Miata Mailing List: August 1996, Message #139
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   From: Gary Fischman 
Subject: Dealership Review
   Date: Fri, 2 Aug 1996 08:51:01 -0400

Someone wrote:
> Well, if miata.net had a "Dealership Review" list, wherein people's
> comments were stored along with some sort of rating system, then
> dealerships would just get a periodic "Here's your score" fax (along
> with some subtle hint like the number of hits the site had seen
> lately).

We tried this. It didn't work. After a full year, no dealership received
more than one or two "votes". In fact, even the aftermarket folks received
less than 15 over the course of the entire year. It turns out that the
only people that tended to fill out those things were people that were
either totally elated or totally pissed off. Nothing in between. So it
boiled down to the fact that a single disgruntled individual was able
to put nasty comments out that would end up tagging a company in a
very negative manner.

The Mailing List is an excellent forum for things like that since its
interactive. A web site is not a good forum since there's no way to
get multiple opinions or to ask follow-up questions. Besides, the risk
of a lawsuit was too high.

	...Gary