Anyone else see this article about the Knot?

Wow, glad I use WW to research my vendors!

This is why I switched to WW for reviews...shady!

Although it would be nice to be able to review vendors you don't end up using. On WW, I mean. I get that they don't want pissed off bridezillas leaving unfair reviews, but it's also unfair that you can only warn future brides about potentially bad vendors IF you went through with hiring them. If you had the good fortune of figuring out that they're shady before signing, you can't even use that info to help anyone!

ETA: ok, I've figured it out -- for each vendor, there should be two sections of reviews; one from brides who signed with them, and the other from people who didn't (which wouldn't all be bad, necessarily). Problem solved for you, WWKatie!

@MrsSA2B Thanks for sharing!

@FinallyMrsT This is great feedback! I will definitely be passing this along to our Dispute Team

How can you review a service provider who never worked for you? That's like reviewing a restaurant you walked into but never ate at, I think it is only fair to legitimize it by only being able to review vendors you worked with, my 2 cents.

@FinallyMrsT - That's a great idea! I mean, there's always a reason, however minor, that we choose one vendor over another. Sometimes you're down to splitting hairs, deciding between a couple of great vendors. It'd be nice to have those reviews, too.

@Jay Farrell Photography - Hmm...I totally understand what you mean. And I suppose there are prospective brides who might get frustrated reading a bunch of reviews from people who never really used a certain vendor's services. But I guess I'm thinking of the times FH and I spent meeting with and getting quotes from different vendors. And there were other vendors we really liked, but it was so difficult choosing between them - we found ourselves flip-flopping back and forth to make a decision. For us, it came down to really minute details. And the vendors obviously weren't exactly alike. But they had a lot different traits/abilities/talents we liked, and we had to decide which of those things mattered to us more. One vendor choice was particularly agonizing! In some cases, price made a difference; in others, it didn't matter at all. But regardless, it'd be nice to be able to put our two cents in and leave something positive. Maybe if there was a way to distinguish the two types of reviews from each other? Just a thought.

This is why you read reviews on: Google, Yelp, Trip Advisor...... Any where but here and the Knot. I had a not so pleasant experience with a vendor and decided to not go forward working with them. SO I wrote a not so glowing review. WW took it down. So I posted it on other review sites. There are other places to read about your vendors. Google and the internet is your friend.

@onawho That's because we do not allow reviews unless there is a signed contract or proof of payment. If you were able to provide either of those, the review would have remained, regardless of the star rating!

@WWKatie .... Okay, that makes sense. If anyone was allowed to review a vendor without really working with them, reviews could get really crazy - fake reviews, etc.

I can see it both ways.

I see super inflated or deflated reviews elsewhere by companies reviewing themselves/other competitors so you don't get fair reviews that way. But I'd also like to know if people only have 3 reviews on here, it's because they were super rude, outrageous, or never bothered to respond to potential clients too

That's not too surprising to me. Even on WW, when you leave a review the vendor is then allowed to respond and you cannot reply in return. I had a vendor 100% pull a bait and switch and when I put that in a review they said they were "glad to get to clarify" and came off sweet as can be despite the fact that in person they literally yelled at me and lied to my face. Review systems all seem to not work that great unfortunately.

@WWKatie -- thanks! you're awesome!

@onawho -- yep, it's all about cross referencing every review site possible!

@Jay - I had a vendor who I have emails from agreeing to provide a service and contract once we secured our venue. We did that May 1st, and literally went home and contacted him that day asking to get our contract so we could send him a deposit. I then got the run around from him - months of missed calls (he would agree to call us at x time and didn't, etc) and also months of him never sending us a contract with the agreed upon price or services. We tried to remain patient, but after four months of that - we were frustrated. He then said he wasn't sure he was going to be in business and couldn't cater our wedding.

We chose our venue based upon the idea he would be catering. He also told us in texts that he might not even be in business by May. A month after he pulled out of doing our wedding he ran a Kickstarter for his business where we could have purchased the package for our wedding at $500 less for $15 more people than we were having - and I called him out on it. How was he having people buy packages when he had said he might not even be in business? How could other brides (who were commenting on his business page about how they thought it would be great for their wedding) trust him not to do the same to him? My lack of contract means I can't post and explain what happened to me, but I sure as hell have told everyone I know about the way he runs his business. We were literally trying to give him a deposit for four months. It was awful.

