Please Read: An Important RoadTest Program Change

Randall Scasny wrote:

 

To solve the problem, I decided I don't want to go down the road of suspending members from the RoadTest program. Suspensions sound too much like the hard rules of the military. I was in the Navy for 10 years and I didn't like tough rules back then, but I knew they were necessary given the reality of uncomfortable shipboard conditions and potentially dangerous operations we were participating in.

 

But this is a community. It should be a place to have some fun, meet new people, network professionally, be a mentor, or get mentored. Suspending people just is the wrong road to follow.

Hi Randall,

I see where you are coming from but to my mind If a member who hasn't completed a particular RoadTest, hasn't contacted you to tell you in advance of their extenuating circumstances, isn't responsive when you contact them, etc, then I don't personally see the downside in suspending them from the program. There has to be some way to dissuade people from signing up just to get free stuff and if its the price we have to pay to ensure suppliers continue to offer their products for free in exchange for a review then so be it.

I was going to say we don't want a few selfish people spoiling it for everybody else, but sadly it seems it's not a few, for this particular supplier it's 87% which quite frankly is shameful, and those people (unless they have a very good reason why they haven't completed their reviews) should be utterly ashamed of themselves.

Best Regards,

Rachael

Randall Scasny wrote:

 

To solve the problem, I decided I don't want to go down the road of suspending members from the RoadTest program. Suspensions sound too much like the hard rules of the military. I was in the Navy for 10 years and I didn't like tough rules back then, but I knew they were necessary given the reality of uncomfortable shipboard conditions and potentially dangerous operations we were participating in.

 

But this is a community. It should be a place to have some fun, meet new people, network professionally, be a mentor, or get mentored. Suspending people just is the wrong road to follow.

Hi Randall,

I see where you are coming from but to my mind If a member who hasn't completed a particular RoadTest, hasn't contacted you to tell you in advance of their extenuating circumstances, isn't responsive when you contact them, etc, then I don't personally see the downside in suspending them from the program. There has to be some way to dissuade people from signing up just to get free stuff and if its the price we have to pay to ensure suppliers continue to offer their products for free in exchange for a review then so be it.

I was going to say we don't want a few selfish people spoiling it for everybody else, but sadly it seems it's not a few, for this particular supplier it's 87% which quite frankly is shameful, and those people (unless they have a very good reason why they haven't completed their reviews) should be utterly ashamed of themselves.

Best Regards,

Rachael

I feel part of the problem of an outright suspension in that those selfish people (wether few in number or not) could generate a new account with ease. If you keep them here maybe they won't create a new account. It's a thought and I must admit not a very well thought out one, But there is always the chance of people creating multiple accounts for the larger more interesting road tests or after getting suspended creating new accounts and doing the same thing all over again.

K

Kas Lewis wrote:

 

I feel part of the problem of an outright suspension in that those selfish people (wether few in number or not) could generate a new account with ease. If you keep them here maybe they won't create a new account. It's a thought and I must admit not a very well thought out one, But there is always the chance of people creating multiple accounts for the larger more interesting road tests or after getting suspended creating new accounts and doing the same thing all over again.

 

K

I would hope that there was more to receiving expensive free kit than just a user account on this forum. I would expect there would be some sort of verification of who they are, real name, address, contact details, some form of ID as proof of who they are etc. Much harder to have lots of duplicates of all that information. I also don't think we were talking about suspending their accounts on here, just their eligibility for signing up for road tests.

Best Regards,

Rachael

Rachael,

You have a sound argument. Clearly, it appears some folks consider RoadTests a giveaway program, which it is not. We really need your professional opinions. My concern is perhaps if the delinquent roadtest reviews see they can make up their reviews, they can change their ways. We'll see how things play out. I need to improve the review percentage.

Thanks for your participation in the community.

Randall

Hi Randall,

Randall Scasny wrote:

 

Rachael,

 

You have a sound argument. Clearly, it appears some folks consider RoadTests a giveaway program, which it is not. We really need your professional opinions. My concern is perhaps if the delinquent roadtest reviews see they can make up their reviews, they can change their ways. We'll see how things play out. I need to improve the review percentage.

 

Thanks for your participation in the community.

 

Randall

If this is the case they they will contact you or be responsive when you try to contact them. Any who are completely uncontactable shouldn't be cut any slack. You need to give them firm deadlines to get back to you when you contact them and let them know the consequences if you don't hear from them. For example:

Dear XYZ, Your road test review of ABC is well overdue and I have not had any communication from you despite numerous attempts to contact you. I expect to receive either your submitted road test no later than DD-MM-YYYY, or an email detailing your extenuating circumstances no later than DD-MM-YYYY. Failure to do so will result in your suspension from all current and future road test programs and require the immediate return of any equipment you received. We will arrange a courier for the return of the equipment at our expense.

If you don't do something like this I can't see how the situation can significantly improve and eventually suppliers will stop being willing to partake in programs like this.

Best Regards,

Rachael

I suspected duplicate accounts too. People who enroll just to get their hands on the item, with no intention of giving back a review, would certainly have no moral issues with creating as many accounts as they can and enrolling with all of them.

I've often wondered what these people could possibly say in their applications that they're sometimes chosen almost exclusively over actually qualified and willing roadtesters.

Interesting thoughts on multiple accounts.  Not knowing the logistics that Element 14 would have to go through, but perhaps a shipping address flagged list?  Of course this could be bypassed by multiple P.O. Box use, etc...  But depending on programming resources available I would think cross referencing accounts, shipping address and even IP might allow an interesting source to provide basic tracking.  Obviously having Randall monitor individually could turn quite brutal for his time, but if the bits could be captured and placed into a tool E14 can use, then perhaps that would be of assistance.

rachaelp  wrote:

 

it seems it's not a few, for this particular supplier it's 87%

Err ... without knowing the sample size, we don't know whether 87% is actually a large number of people.

So it may be just a small number of people, and this supplier has been unlucky that they made up a large percentage of their testers ... ?

Not that this excuses anything, of course - but we don't want to get things unnecessarily out of proportion.

Andy Neil wrote:

 

rachaelp wrote:

 

it seems it's not a few, for this particular supplier it's 87%

 

Err ... without knowing the sample size, we don't know whether 87% is actually a large number of people.

 

So it may be just a small number of people, and this supplier has been unlucky that they made up a large percentage of their testers ... ?

 

Not that this excuses anything, of course - but we don't want to get things unnecessarily out of proportion.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Even if this supplier is unlucky and their percentage failure rate is higher, I'm sure it's a problem across the board otherwise I suspect the focus would be why that supplier had such a low success rate and try to fix that rather than put changes in across the entire road test program to combat the issue so we can probably assume that, whilst it might not be as bad for all suppliers, it's a common problem.

To your point, yes we don't know the sample size but we know at least 7 people didn't submit a review for this one supplier. If I'd been giving product out for review and I only got results from 1 in 8 people I gave things to I would be quite annoyed.

Best Regards,

Rachael

It's a large sample I didn't want to spell it out because the actual numbers are dreadful. Simplifying it to a percentage is bad enough. But things are improving immensely. People are getting their reviews in or notifying about upcoming review postings, which was not happening 2 weeks ago. Thanks.

Randall Scasny wrote:

things are improving immensely. People are getting their reviews in or notifying about upcoming review postings, which was not happening 2 weeks ago. Thanks.

Well - that's a result, then!