Merchant Ratings FAQ

What is the Shopzilla Smiley Scale™?

Outstanding Good Satisfactory Poor

The Shopzilla Smiley Scale is a simple and intuitive way to visualize 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 "Customer Certified" seal mean?

A Customer Certified store has a proven track record of dependability and customer satisfaction. To become Customer Certified, a store must allow Shopzilla to place an invitation on its customers’ receipt page asking them to rate their purchase experience. Shopzilla 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 Customer Certified seal.

• Must continuously solicit feedback directly from customers via the Shopzilla survey. The store must participate in Shopzilla’s free customer survey program, allowing Shopzilla 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, Shopzilla 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 Shopzilla is in the process of evaluating the store but has not yet collected enough customer reviews to issue a rating. Shopzilla 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:

• Shopzilla 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 Shopzilla has collected for a particular store. Shopzilla 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 Shopzilla’s reviews and ratings gathered?

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

1. Customer Certified Ratings
   Many stores are designated as "Customer Certified". These stores have agreed to allow Shopzilla to collect feedback directly from their customers as they make purchases. To do this, Shopzilla 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. (You may have seen Shopzilla’s invitations pop up when you’ve shopped around the web! Hopefully, you’ve filled out a survey.) 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 Shopzilla is able to collect timely, detailed and accurate feedback about both the ordering and fulfillment process of every Customer Certified store. No other ratings system comes close!
2. Shopzilla Members Ratings
   But isn’t it important to have ratings for every store, not just the ones that participate in the Customer Certification program? Yes! That’s why Shopzilla has put together a panel of over 1.3 million active online shoppers who have volunteered to provide store ratings and reviews. Their reviews, combined with the reviews written by visitors to the Shopzilla website allow Shopzilla to have reliable and up-to-date ratings for stores who don’t participate in the Customer 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" regarding your purchases at the store.

Alternatively, every time you make a purchase at an online store look for the Shopzilla survey invitation on the receipt page. Over 2,400 stores are participating in Shopzilla’s program, so you shouldn’t have too much trouble finding one! Simply click on that invitation and you’ll be presented with the Shopzilla 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 Shopzilla’s free Customer Certification survey program. Shopzilla 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 Shopzilla, 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 Shopzilla homepage. From there, you can search for an individual store or compare between stores in each category.

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How are Shopzilla’s ratings calculated?

Shopzilla takes great care to ensure the most rigorous, reliable and up-to-date ratings possible. Accordingly, Shopzilla takes the latest feedback from its point-of-sale survey network and combines it with the latest feedback from Shopzilla 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 Shopzilla’s calculations. Shopzilla only uses data from the latest 90 days when performing the calculations to arrive at a rating. That means that the store ratings on Shopzilla are never more than three months old!

It should be noted, that while each individual feedback point for all sources is weighed equally in Shopzilla’s ratings, the stores participating in the Customer Certification program generally have the most reliable ratings because they allow Shopzilla 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 Customer Certification program truly represents the "gold standard" of customer satisfaction ratings of stores. To find stores in this program look for the "Customer Certified" medal on their site or on Shopzilla, or the "Customer Certified" designation on Shopzilla.

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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?

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

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How does Shopzilla stop ratings manipulations and fraud?

Shopzilla has been in the business of having the most reliable store ratings on the Web since 1996. Over the years, Shopzilla 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 Shopzilla’s large numbers of reviews from a variety of sources, sophisticated consistency-checking algorithms, and powerful analytic tools and systems guarantee that Shopzilla is the leader in ratings fraud detection.

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

Shopzilla 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 colorful Smiley Scale, Shopzilla’s ratings are extremely intuitive and easy to use too. It’s no wonder that Shopzilla is the company that the press and respected organizations such as Consumers Union 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, Shopzilla does not charge stores for evaluation or listing on the Shopzilla websites. Shopzilla is dedicated to providing shoppers with unbiased information to make more informed and confident online buying decisions.

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What do Customer Certified stores receive for participating in the program?

Customer Certified stores receive a "Customer Certified" medal for display on their site and medaled designation on the Shopzilla website — 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 Shopzilla’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 Shopzilla’s FREE Customer Certification program, click here.

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What stores are eligible to be Customer Certified?

Any online store can apply to participate in the free Shopzilla 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 Shopzilla’s survey process.

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How can I join Shopzilla’s online research panel?

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

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