Unfortunately, the deal was also too good to be true.

After 3+ weeks of making and breaking multiple shipment deadlines (and promising not to cancel orders), they cancelled all remaining number of orders (including mine) and pissed off a number of customers (including me). Check the forums for that deal if you want to see how people react to poor customer service.

Five or so of those angry customers went to resellerratings.com and filed reviews stating how they were very dissatisfied with sTooTsi because of how the deal went.

sTooTsi didn’t like their recent drop in ranking on ResellerRatings.com because it now appears that they are gaming their review rankings. In a 4 day period (Sept 3 to Sept 6) resellerratings.com is showing 174 new reviews for their site. More than 90% of those reviews were ranked “Somewhat Satisfied” or “Very Satisfied”.

So how would this lead me to believe that sTooTsi is trying to manipulate ResellerRatings.com review stats? Those 174 new reviews are MORE THAN 5 TIMES as many reviews they had received in previous 6 months and close to double the amount of customer reviews than they had received since 10/31/06. Sounds awfully fishy to me, but it gets better…

Many of the reveiws are pertaining to a free product (ear bud headphones) they gave away in 2007. It looks like they emailed the customers who ordered the completely free item to specifically beg for a review @ resellerratings.com.

One reviewer specifically mentions that their review on 9/3/08 is for a holiday promo that sTooTsi ran after Thanksgiving. Another reviewer mentions that the headphones worked for 6 months and then died (meaning that the deal they were reviewing was more than 6 months old). What would inspire so many people to all the sudden run out to a review website to talk about a product they ordered 10 or 11 months ago?

My guess is that they got offered a coupon code for posting a review. If that is what they did, it would be extra classy since some people in the PC game purchase forum are claiming they didn’t get refunded their shipping amounts even though no product was shipped to them.

Here are few of my favorite reviews:

Very Satisfied
Reviewer: cherronlogan (1)
9/3/08 8:13 PM
I DONT EVEN REMEMBER WHAT I AM REVIEWING, IT HAS BEEN SO LONG! WHATEVER IT WAS, IT WAS FREE SO IT WAS GREAT. THANK YOU FOR THE FREE PRODUCT! FIVE STARS!

Somewhat Satisfied
Reviewer: orbitrap (1)
9/3/08 9:05 PM
I don’t think I’ve received anything. But never got charged either.

Satisified with a vendor but you can’t remember what they sent you or if they ever did?

Nah, I changed my mind. These people weren’t enticed into leaving a review. I’m sure they just rolled over in bed one morning and told their spouse “Hey, remember that thing that I don’t remember! I should go write a review on a specific website stating that the place that may or may not have sent the thing I don’t remember to me how they are doing such a swell job!”

It creeps me out a little though that it happened so many people on the same day.
I better put on my tinfoil hat.

EDIT (9/15/08): As expected, the number of new reviews sTooTsi has received since 9/6 has dropped off by more than 90%. A few new complaints are mixed in with the dwindling flow of “Red Friday” reviews. My guess is that in another couple weeks they will back to the usual rate of just a few reviews a month.