We started developing MerchantRating.com for the benefit of consumers. Every one of us are consumers. Even with years of experiences in e-commerce, most time we find it difficult to identify which merchants are reliable and trustworthy. There are millions of merchants on the web and we want to differentiate who amongst them deserve our business.

Take as an example a situation where we are interested in purchasing a memorabilia from a merchant in Sweden. We have no reference of this particular merchant and no one we know have dealt with this merchant before. This merchant may be new since when we googled the merchant, the results were few. As we are really interested in purchasing the memorabilia, do we proceed to submit the order and hope the item will arrive? Wouldn't it be more comforting if we can verify that the merchant is legitimate and verified by a third-party? Won't some testimonials from the merchant's previous satisfied customers give us the confidence in submitting our credit card details to purchase the item? Of course.

As another example, we are eye-ing a particular software that will help us manage our finance better. Does the software work? Is the developer responsibe and responsive in dealing with issues that might crop up with the software?  How about customer support?

These are a few issues we wish can be solved by having a third-party, independent and trustworthy referral service. MerchantRating is that service. To help consumers find reliable, trusted and committed internet merchants, we established MerchantRating.com. There are millions of merchants out there and we want to be able to identify which deserve our business. 

We hope the internet consumers find our service beneficial. We welcome any suggestions to make this service better. Just email us at suggestions@merchantrating.com

How does MerchantRating benefit consumers?

• Venue for past merchants' customers to leave feedbacks of their transactions with the merchants.
• New consumers to use these feedbacks in evaluating trustworthiness of the merchants before conducting business transactions. 
• Increase likelihood of smooth transactions since it is an incentive for the merchants to conduct businesses in most professional manner to earn their customers' positive feedbacks and avoid negative feedbacks.
• Identify reliable merchants with high positive ratings since merchants with high positive ratings are more likely to be responsible when dealing with consumers.
• A venue for interactions between merchants and consumers to further enhance their online business transactions by making it safer and more pleasant.
• Consumers can use our list of merchants previously rated in selecting merchants they feel comfortable doing business with. 

All feedbacks are submitted by actual customers. We do not edit or manipulate the feedbacks to anybody’s benefit. The rating reflects the current feedbacks provided by actual customers only.

How does the Rating system work?

We have the simplest rating system possible so the vast majority of internet users will find the rating user-friendly and reliable. We have developed the rating system that works as follows;

• Merchants that conduct businesses on the internet apply to become member of MerchantRating.com.
• We evaluate the application. Successful merchants are provided Seal of MerchantRating.com to be displayed at the merchants' websites.
• The merchants' actual customers provide feedbacks on their experiences in dealing with the merchants in a form at MerchantRating.com. This is done by clicking on the seal displayed at the merchant's website or following a link provided at Merchant Report at MerchantRating.com.
• These feedbacks are translated to the current rating which is displayed at the merchant's website and our Directory.
• We constantly update the rating based on the current feedbacks.
• Consumers use the rating to find merchants that they would like to deal with.

These ratings serve only as a guide and should be used as one of many parameters in evaluating trustworthiness of the merchants.

How to rate a merchant?

After you have completed a business transaction with the merchant, you are encouraged to give your feedbacks. Here’s how:

• Click on MerchantRating seal at the merchant’s website. This will direct you to the Merchant’s Report.
• Or, search the merchant at our 'Search Merchant' function at the top right of this page or browse our Directory to find the merchant you would like to rate.
• Click on 'Rate this Merchant' and fill-in the questionaires based on your experience in dealing with this merchant.
• You can also leave text testimonials if you would like to share in details your experiences.
• Click 'Rate Merchant' to submit the feedback to us.
• We will verify the authenticity of the feedback and it will be reflected in the rating of the merchant.

How to read and interpret the rating?

We strive to keep the rating and its interpretation simple so that it is easy to understand and therefore useful.

• Using 10 feedback parameters in the feedback form, merchants are rated by their actual customers. Based on the score, we calculate its rating and award the Number of Stars to reflect the feedback given.
• The highest Number of Stars (maximum of 5) would reflect the most positive feedbacks given by the customers. The lowest Number of Stars would indicate more negative feedbacks.
• We will also show the number of feedbacks received. The higher number of feedbacks received with the higher Number of Stars would generally indicate that the merchant is more reliable than a merchant with higher number of Stars but less number of feedbacks.
• The text testimonials give details on past customers experiences with the merchants. We also give opportunity to the merchants to respond to the text testimonials left by their customers.

Whilst it is the dream of all merchants to have perfect ratings and all the glowing testimonials, it is a fact in business that there are bound to be some unsatisfied customers. These customers might leave low rating. How the merchants respond to this situation and resolve the problem that make a different between an excellent and an average merchant. Based on our years of experiences, it is almost impossible and unreal not to have unsatisfied customers.  The merchant's efforts in dealing with these unsatisfied customers are actually the true indicator of the trustworthiness of a merchant. Thus, merchants are invited to respond in details on how they are making the efforts in resolving problems with the unsatisfied customers. 

How accurate is the rating?

We take pride in ensuring that the ratings displayed at MerchantRating.com are as accurate as possible. Steps taken to ensure this are:

• All the feedbacks are provided by actual customers.
• We constantly monitor all the feedbacks to avoid false ratings.
• We follow-up on the feedbacks to ensure they are genuine and legitimate.
• We implement many proprietary methods to ensure the integrity of the ratings.
• All merchants enrolled with us are carefully screened. Using our vast experiences, we carefully evaluate all merchants to ensure their businesses are legitimate and trustworthy.
• We study and evaluate each of the merchant website to ensure the business policy is fair and legitimate.

How does MerchantRating protect consumers?

We provide the historical experiences of previous consumers to help future consumers decide whether to conduct a business transaction with the merchants. In the event of disputes and unsatisfactory experiences, we will send correspondences to the merchants and your experiences will be reflected in the merchant's current rating.

We also provide guides on how to resolve problem between consumers and merchants. Please email us for any specific inquiry. Our Staff Consultant will attend to your request.

Frequently Asked Questions

1) How does MerchantRating help consumers?

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