16/11/07
Dear Reviewer, Please take this chance to make the world a little bit better for service customers everywhere while earning a £10 Amazon gift voucher in the process! To explain: Having recently completed my Master of Science in Marketing degree at Manchester Business School (UK) by writing a dissertation about online reviews, I have been asked by the school to continue my academic research. As a result, I am looking to interview additional online reviewers who are willing to talk to me about their experiences. To be eligible to participate, you would need to fulfil the following requirements: 1) You must have had a particularly negative service (not product!) experience, for example during airline travel, a hotel stay, car repair, etc. 2) You must have written and published an online review about this experience If you fulfil these requirements, I would like to talk to you, ideally via Internet chat (you may choose the medium, AOL/Windows messenger, Skype etc.). The interview would take no more than 1 hour, and very likely less than that. We could arrange and/or split sessions at your convenience. Naturally, all data provided by you would be treated with confidentiality and you would remain anonymous. Based on the analysis of the interviews, advice will be given to companies on how to improve customer service and on how to deal with dissatisfied service customers. Therefore, by contributing to my research YOU can help make the world a little bit better for service customers everywhere! On top of that, Manchester Business School would provide you with a £10 Amazon gift voucher as a sign of appreciation for your efforts. Please note that although the review platform operator has given me permission to contact its members (i.e. you), my research is not actively supported or condoned by the latter. Participation is completely voluntary. Due to my approach in contacting potential respondents, you MAY receive this message more than once. This is regrettable, but unavoidable, and I would like to take the opportunity to apologise for this in advance. If you feel you fulfil the set requirements and are willing to participate, please contact me at your earliest convenience at morian@gmx.net or marc-philip.mor ian@mbs.ac.uk . Please make sure to include a link to your respective review(s) in your response. Many thanks in advance! Kind regards, Marc Morian

11/07/07
I actually looked at their website for the first time last week. They didn't have what I wanted anyway but given your comments I'll probably steer clear in the future too xx