Feefo amends Trusted Merchant policy after agent feedback

Feefo amends Trusted Merchant policy after agent feedback

Review website Feefo has reviewed its Trusted Merchant Accreditation scheme for retailers after a travel agent questioned its policy.

Review website Feefo has reviewed its Trusted Merchant Accreditation scheme for retailers after a travel agent questioned its policy.

The site has reduced the minimum number of reviews required to be considered as a trusted merchant from 100 to 80, a move which has resulted in a further 20 businesses which subscribe to Feefo receiving either a Trusted Merchant or Gold Trusted Merchant certificate.

They include Travel Designers, which received the Gold Trusted Merchant status and instigated the policy change after originally not receiving the accredition.

The high-street agency based in Balham, London, received the accreditation last year after achieving a 100% customer satisfaction rating by clients who used Feefo to review the agency’s service. Feefo did not have a volume criteria for the accreditation last year.

Nick Harding-McKay, managing director of Travel Designers, said: “Our customers have given us 100% customer satisfaction rates and we use that in our marketing. Every client who books with us gets sent a form from Feefo asking them to rate our service.

“When I asked why we didn’t get the accreditation I was told it was because we didn’t have enough customers, but we are a small business, we’re never going to have the same numbers as a business like Thomas Cook.”

Feefo has traditionally based its accreditation scheme, which recognises consistent high quality customer service across its sellers, on overall customer satisfaction ratings from the preceding 12 months and the volume of reviews received, set at a minimum of 100 reviews.

But Feefo conceded that the volume metric ruled out a number of smaller businesses who consistently demonstrated high levels of customer service as a percentage of their overall sales.

Chief executive Andrew Mabbutt, said: “We recognise that it is not just about how many reviews you have, but the overall satisfaction as a percentage against volume of business and we are happy to reflect this in our metrics we use to award these accreditations. However, the minimum of 80 reviews overall will now stand.”