About WOMO
- What is WOMO?
- Info for Users
- Info for Businesses
- Who's behind WOMO?
- Become a WOMO Advocate
- Best Business Awards 2010-2011
- Best Business Awards 2012
- WOMO Bumper Stickers
- Business Case Studies
- Contact Us
- News and Articles
- FAQs for Users
- FAQs for Businesses
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FAQs for Users
- The information does not appear to be truthful
- The review is offensive in nature or contains abusive language
- The information is not helpful to the community and is not in the spirit of WOMO
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The WOMO community
There are thousands of people using WOMO every day and when something looks not quite right, any member can alert us to this and we'll investigate. If you notice something that smells a bit fishy, you can easily do this by clicking on the "Flag as Suspect or Inappropriate" link which appears after each review. When you do this, please explain your reasons so that we can assess the review and either contact the reviewer to verify the details, or remove the review entirely if it breaches our Fair Play Policy.
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Smart Technology
Locked in an box, inside our most secure server, inside a hidden data centre, lies our "Secret Squirrel Lie Detection" code. We can't tell you exactly how it works, but we can tell you that if someone tries to submit an untruthful review, it's likely to set of some alarms here and that review will be suspended until we look into it. This code looks at a number or different factors and combines them to trigger our "suspect review process".
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Member TrustFactors
Reviews from users with low TrustFactors do not have as much weighting as reviews from members with a high TrustFactors. To build up a high TrustFactor, users have to provide verifiable contact details and gain a reputation on WOMO. When a new member starts using WOMO, their TrustFactor is quite low and their reviews don't carry much weight, but as their reputation builds, their TrustFactor grows and their reviews have more influence. (Sometimes members reviews won't show until their TrustFactor increases.) The TrustFactor weighting filters through to users past reviews as well. This system provides a high degree of protection.
- allowing WOMO to pass their contact details onto the business so that the business can get in touch and attempt to resolve the issue,
- liaising with the business anonymously through WOMO to resolve the issue, or
- in cases where the customer feels they have pursued all angles with the business, they can of course just post their review as it is.
Businesses are almost always added to WOMO when they are first reviewed by a customer. We're all about quality, not quantity and we want to hear what actual customers think of businesses. There's enough advertising guff in other places.
Simple - just go to Review a Business and follow the prompts. First you'll enter a small amount of information and we'll use this to check whether that business has already been entered. If not, then you get to enter as much, or as little, information about that business as you like. Then you do the actual review, telling other WOMO users what you loved or didn't love about that business.
The short answer is; for the greater good.
The details are; because you want to help other people in your community find the best businesses and protect them from the worst. Because, if you review the businesses you use, you'll encourage your friends and neighbours to do the same, and before you know it you'll have a fantastic resource to draw from next time you need to find something great. And because you want to help those businesses that are doing a great job and deserve recognition, and because there are some businesses that don't deserve to be in business.
As a more direct benefit for you, when you review businesses, you also create a personal directory for yourself (under My WOMO). So the next time you're trying to think of where to eat dinner, or remember the name of that plumber that arrived within an hour of your call 2 years ago, you can see if all listed here. You can easily check what other people thought of these businesses too. And when someone asks for the details of your hairdresser or to recommend a dentist, you can just give them the link to your My WOMO.
Go on, show some community spirit - it won't cost you anything!
Sometimes you might enter a review and find that it doesn't immediately show on the WOMO website. This might be because something about the review has triggered it to be flagged for us to manually check. We check all of these cases within 1 business day and if we find a problem with the review, we'll email you to let you know what the problem is. The other reason your review may not show is if it's a negative review and your TrustFactor is not high enough. Once you increase your TrustFactor to 70 or more (which is easy to do by verifying your email, verifying your mobile and/or entering a couple more reviews) your review will automatically be displayed.
Reviews are submitted by everyday people like you. To post a review, you just need to be a customer of the business. If you've had a good experience, it's a great help for that business to review them on WOMO as lots of other people will see your review. Likewise, if you've had a negative experience, it's a good way to let other people know about this - and hopefully encourage the business to lift their game! It's just like the old over-the-fence / email / coffee-break chat that you'd have with people to share your experience with businesses - but on the web.
There's a place for professional reviewers but personally, we think that all that free drink and wine clouds their judgment and we'd rather hear what the normal people think.
Nope, never.
No, and again, never.
The purpose of WOMO is not to make squillions of dollars, but to provide a really useful resource that evens out the playing field for businesses, and gives more power to consumers.
We cover our costs with our Happy Customers Program. This is a way that businesses that provide good service can boost their word-of-mouth marketing and add things like special offers, images, and a description of the services to their listing. This program is designed for small businesses so the fees are minimal.
Basically any business that provides (or should provide) an element of service. A full listing of the types of businesses currently listed on WOMO can be seen here, but users are always adding new categories. Users can review any Australian business on WOMO.
That's up to you. By default, your "WOMO Name" and TrustFactor will show against your reviews and users can click through to your My WOMO page and see your suburb and other reviews you've done, as well as any other information you've included in your profile. You can choose your own WOMO Name - making it as identifying (by making it your real name), or as anonymous as you'd like (use DrWho, MickeyMouse, or a name that only your friends would know).
If you want to remain anonymous for a particular review, you can choose to "Post Anonymously" when you enter the review. We understand that sometimes you might want to use this - perhaps for your hair replacement specialist or gynaecologist (especially if your descriptions are graphic). But in general, if your review is true and fair, what's to hide?
