Quality Control Officer (QCO)

I have seen a lot of negativity towards market place, shitlists ect...

BHW should really get a quality control officer, just like they do mods/admins.


The purpose of the QCO would be to contact recent buyers of service to ask them what they received ect without the seller knowing, and then decide whether it was sold to the buyers as advertised and if the reviews were genuine.

It's a real shame when someone has to have a bad experience to out a seller. I think reducing the number of bad experiences in the market place would be an amazing improvement to this forum.

It couldn't hurt to have a Quality control officer here, could it?

Dark Sky said:

I have seen a lot of negativity towards market place, shitlists ect...

BHW should really get a quality control officer, just like they do mods/admins.


The purpose of the QCO would be to contact recent buyers of service to ask them what they received ect without the seller knowing, and then decide whether it was sold to the buyers as advertised and if the reviews were genuine.

It's a real shame when someone has to have a bad experience to out a seller. I think reducing the number of bad experiences in the market place would be an amazing improvement to this forum.

It couldn't hurt to have a Quality control officer here, could it?

Click to expand...

I think this would waste volunteer mod time, because half would get no response

I think it would be better to seperate paid reviews + trials/freebies

Maybe even even a thumbs up/down system which to vote - you need to write a relevant detailed quality review which is approved by mods or the og BST mod (spammed reviews deleted, just like spam posts, and these can be approved in 5-10 seconds & saves the market place)

That way it's not abused / spammed.
Or maybe a 1 to 5 star voting system so you can distinguish an attack of fake reviews easily (human reviews , the 3 star would match with some negativity mentioned)

And maybe only allow star ranked reviews which include pros/cons

unknownsmmers said:

I think this would waste volunteer mod time, because half would get no response

I think it would be better to seperate paid reviews + trials/freebies

Maybe even even a thumbs up/down system which to vote - you need to write a relevant detailed quality review which is approved by mods or the og BST mod (spammed reviews deleted, just like spam posts, can be reviewed in 5-10 seconds & saves the market place)

That way it's not abused / spammed.
Or maybe a 1 to 5 star voting system so you can distinguish an attack of fake reviews easily (human reviews , the 3 star would match with some negativity mentioned)

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I would of thought this place is big enough to get someone to solely do the QCO role.

Problem with the above is, you're then depending on the customers to fish out bad sellers. Although there's nothing wrong with that, it would be much more efficient to have a dedicated member to fish them out.

Each customer has their own expectations, which is why it's hard to judge based on customers. And customers may not get what is advertised, yet they are happy, write a positive review, and boom someone who wants as advertised just bought a bad service because of those positive reviews, now said a person gets a refund, but it's still been a bad experience. Then to flag this, the buyer has to provide proof that it wasn't as advertised, which sometimes can be a lot of effort. More than it's worth.

Dark Sky said:

I would of thought this place is big enough to get someone to solely do the QCO role.

Problem with the above is, you're then depending on the customers to fish out bad sellers. Although there's nothing wrong with that, it would be much more efficient to have a dedicated member to fish them out.

Each customer has their own expectations, which is why it's hard to judge based on customers. And customers may not get what is advertised, yet they are happy, write a positive review, and boom someone who wants as advertised just bought a bad service because of those positive reviews, now said a person gets a refund, but it's still been a bad experience. Then to flag this, the buyer has to provide proof that it wasn't as advertised, which sometimes can be a lot of effort. More than it's worth.

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Customers always weave out bad sellers , that's capitalism my friend.

If we knew we wouldn't get lost by bumps, and if we needed to list cons with the pro's, we would see what's bad about the service and the seller wouldn't be offended because atleast they got a compliment (50/50) , right now many SEO buyers are worried about negseo on their site so they just keep quiet and don't write a review unless it's positive. But if freebie reviews are seperate from paid reviews (paid reviews being more valuable of course), you need to list what's bad and good. Not just bad, not just good.

Example:
- service was terrible
- amazing guy, which he could improve and I could return in the future
Or
- service was the best I've experienced
- customer support is the most rude person in the world

Atleast we have some insight. Great service, bad people.

Great people, bad service . Etc.

