Randy D.
Lost my faith in SiteJabber's authenticity
My experience with SiteJabber began in 2014 when the marketplace Storenvy made the decision to begin charging a fee to sellers and stores who used it's formerly free marketplace. Storenvy's original owner and founder, John had asked me to take a look at it. I was a well known volunteer support member for the Storenvy Facebook group, and had the opportunity to consult the founder and his lead manager on a few big decisions. The Storenvy SiteJabber page was being flooded with negative comments with all kinds of crazy claims, criticism, many of them by former marketplace users who had been kicked off and banned from the marketplace for policy violations, ripping off customers, and other problems. I was skeptical. My next encounter with SiteJabber came with the Marketplace Mercari in 2017. Mercari had started as a free marketplace for people to sell on through a phone app. The moment Mercari began charging a commission fee to sell, SiteJabber once again became the home where scammers, policy violators and those suspended for account violations gathered. This time, because I had been researching and reviewing Mercari for over a year, I decided to write in favor of Mercari, and I wrote a few other reviews of other marketplaces also. My Site Jabber articles had risen to 1 Million views and 1500 interactions. Why? Because I presented facts in my review, they were not merely the opinion of someone who was out for revenge. Unfortunately, about 6 months ago, I had logged in to help answer questions about several different marketplaces, and I decided to copy the link to my profile page to include in my portfolio page. While I could see it, no one else could. I was busy at the time, so I just moved on to my other projects. In August 2018, I logged back into SiteJabber, I had forgotten that I hadn't been able to view my reviews or profile publicly. I began interacting on a marketplace, providing answers to questions, and I noticed that my responses had greyed out. I thought that was very strange, so I checked my profile. Couldn't be found and an error message appeared suggesting that at some point my account had been removed from public view for a violation of rules. I honestly thought that was Ironic. Looking through the marketplace reviews on SiteJabber, I also noticed the same members writing multiple negative reviews about the same marketplace to drive down that marketplaces ratings. On the one hand, I'll give credit to SiteJabber for having a method for marketplaces and businesses to respond. However, I have to question the authenticity of SiteJabber as a legitimate resource for real reviews. The mere fact that duplicate accounts can be used to try to ruin a marketplace or business means that resource is tainted and unreliable. At some point, SiteJabber had a degree of authenticy to it, despite being a place where only those who were disciplined or had a sour experience when things didn't go their way. write reviews. But something changed. My first skeptical impression of the legitimacy of SiteJabber seems completely realized now. I ended up deleting my account, including the reviews which, I could see, but had been hidden from the business and marketplace review pages. But I think what stood out to me, is how Amazon for example, has such a massively high rating on their reviews, and the other marketplaces have one or two ratings. I find that not believable. Those are my impressions, on SiteJabber. I ultimately trust it as a reliable resource, to the same degree I'd trust the person screaming at the customer service representative in the local Best Buy customer return line, when that CSR is being patient and taking extra ordinary steps to help them.