You can change your WOMO Name, and any other registration or profile information, by going to the My WOMO section (last option in the menu across the top). Then choose the "Account" option on the left-hand side and edit your "WOMO Name". You can change this to anything but it needs to be unique. Any changes you make will filter through to the past reviews you've posted.
The WOMO TrustFactor allows you to better gauge the reputation and reliability of other WOMO members. In real life you don't necessarily trust everyone you know to the same extent, and WOMO members are all different too.
Each member is assigned a TrustFactor score - this is based on a number of dimensions and is recalculated every night. TrustFactor scores range from 0 (extremely bad) to 100 (extremely good) and reviews from members with high TrustFactors are given more importance than reviews from others.
It's not hard to build a high TrustFactor - just enter some key contact information (so that we can easily communicate with you if we need to verify anything), do your bit to contribute reviews, and ensure everything you post is an honest and fair account of your experience.
Member's TrustFactorTM scores are calculated as follows:
Member's reviews are retracted in situations where:
WOMO investigates reviews whenever another member flags a review as suspect or inappropriate, or our own checking finds something to be suspicious about the review or member.
There are basically three key aspects of WOMO that help keep the reviews as dependable as possible.
As long as the reviews you enter are an honest descriptions of your experience and you stick to our Fair Play Policy and Conditions of Use, you should feel free to post whatever you want, whether positive or negative.
Rarely. But if the review looks suspicious for some reason, if it is flagged by another WOMO user as being suspicious, or if the business owner (or representative) contacts us and alleges that the review is false or inaccurate, we will investigate. If we cannot contact the member within a reasonable time, or if their contact details are incorrect, we will retract the review. If we can contact the reviewer, we will mediate and determine whether the review is fair, given the member's experience. In these cases, the review may be modified (sometimes toned down), or retracted. We will also remove or edit any review that contain inappropriate or offensive content, or that breaches our Fair Play Policy.
The idea is to keep the reviews on WOMO as dependable as possible. If we have to sacrifice a few, then so be it.
Businesses that are serious about customer satisfaction are invited to participate in our Happy Customers Program. This program helps businesses keep their finger on the pulse and ensure their business continues to meet their customers' expectations - as well as ramping up their word-of-mouth marketing.
When WOMO users see the "Happy Customers" program icon, they can be sure that they are dealing with a business that makes customer service their first priority and goes out of their way to provide a fantastic customer experience. These are also the businesses that actively encourage an open dialogue on their business.
As part of the Happy Customers Program, we also provide a Problem Resolution Process. Despite the best of intentions, even great businesses experience problems from time to time. Misunderstandings happen, things go wrong, and yes, people do make mistakes. We understand that this is a fact of life. What's important though is that when things do go wrong, they get fixed. With the Problem Resolution Process, if a customer submits a unfavourable rating (less than 3 out of 5) on a business, we help resolve the issue by giving the customer the option of either;
Businesses that participate in the Happy Customers Program are also provided with various promotional materials to help communicate to their customers that they are a business that is serious about customer service.
To be part of the Happy Customers program, businesses must maintain an overall rating of at least 3 out of 5.
If you are a business and are interested in joining our Happy Customers Program, there are more details in the "Business Owners" section which can be accessed in the last tab across the top of each page.
The integrity of the reviews on WOMO is of utmost importance. One way we can tell that each reviewer is a real, unique person is by asking you to verify your email address, but verifying your mobile phone number provides us with added confidence. Plus, if one of your reviews is ever queried, we need to be able to get in touch with you, and a mobile phone number is usually the fastest way to do this.
It's not essential that you provide your mobile phone number though - although it does help to increase your TrustFactor.
However, to be eligible for most promotions we run, we will require you to have a verified mobile phone number. As you can appreciate, when we provide incentives for people to enter reviews, it's extremely important that we can validate those reviews by being able to contact each reviewer whenever necessary. The easiest way for us to do this is generally by verifying a mobile phone number.
Please note that WOMO does not use mobile phone numbers for any marketing purposes and will not give your number to anyone.
By default, we include the businesses that service the area that you are searching for. For example, a plumber might travel to your area or an online store might deliver to your area. If you prefer, you can turn this off by un-ticking the box on the left hand side that says "Include businesses servicing this area?". Here you can also choose the distance from the area you wish to search as well.
Depending on the type of search you are doing, businesses are sorted by "Highest Rating", "Most Reviews", "Shortest Distance", "Business Name", "Most Recent", or "Best Match". You can change how you want them sorted from the panel on the left-hand side.
When we sort by "Highest Rating", we look at the average overall rating, the number of reviews each business has, and whether or not the business is in WOMO's Happy Customers Program (ie proactive about customer service).
When we sort by "Best Match" we look at the best match for the key words you enter. These might be contained in the business name, categories the business is in, or reviews for that business.
When you purchase a voucher on WOMO, you pay by credit card and your voucher emailed to you within 48 hours (usually within 24 hours).
To redeem this voucher, you just need to present your unique Voucher Number (included in your email) to the business. Your name, email and contact number are sent to the business and as well as the details of your voucher.
If you are giving the voucher as a gift, you can forward the email containing the voucher directly to the recipient - at exactly the time you choose.
Sorry, but we only do electronic vouchers (no printed versions).
