have personally seen from MULTIPLE vendors here). As others have said to fix the problem the vendor "Immunity" idol has to be taken away or replaced with a better action plan.

Levi

Since I am not the sponsor in question that got this thread started I guess I should have just ignored it but I don't like how it's turned into an attack on the "mod squad" and lumping all vendors together in a negative manner. And for the record I'm not just some guy with a credit card #
That is your right but obviously not very well thought out.
It's irresponsible statements like this that are quickly typed in the heat of the moment that contribute to the reasons "bad reviews" are not allowed. There will sometimes be issues with what one purchases anywhere but some people tend to get carried away and would post negative comments about a vendor before they are given an opportunity to correct whatever the issue was. Should the vendors start posting bad customer experiences with the members as well or perhaps publish a list of known "tire kickers" who never follow up their promised purchases. The whole thing is just silly.
I agree with this 100% if there are unresolved issues. Again that is on the assumption that the vendor was contacted and given the opportunity to make things right.
Great idea as long as when the "poll rating" idea is used it's not anonymous. There needs to be accountability from the members who post there in the same way it is expected from the vendors. If people have to give their name and others can see how they voted they are more likely to be honest.
As mentioned by several members PM'ing works very well and I endorse that as the best course of action to get your own vendor reviews.

Greg, I'm not sure we have that option, but we'll look into it. To my knowledge, at this time we can only internally audit who voted.
And thank you for your well tempered and professional thoughts on this issue.

To all those that have posted here, supporting the Canreef "staff", THANK-YOU.

To those that dont, {I still dont get it}, well I deleted my post from first thing this morning as I would have likely had to resign after posting it. My mind cant grasp, how members can run down and call staff members some of the names they get called, just because they offer their time freely to help run an aquarium board, for the hobby we all love.

If we posted a list of some of the names we have been called, you would be shocked. Well maybe not. As mentioned, some options are being discussed. But they need to be done so with the boards owner, who foots the bills and deals with our sponsers.

Thanks

Having been on canreef for awhile. I can remember a time when Vendor rating type posts where able to live for a few days until they got stupid.
What I noticed was that the majority of people complaining about vendor never bothered to contact the vendor to seek some form of corrective action. They would simply spew off about what a crappy experience they had and they will never shop there again.
I always felt this was unfair to the store as there might have been a valid reason for the poor performance that day and compensation could resolve the issue.

I think people need to be mature about how they rate each vendor and ensure your rating is valid and not just emotional.

Jason