Feedback Rebates FAQs

This FAQ page is for the Feedback Rebates App on Shopify. If you'd like to learn more about our reputation network or Feedback Rebates in general, please visit Virthium.com.

What is a Feedback Rebate?

Feedback Rebate is the rebate your customers can redeem by leaving an honest review.

 

How does it work?

Suppose you're selling a $40 product and offering $4 feedback rebate. 

1. Customer buys your product paying the full price of $40 with an expectation to receive a $4 refund once they leave a review.
2. Several days later they get an email that contains a special review link and an expiration date.
3. Customer clicks this link, writes a review and automatically gets their $4 refund. We charge you a 25% transaction fee, which in this case is $1.

If the customer doesn’t leave a review you don’t pay anything and keep the extra $4. In other words, you either get a review or sell at a full price. 

 

How much does it cost?

You chose the rebate amount, when to offer it and for which product. We charge a  transaction fee (25% of your feedback rebate) if the customer leaves a review. There are no subscription fees, so you can keep this app installed for as long as you'd like.

If you are already offering discounts and decide to switch to Feedback Rebates instead, even with the 25% transaction fee, your reviews will likely cost you very little if anything at all. In fact, anything less than 80% response rate (8 out of 10 customers leaving reviews) will actually save you money. This is because you either get a review or sell at a full price. Let’s look at the math:

 

Situation	Cost of Sales	Result
50 people buy $40 shirt “On Sale” for $36	50 * $4 discount = $200	50 sales 0 reviews
50 people buy $40 shirt with $4 Feedback Rebate. 40 of them leave a review.	40 * ($4 + $1 fee) = $200	50 sales 40 reviews

 

That’s right, you just got 40 reviews for FREE just by offering Feedback Rebates instead of discounts! Even if every one of your customers leaves a review and you end up paying a little more, wouldn't it still worth every penny?

 

What happens if the customer didn’t provide an email?

In this case, the email with the review link is sent to you. You can manually forward this email to your customer or send the link via other means.

 

What happens when a customer buys multiple products?

• Each time your customer buys a product with an active Feedback Rebate, they will need to leave a review to redeem it. In other words, you may get multiple but different reviews of the same product from the same customer if that customer is a repeat customer.
  
  
• If the customer buys more than one product at a time, the rebate is multiplied by the amount purchased. For example, if you’re offering a $4 rebate for a product and the customer buys two, they will get an $8 refund and only need to write one review.
  
  
• If you are offering feedback rebates on multiple products, your customer will need to leave a review for each product they buy to get their rebates. Yes, this means you’re likely to get multiple reviews from a single sale. 

 

What happens if the order is pending?

If you’re offering Feedback Rebates on products for which the payment may not be immediate, please allow an adequate time in the Feedback Rebate settings to accommodate for the “pending” period. Your customer won’t be able to receive their refund if their payment for the product has not yet been processed. 

 

Are these reviews biased?

Your customers are not getting the rebate offer for leaving a review, they are getting it for buying your product. 

To put it differently, Feedback Rebate is just another form of an "On Sale" discount offered before the sale. You are not offering your customers any special favors for their reviews, you’re simply lowering your price to sell more of your product. An "On Sale" is not biased and neither are Feedback Rebates because it's the same deal for the customer. 

Here is a large empirical study on feedback rebates recently conducted by UC Berkeley at Taobao. They analyzed the data from thousands of merchants over a six-month period (nearly 7 million purchases) and found no bias at all. 

 

What if I get a bad review?

Even the best businesses occasionally get bad reviews. Unfortunately, the only people who have a legitimate reason to leave reviews are typically the dissatisfied customers. We believe the problem is not the presence of bad reviews but the absence of good ones. Here is why...

If a movie, watched and rated by thousands of people, got 9 stars out of 10, that's a great movie! Even though some people clearly didn't like it. There is a huge difference between getting a bad review when you only have a few reviews, and getting it when you have hundreds or even thousands of them.

With Feedback Rebates, your satisfied customers, which hopefully is the majority, will finally have a reason to leave reviews too. This means that, if you run a genuinely good business, a Feedback Rebate is probably the safest option you have when it comes to reviews.

 

Can I delete, modify or hide a review?

You can request a review to be removed if it contains an offensive or nonsensical language. You can also delete your product listing from Virthium network, which will delete all reviews under that product. 

 

Can I upload my existing reviews?

We don’t currently provide this feature. If you already have a lot of great reviews on your site, keep them there. You can use Feedback Rebates and your current app at the same time. Chances are, very soon the amount and the quality of the reviews you get using Feedback Rebates will surpass what you have now. At that point, you may choose to remove your old app if you wish. 

We are looking into the possibility of moving reviews from other reputable networks. We will keep you updated on the progress.

 

How does a Feedback Rebate affect the review word-count?

The minimum character/word-count required to leave a review is calculated using a diminishing-returns formula that is dependent on your feedback rebate amount. For example, if you offer a $4 feedback rebate, the minimum word count is about 6 words, whereas if you offer a $40 rebate, the minimum word-count is about 31 words. This allows you to get a reasonably detailed review for the value of the rebate without overburdening your customers. 

 

Can I modify the email content?

Feedback Rebates is a reviews program provided by Virthium. Our reputation network acts as a trusted intermediary protecting both merchants and their customers from potentially unfair and manipulative marketing practices. As long as your Feedback Rebate offer remains active, all customers are able to leave a review so there is no option for merchants to pick-and-choose those who will receive these rebates in the future. This is what creates trust in the Feedback Rebates program and produces reviews your customers see on your site. We use a standard email format to send all Feedback Rebate offers.

 

What about fake reviews?

We send your customers a unique review link to leave a review and redeem the rebate. Without this link, no one can leave a review. That’s right, there is no review-form on your site for just anyone to fill out. People have to actually buy your product and verify their phone number to leave a review. This means you won't see fake or anonymous reviews on your site or anywhere on our network.  

 

Who can I contact if I have questions?

Please email us at team@virthium.com or call us at (602) 942-3080