Weddingwire Vendor Awards – Not What They Seem – Anybody Can Get Them

and worse almost anybody can post a review-real or fake-they are there.

UPDATE: We wrote about this almost 2 years ago, but I see just in the last few days, these bogus awards are influencing people again. Vendors, you are gullible to believe that this is meaningful, and clients, it actually is worthless. Please read below what this is actually all about, and forget you even see this on sites. Yes, we admittedly thought a couple of years ago it was worth something, but in reality it’s deception, and the clients are the ones being deceived. Sure there are actual vendors who deserve recognition, but not this way and certainly not from this site. A celebrity planner is now having major issues with this site as well, and if she does what she says- there will be a legal battle soon.

________________________________________

A long time relationship with a wedding site has come to an abrupt end, our choice. We were given a supposed prestigious award (Bride’s Choice Award ) for 2009 and 2010 from this site. This award from our experience is not what it seems and many vendors agree. We were told that over 500,000 clients for the 2010 awards from this site were polled as to the best vendors in each category, i.e. decorators, florists, photographers, etc. It was broken down that  all winners were supposedly in the top 5% of their category. In 2009 if memory doesn’t fail, we believe there were even more couples polled.  We aren’t sure where the clients came from whether they are actual members on the site, or just random.

In recent weeks, we asked every one of our  past clients if they were ever contacted by this site to vote.  Not one of our clients were ever approached. Then we asked other vendors that are either friends or peers on this same site. We got the same answer….. nobody has ever been contacted to vote on their favourite vendors. Again… not sure who was polled.  We were under the impression that it was brides and grooms that were signed up on this site. as we can’t see perfect strangers voting on unknown vendors.  We didn’t know that there were that many members capable of voting either.

We then asked the actual admins/owners  of this site to provide us with proof as to who had been polled. Their reply was that due to privacy policies in place that wasn’t possible. That’s a fair enough answer, however our clients aren’t private as we were the ones  that got them to sign up on this site in the first place. They wouldn’t even give the names of our clients… and that’s because they couldn’t, they were never asked, so again why would perfect strangers vote for us.

If you google these awards by their name… literally hundreds of vendors appear with the press release about how they have won this award, but many derogotary comments have been made on forums, twitter and blogs by both vendors who got this award and others that didn’t. They know that is is literally a sick joke.   

Here are some comments http://www.fredmiranda.com/forum/topic/975966

We and several other vendors have come to the conclusion that we have been used by this site to further their ratings with absolutely no benefit to actual vendors or worse clients, at all.  Oh sure, we can put a logo up with the sites name mentioning that we have this award, but it actually  means nothing to us, and again is free advertising for them and we believe somewhat deceptive, no let me re-phrase that, entirely deceptive to unsuspecting brides for sure.

We do know that no matter how bad an actual vendor is.. they too can win this award.  Seems at present there is no particular criteria to weed out the good vendors from the bad, which actually is impossible if true clients were never asked.

There were actually impersonators as well, posing as vendors which was rather scary and bogus brides leaving reviews which we actually saw.

Integrity especially in recent years is so important when dealing in the wedding industry. If sites that cater to brides and grooms show that much lack of it, how is a couple to know in reality who is a good vendor and who to stay clear of.

Due to these questionable ethics, we voluntarily removed ourselves and any association with them. We gave them time to answer all our questions, but they didn’t.

This site should have been more forthcoming in how the awards were actually determined, but their silence speaks volumes and we do know that listings of vendors on that site may only have a couple of reviews, never been updated by the vendor and yet they still receive this award. It just happened again in 2012.

It means nothing, absolutely nothing to both the vendor and any clients that may be persuaded by this.

We apologize to our past clients and anyone who hit our website or blogs that thought seeing this award was actually worth something. We have removed it and will no longer participate with unscrupulous websites.