This might help Shield members & allow us more details about the cons of each service , if pro/con reviews under paid reviews became a rule.

Also, BHW has a secret shopper team.
They are plain-clothed users who accept reviews or pay ocaisionally together as a team, to weave out complaints & potential complaints. Keeping us all safe.

Please take A moment of silence to appreciate them <3

unknownsmmers said:

Customers always weave out bad sellers , that's capitalism my friend.

If we knew we wouldn't get lost by bumps, and if we needed to list cons with the pro's, we would see what's bad about the service and the seller wouldn't be offended because atleast they got a compliment (50/50) , right now many SEO buyers are worried about negseo on their site so they just keep quiet and don't write a review unless it's positive. But if freebie reviews are seperate from paid reviews (paid reviews being more valuable of course), you need to list what's bad and good. Not just bad, not just good.

Example:
- service was terrible
- amazing guy, which he could improve and I could return in the future
Or
- service was the best I've experienced
- customer support is the most rude person in the world

Atleast we have some insight. Great service, bad people.

Great people, bad service . Etc.

This might help Shield members & allow us more details about the cons of each service , if pro/con reviews under paid reviews became a rule.

Also, BHW has a secret shopper team.
They are plain-clothed users who accept reviews or pay ocaisionally together as a team, to weave out complaints & potential complaints. Keeping us all safe.

Please take A moment of silence to appreciate them <3

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Problem with accepting service for reviews, is sellers are aware, and make sure they provide top quality. E.G I've had content writers provide me amazing sample tests for my niche. Soon as I order multiple articles, BOOM I get hit with some guy who clearly failed english, loves copy and pasting, and loses all their knowledge of the niche I asked for, loads of spelling errors, gramatical mistakes and more.

I personally get a bad hit rate of around 70%, I think this is too high. If current methods are not working to reduce bad services, we need a different strategy. I understand there so many happy people, but in my eyes they don't fully understand the service

Great example. Content seller advertises "native english writer" its then written by someone from the phillipines who is not native english. Most people are not from england so cannot decipher if its native english. They then think its great because it looks good to them, writes a great review. BOOM, me from the UK comes along, sees all the good reviews, gets trashy written content that will never be Native standards, now I need to ask for a refund. Meanwhile everyone else is happy because they don't know any different.

Same with SEO, a lot of people dont understand it, think they got great links. BOOM SEO expert comes along, calls it out, has to get a refund, meanwhile everyone else is happy and writing positive reviews.

Dark Sky said:

Problem with accepting service for reviews, is sellers are aware, and make sure they provide top quality. E.G I've had content writers provide me amazing sample tests for my niche. Soon as I order multiple articles, BOOM I get hit with some guy who clearly failed english, loves copy and pasting, and loses all their knowledge of the niche I asked for, loads of spelling errors, gramatical mistakes and more.

I personally get a bad hit rate of around 70%, I think this is too high. If current methods are not working to reduce bad services, we need a different strategy. I understand there so many happy people, but in my eyes they don't fully understand the service

Great example. Content seller advertises "native english writer" its then written by someone from the phillipines who is not native english. Most people are not from england so cannot decipher if its native english. They then think its great because it looks good to them, writes a great review. BOOM, me from the UK comes along, sees all the good reviews, gets trashy written content that will never be Native standards, now I need to ask for a refund. Meanwhile everyone else is happy because they don't know any different.

Same with SEO, a lot of people dont understand it, think they got great links. BOOM SEO expert comes along, calls it out, has to get a refund, meanwhile everyone else is happy and writing positive reviews.

Click to expand...

Yeah that's why we should seperate freebies , and paid reviews. each under a different category button in the sellers BST

If all the freebies are happy,
Then if you click over to the paid reviews and there are none, red flag.
Or the people who pay complain 2 out of 10 times , red flag. maybe you should compare with other BST and find the most reputable seller with long detailed pro/con reviews.

