Most of our stores are nominated as "Website Certified ". These stores have agreed to allow Techrate.com to collect feedback directly from their customers as they make purchases. To do this, Techrate.com literally sits at the checkout (receipt) page of tens of millions of transactions each month inviting real customers to share their experiences and give feedback directly after a purchase. Of course, a transaction is not complete until a customer receives his/her goods. Therefore, we follow up via e-mail to make sure that the store delivered the goods as promised. This continuous process ensures that Techrate.com is able to collect timely, detailed and accurate ratings and feedback about both the ordering and fulfillment process of every Website Certified store. No other ratings methodology comes close!

Techrate.com has put together a large number of active online shoppers to volunteer to provide ratings and feedback to help others shop. Also, each month our site welcomes a huge number of online shoppers looking to compare prices and share their experiences regarding each merchant. We use this virtual army of shoppers to rate stores who may not want to cooperate with Techrate by giving us access to gather feedback from their customers at checkout. By combining the above sources of feedback, we assure you the shopper that we have the most reliable and up-to-date ratings possible regarding each store!

To rate the stores the shopper has to click on any Store Report Card link and you will have an opportunity to "Give Feedback" to Techrate.com regarding your purchases at the store.

On the other hand, every time you make a purchase at an online store looks for the Techrate.com survey invitation on the receipt page. Simply click on that invitation and you'll be presented with the Techrate.com survey. In the survey, you'll be asked to evaluate the store for the purchase you just made. If you do not see a survey invitation on a store's receipt page, this means that the store is not yet participating in our free Website Certified survey program. We encourage you to ask the store to join the program and help us help all online buyers make more informed, confident decisions.

The customer feed back is taken every day. Every week the ratings and reviews of Website Certified stores are updated. Techrate Member Ratings are also collected continuously, but updated on a weekly basis.

The rating of the store listing is done by the simply scale or on the number of reviews link at Techrate.com and you will see its report card. Click on the Store Ratings tab to search directly for Store Report Cards and compare stores with in a particular category side-by-side. Store Report Cards include the Store Rating through customer reviews, key features and services offered, and important contact information.

Great care is ensured with Techrate.com for the rating calculations as we use the most rigorous and reliable resources for up-to-date ratings possible. Accordingly, we take the latest feedback from our point-of-sale survey network and combine it with the latest feedback from Techrate Members to arrive at Store Ratings.

The equation that determines each merchant's rating is calculated as follows for each dimension of service:

Merchant ratings often change over time - Summer time is not the same as Holiday season - time is also a very important element in our calculations. Accordingly, we only use data from the latest 90 days when performing the calculations to arrive at a rating. That means that, the information on Techrate is not more than three months old!

It is to be noted, that while we give weight age to each individual feedback point for all sources equally in our ratings, the stores participating in our Website Certified program generally have the most reliable ratings because they are allowing Techrate to proactively and continuously solicit feedback from actual customers on their site receipt page and through follow-up e-mail surveys after fulfillment, when the experience with a store is freshest. Thus, the Website Certified program represents the "gold standard" of customer satisfaction ratings of stores. To find stores in this program look for the "Website Certified" medal on the site or the following designation on ours: Website Certified.

We follow 15 quality rating pattern. 8 Out of 15 ratings are determined at the point-of-sale or "checkout". Asking a store's customers to evaluate their purchase experiences immediately after completing the online transaction collects these. The rest of 7 quality ratings are determined when the purchase is expected to be receiving as an "after delivery" follow-up. Explanations of each ratings attribute are found below:

We've put in place many ways of detecting and eliminating fraudulent ratings. For obvious reasons, we don't like to detail exactly what we look for and how we detect fraud, but suffice it to say that we use a combination of sophisticated mathematical algorithms, large numbers of reviews from a variety of sources that are checked against each other for consistency, and powerful analytic tools and systems to make sure that we are on the leading edge of detecting and eliminating systematic fraud from our ratings. The most reliable store ratings on the web are Techrate.com!

Techrate is the only shopping site, which focuses on comparison ratings. Thus, our methodology, sampling techniques and comprehensiveness of sources are unsurpassed. And now, with the colorful Smiley Scale, our ratings are extremely insightful and easy to use too.

No. To preserve the highest levels of objectivity and independence in our ratings, we do not charge stores for evaluation or listing on Techrate.com. We are dedicated to providing consumers with correct information to make them more informed and confident for online buying decisions.

"Website Certified" medal for display is given by the Website Certified store. Techrate.com showing all visitors their participation in the web's most rigorous monitoring program and their proactive stance of receiving feedback and providing a satisfactory customer experience. All participants in Techrate.com point-of-sale survey program receive free real-time research based on survey results to help them to better serve their customers' needs.

Any online store can apply to participate in the free Techrate.com Customer Certification Program as long as the store:

To maintain the high integrity of our data, we require all members of our research panel to be online buyers. We give online buyers the opportunity to join the Techrate.com Online Research Panel by expressing their interest on our surveys. To join, simply click on the panel information checkbox in the survey following your next purchase from a Website Certified online store. More information will be sent directly to you via email.