I'm ok with where we ended up - we found two alternate caterers that I think will do an awesome job - but I am still a little bitter that I planned everything around him catering our event and the crap he pulled.

These are the type of reviews people should be able to leave for vendors they didn't book. I still have proof from emails/texts with the business to back up what happened. Others should know this is something they could encounter.

MrsSA2B I understand what you're saying. If you have feedback about a potential vendor experience, what was good but why you went with a different provider, that feedback is valuable to us if we get it directly from you. You can also leave Facebook business page reviews as there is no scrutinizing there, anyone can leave a review which I have mixed feelings about. If you had a bad experience, there's always social media which gets picked up by Google And telling your friends.

I feel differently about this every day. I DO think that it would be helpful to review the process (no surprise that I think ours is stellar) but it's a little hard to prove a relationship that only sorta exists.

I'm lucky in that what we do is not very subjective, not dependent on nature (like flower colors). My couples know exactly what we will say, how we'll say it, and ideally they have a great experience from the first call to the thank you note.

So, I don't have an answer.

I definitely take some reviews with a grain of salt - and do extensive research on a vendor.

i'll share an example:

i had a very unpleasant experience with a vendor who i didnt book and wouldn't be able to share my experience on this site in a review. i had an appointment with said vendor, and after I received feedback to not use them from a friend that did - i kindly cancelled my appointment. i received the NASTIEST response. basically stating no one could do a better job than them and good luck and good riddance. Very unprofessional.

I checked out their reviews on WW, TheKnot, and found nothing but positive responses. After reading all these reviews i noticed.. "we just had our engagement session..." started off almost every review. hmmm ok. I found a review from someone online and long and behold they documented their entire experience with said vendor and it was very negative. in there it said... "vendor asked all to post a review after their engagement session, but after that everything went downhill"

And I understand what WWKatie. Actually, if I had PAID for the salon appointment I would have had a proof of purchase so to speak, but I ended up doing a walk in appointment (which they had stated on the website was allowed) so there was no paper trail. Its all good and I did not mean to derail the thread OP.

Does the headline seem worse than the content in that article to anyone else?

after reading the breakdown....here's my personal translation...

it seems like The Knott received a complaint from a vendor about a bad review and The Knott basically told the vendor in flowery language

1- We can't take the review down

2- If you really want the review to look not important, get other great reviews from clients

3- Respond to the review or it will seem worse!

yeah. they said it nice and flowery.... but they still seemed to stick to their guns.

In response to the bride they did seem to stick to keeping the bad review up, just asking to fix two minor things to make sure the bad review was factual. When the venue apologized, they asked that was acknowledged in the review, and when the bride stated the venue was over-booking, they said that was a "statement of assumption" and violated their review policy (ie. they didn't over-book or have a problem with her scheduled wedding, or book another wedding during hers!).

I'm all for acknowledging that the knott was maybe too transparent in cc'ing both parties the same information, and maybe didn't do a good job considering the bride's feelings, but they actually seemed to stand up to the vendor and say they couldn't take down the bad review.

They also stood up to the reviewer and said you can have your bad review, just don't include assumed facts like there was an "over booking" when there was not a booking conflict for this wedding or any wedding that was known about.

@Josh R They also say that their “policy is to only take down reviews that contain spam, explicit content or are proven to be factually false”. This is what is different here at WW. We are not a court of law or a dispute resolution service. We do not get into he/she said this and he/she said that. As long as a reviewer can prove that they were a legitimate client, the content remains (unless it violates our TOU). WeddingWire is not the determiner of what is "factually false", which is an important distinction.

@Josh, the review was actually taken down. It's mentioned further down in the article that despite the changes she made, The Knot removed her review.

That's super shady and I always take reviews with a grain of salt. I also always sort the reviews from lowest to highest, so I can read the bad ones first. The default is highest reviews first (at least on WW), but I figure that reading negative reviews first helps me weed out the vendors I really want to stay away from.