I'm not saying this is fool-proof for newbies & people testing new services in the market place, but it's definitely an added level of security on the buyers end knowing if it's a purely bumped feed with no paid reviews, or if it's good for samples & bad for business / paid reviews, etc

Edit:
And again, you can't just shit on it for example.
You need to say what's good and whats bad
- pro: easy to navigate website, great sample, good customer support
- con: the quality I received decreased after my sample & the buyer was unable to fix my concerns as a native English speaker I was/wasn't refunded

You will always get people gaming the system. Hell this entire forum is about just that.

The more checks and balances bhw puts in place, the more people will find ways around it, the more resources bhw will have to commit and at the end of the day they wont be able to stop unscrupulous sellers or buyers for that matter.

Just look at amazon, they cannot stop it with all their resources.

The only way bhw could stop it would be to check every bst throughly before it goes live.

But, although nice in theory, that is hugely impractical.

At the end of the day it is always the same caveat emptor - buyer beware.

If there is a latin phrase for it, then it shows you how long this has been a problem!

Dark Sky said:

The purpose of the QCO would be to contact recent buyers of service to ask them what they received ect without the seller knowing, and then decide whether it was sold to the buyers as advertised and if the reviews were genuine.

Click to expand...

I know myself and a couple of other moderators have tried something similar, but those members typically don't respond. They either don't want to be snitches or they start getting really paranoid that if they say anything, the seller will act against them.

But I agree, reducing the number of bad experiences in the marketplace would be nice. Ideally, preventing those sellers from getting approved at all would be best, but with the BHW 2.0 Marketplace coming up, we'll be making more changes to make the marketplace better for buyers and sellers. https://www.blackhatworld.com/seo/bhw-marketplace-2-0-thoughts.1106901/

Dark Sky said:

Problem with accepting service for reviews, is sellers are aware, and make sure they provide top quality.

Click to expand...

Everybody likes to say this, but as I've said before, the number of sellers who provide me with abysmal customer service, try to pull the wool over my eyes, don't/can't read instructions because they're in a rush to get approved, or offer their services to me "just as advertised" (**cough** bare minimum **cough**) are in the majority. I reject half the threads I review because of this and for the ones that get approved based on the bare minimum, they get my "red" reviews.

Zwielicht said:

Some users have stated that sellers are going to do their best to get a good review and get an approval, but something you should note is that an approval just means that the seller is offering what they're selling, and that's exactly what some of them aim for. However, the ones who go above and beyond what they're expected to do get that acknowledged in the mod reviews (and no, I don't mean they over-deliver; I explicitly tell sellers not to do this during the review as I toss under the same category as brown-nosing).

Click to expand...

Dark Sky said:

Problem with accepting service for reviews, is sellers are aware, and make sure they provide top quality. E.G I've had content writers provide me amazing sample tests for my niche. Soon as I order multiple articles, BOOM I get hit with some guy who clearly failed english, loves copy and pasting, and loses all their knowledge of the niche I asked for, loads of spelling errors, gramatical mistakes and more.

I personally get a bad hit rate of around 70%, I think this is too high. If current methods are not working to reduce bad services, we need a different strategy. I understand there so many happy people, but in my eyes they don't fully understand the service

Great example. Content seller advertises "native english writer" its then written by someone from the phillipines who is not native english. Most people are not from england so cannot decipher if its native english. They then think its great because it looks good to them, writes a great review. BOOM, me from the UK comes along, sees all the good reviews, gets trashy written content that will never be Native standards, now I need to ask for a refund. Meanwhile everyone else is happy because they don't know any different.

Same with SEO, a lot of people dont understand it, think they got great links. BOOM SEO expert comes along, calls it out, has to get a refund, meanwhile everyone else is happy and writing positive reviews.

Click to expand...

Did this happen to you with any of the services on the forum?

Anyway, I leave this at the bottom of every review:

For Buyers: The quality of the product or service that I receive is what you should expect, or better. If you feel that the quality of the service has dropped significantly, please let us know via the report button.

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I've been leaving that at the bottom of my reviews for a while now, and I can say that the number of reports is far lower than it should be. Despite the reports system being anonymous, the buyers I have tried contacting shy away from saying anything due to the reasons I mentioned earlier (i.e., they're worried about reporting).

7. THE REPORT BUTTON.

If you find a post that appears to be in direct violation of the Terms, please report it to us by using the report button (the "!" button). You will find a report button next to every post, as well as in each PM that you receive. Clicking the button will inform the Black Hat World Administrator(s) and/or Moderator(s) of the location of the offending post or PM, enabling Black Hat World may take reasonable action to remove such posts. Black Hat World will make a commercially reasonable effort to take action, but does not guarantee that it will respond to or will take action in response to all such notifications, and therefore cannot be responsible for a failure to respond. Using the report button may be an effective means of countering spammers or others posting objectionable content. If you just ignore objectionable posts, the posts will likely not be addressed as Black Hat World does not actively monitor the Site. Reporting a post is completely anonymous, and Black Hat World will not disclose your identity to the individual you are reporting, and will not publish the fact that you have made any report(s).

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GringoMonkey said:

You will always get people gaming the system. Hell this entire forum is about just that.

The more checks and balances bhw puts in place, the more people will find ways around it, the more resources bhw will have to commit and at the end of the day they wont be able to stop unscrupulous sellers or buyers for that matter.

Just look at amazon, they cannot stop it with all their resources.

The only way bhw could stop it would be to check every bst throughly before it goes live.

But, although nice in theory, that is hugely impractical.

At the end of the day it is always the same caveat emptor - buyer beware.

If there is a latin phrase for it, then it shows you how long this has been a problem!

Click to expand...

I get what you mean, but take secret shoppers for example. Or surprise hygeine inspections for restaurants. It works extremely well. The QCO would essentially be like one, they would check a thread out that hasnt been assessed in a while, message a few recent buyers with a template requesting the reports ect that the seller sent. Then compare it to the service offered. Boom job done.

It's secret, the seller is unaware, the buyer has been selected at random. The Service bought is compared with the service offered. Job sorted. Quality assesment done.

Zwielicht said:

I know myself and a couple of other moderators have tried something similar, but those members typically don't respond. They either don't want to be snitches or they start getting really paranoid that if they say anything, the seller will act against them.

But I agree, reducing the number of bad experiences in the marketplace would be nice. Ideally, preventing those sellers from getting approved at all would be best, but with the BHW 2.0 Marketplace coming up, we'll be making more changes to make the marketplace better for buyers and sellers. https://www.blackhatworld.com/seo/bhw-marketplace-2-0-thoughts.1106901/


Everybody likes to say this, but as I've said before, the number of sellers who provide me with abysmal customer service, try to pull the wool over my eyes, don't/can't read instructions because they're in a rush to get approved, or offer their services to me "just as advertised" (**cough** bare minimum **cough**) are in the majority. I reject half the threads I review because of this and for the ones that get approved, well, there's a reason my "red" reviews are the most common.


Did this happen to you with any of the services on the forum?

Anyway, I leave this at the bottom of every review:

I've been leaving that at the bottom of my reviews for a while now, and I can say that the number of reports is far lower than it should be. Despite the reports system being anonymous, the buyers I have tried contacting shy away from saying anything due to the reasons I mentioned earlier (i.e., they're worried about reporting).

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Thanks for the response mate, I wasnt aware of BHW market place v2.0 looking forward to it.

Yes over 70% of my purchases have been awful experiences. I don't have a lot of time on my hands due to working 12 hour shifts followed by running my website, the amount of time I have to purchase things is slim, and I really don't have time to report 70% of my purchases and then provide proof of the poor service (As proof varies depending on the service bought and putting up and argument for my report)

If I had a better hit rate at good sellers, I would probably put my little bit of time into reporting that bad ones, but theres just too many for me to handle. I'm currently dealing with a content sellers whos name I shall not mention, who has provided me possibly the worst content I have ever recieved from BHW, and that is saying something.

He's told me to "sit tight" but i'm so frustrated he didnt actually meet any criteria of what he offered. The test I sent him came back perfect. Then the content I bought from him was literally awful. Not sure why the free test was perfect, but then I give him money and he produces absolute attrocious content.

But again, this is normal for me unfortunately. I just never have the time to go through all the guidelines to create a shitlist, my life is too busy, I barely have time for my own site anymore...

I assume other people here may have busy lives too, which is why I thought of a dedicated QCO. We send them what we got, and they make the decision. But I guess if similiar has been tried before, theres no point trying to revive something that didnt work. I will await BHW v2.0, thanks

Dark Sky said:

Great example. Content seller advertises "native english writer" its then written by someone from the phillipines who is not native english. Most people are not from england so cannot decipher if its native english. They then think its great because it looks good to them, writes a great review. BOOM, me from the UK comes along, sees all the good reviews, gets trashy written content that will never be Native standards, now I need to ask for a refund. Meanwhile everyone else is happy because they don't know any different.

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English is one of two official languages of the Philippines so technically they could be a native English writer.

If you're expecting high-quality English written by someone from the UK or US then you're going to pay a lot more than many sellers advertise on here. No one in their right mind in the UK or US would be charging $2-3 for 500 words and as an example, I've paid up to $100 for 500 words previously from a niche specific copywriter.

I would also take some of the sales spiel on here with a pinch of salt. Sellers advertise college level writers or writers with PhDs and neither of these are a gauge of quality, nor are they going to be reflective of who actually writes the articles.

Dark Sky said:

Yes over 70% of my purchases have been awful experiences. I don't have a lot of time on my hands due to working 12 hour shifts followed by running my website, the amount of time I have to purchase things is slim, and I really don't have time to report 70% of my purchases and then provide proof of the poor service (As proof varies depending on the service bought and putting up and argument for my report)

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If you're not happy with a service, then I really don't understand why you wouldn't leave a review or contact the seller to resolve it. If the staff see a flurry of bad reviews in a BST, then they can investigate, re-review the service etc.

Dark Sky said:

I assume other people here may have busy lives too, which is why I thought of a dedicated QCO.

Click to expand...

You already have Market Place Moderators who essentially do that role anyway. They are, however, reliant on people reporting things to them so they are aware of issues etc.

Dark Sky said:

I have seen a lot of negativity towards market place, shitlists ect...

BHW should really get a quality control officer, just like they do mods/admins.


The purpose of the QCO would be to contact recent buyers of service to ask them what they received ect without the seller knowing, and then decide whether it was sold to the buyers as advertised and if the reviews were genuine.

It's a real shame when someone has to have a bad experience to out a seller. I think reducing the number of bad experiences in the market place would be an amazing improvement to this forum.

It couldn't hurt to have a Quality control officer here, could it?

Click to expand...

Hi - that's me and the team.

For clarity - we do test services (which is fairly unique in the industry) to ensure they can deliver what they advertise before they are permitted on the forum all outlined here https://www.blackhatworld.com/forums/bhw-marketplace-rules-and-how-to-post.203/

We then review services, based on our secret sauce (but essentially the amount of complaints that are received), as secret shoppers to ensure the quality remains.

The rest @Diamond Damien has covered here https://www.blackhatworld.com/seo/t...ilding-services.1157245/page-23#post-12412683

Sephrata said:

Sellers advertise college level writers or writers with PhDs and neither of these are a gauge of quality, nor are they going to be reflective of who actually writes the articles.

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As @Sephrata mentions above and @Diamond Damien posted (mentioned above) - you've got to read what's actually being offered. "College level writer" doesn't mean they went to college just that they should be able to write to the level of someone who could get into a college, no mention of which college or what quality that college that is. Those with PhDs in bio chemistry aren't going to be the best at writing copy for ad sales in marketplace threads, you need a quality copywriter ideally with experience in your niche, ask for a sample of their work. In short understand what you're buying, read what the seller is actually selling (not what you hope it will do for your site) and understand basic economics, cost of living, supply and demand (essentially good shit ain't cheap - but expensive is subjective).

We work to ensure you're able to receive the digital marketing education you need for free on this forum (become a member, it's free and there is great guidance for newbies and those returning) we the encourage you to ask those questions, we don't bite, we're a nice bunch just don't ask to be spoon-fed - the secrets out the Papal Monkey Generator isn't real!

We aim to arm the buyer with as much information as possible and then let them make an informed decision. The new marketplace will go some way toward that, but even Amazon and their like rely on feedback from the buyer to ensure quality remains high.

Asked - Answered - closed.