I just logged into ratemyhorsepro for the first time and was surprised by the lack of reviews for trainers and boarding facilities in my area. Has anyone heeded a review from their site? Seems like you would have to take everything with a grain of salt but great way to avoid bad experiences with trainer or barn. What has been your experience with this site?
I’m anxious to know too…I’d like to sign up but have been a bit leery from the beginning about having to provide my credit card number instead of using something like Paypal.
I think a lot of people don’t want to use a CC card either. It is a nice site for articles on major equine news topics (lawsuits for example). However, I don’t think it has enough reviews to be worthwhile. The types of people who NEED to see those reviews may not be savvy enough to know about ratemyhorsepro in the first place. I’m thinking about people who might be new to the horse scene or new to a particular area. Most long time horse people know by word of mouth which places are good and which places are bad.
I agree, SnicklefritzG. If I could pay via PayPal, I miiiiiight think about doing it. Maybe. But I’m reluctant to pay them at all, and certainly don’t want to give them my CC information. And I think the kind of new-to-the-horse-thing folks are probably even MORE reluctant that I am to shell out money to find out what may or may not be useful to them.
I think even if they had a system where you had to pay to leave a review, but not to read them, that might be more palatable to me from a consumer perspective. But their model must be working for them, because they’re still running.
I signed up out of curiosity a few months ago. It’s a shame the reviews and ratings are so sparse. I made sure to leave a good review for my last boarding barn and notify the site of some boarding barns listed that no longer exist. There was one barn I would have loved to leave a brutally honest review of their lackluster care, but it wasn’t listed.
I agree the credit card thing sucks. I see their point: people are catty, especially with the anonymity of online reviews. Having to pay definitely deters people from logging on to post downright libelous claims just because someone ticked them off that day. It also deters barn owners/trainers from posting overly-inflated reviews about themselves. But mainly it just deters people from using the site period.
I love their free news articles.
[QUOTE=Texarkana;7364492]
I signed up out of curiosity a few months ago. It’s a shame the reviews and ratings are so sparse. I made sure to leave a good review for my last boarding barn and notify the site of some boarding barns listed that no longer exist. There was one barn I would have loved to leave a brutally honest review of their lackluster care, but it wasn’t listed.
I agree the credit card thing sucks. I see their point: people are catty, especially with the anonymity of online reviews. Having to pay definitely deters people from logging on to post downright libelous claims just because someone ticked them off that day. But at the same time, it deters people from using the site overall.
I love their free news articles.[/QUOTE]
I don’t really see how it is a deterrent. Why couldn’t someone get a prepaid visa card and register it with dummy information if they wanted to remain anonymous and leave bad reviews?
I signed up a few years ago when I was looking for a new place to take lessons. I was kind of upset about it because when I did the free search, the names of several stables/trainers in my area came up, but after I put my CC number in and joined, I found that the listing of stable and trainer names was all there was. None of them actually had any reviews. So, totally not useful.
No.
[QUOTE=RockinHorse;7364496]
I don’t really see how it is a deterrent. Why couldn’t someone get a prepaid visa card and register it with dummy information if they wanted to remain anonymous and leave bad reviews?[/QUOTE]
If someone went through that much trouble to post a review, they have bigger issues.
Can someone who has an account look up that Nick Peronace guy? Someone on his thread said he’s got a listing. Out of morbid curiosity I’d love to see if he has reviews.
I like the articles on the site but refuse to give a credit card number although I may change trainer’s soon. It sounds like the reviews are few and far between anyhow.
I refuse to give them my CC number. It has not been useful to me.
Sheilah
[QUOTE=RockinHorse;7364496]
I don’t really see how it is a deterrent. Why couldn’t someone get a prepaid visa card and register it with dummy information if they wanted to remain anonymous and leave bad reviews?[/QUOTE]
[QUOTE=RxCate;7364587]If someone went through that much trouble to post a review, they have bigger issues.
Can someone who has an account look up that Nick Peronace guy? Someone on his thread said he’s got a listing. Out of morbid curiosity I’d love to see if he has reviews.[/QUOTE]
Exactly my point! Requiring a credit card is no protection against whack jobs.
I don’t see why it needs to be a paid site. Too many forums where you can receive the same information for free.
I would post a lot (positive and negative reviews) if I didn’t have to pay for it. I would want to read for free too.
Thank you for the feedback. The ratings portion of the site is scheduled to undergo changes this year, so your feedback is appreciated.
Please remember about the ratings. We do not control the ratings. You do.
To the original poster, did you rate your professionals before logging out? By doing so, you enhance the system and can potentially help someone else.
The ratings are free. You are entering your credit card information to verify you are who you say. This protects the validity of the ratings. We occasionally have trainers try to sign up as consumers – without the current system, the ratings would be a free for all.
Do you think opening the ratings for everyone to see would help to get more people to rate? We’d like to hear your feedback.
Finally, Rate My Horse PRO is more than just ratings. I encourage anyone looking for information about a professional to run a search on the site. There are some amazing resources put together on the site through the News and Equine Court features.
As always, if you need to reach us directly we are always here to help, but rarely on the message boards. Feel free to contact us at info@ratemyhorsepro.com.
Our own Debbie Hanson can be found on COTH occasionally.
Please join our almost 65K Facebook fans too and stay up to date with everything we do. https://www.facebook.com/HorseTrainerRatings
[QUOTE=Rate My Horse PRO™;7364924]
Thank you for the feedback. The ratings portion of the site is scheduled to undergo changes this year, so your feedback is appreciated.
Please remember about the ratings. We do not control the ratings. You do.
To the original poster, did you rate your professionals before logging out? By doing so, you enhance the system and can potentially help someone else.
The ratings are free. You are entering your credit card information to verify you are who you say. This protects the validity of the ratings. We occasionally have trainers try to sign up as consumers – without the current system, the ratings would be a free for all.
Do you think opening the ratings for everyone to see would help to get more people to rate? We’d like to hear your feedback.
Finally, Rate My Horse PRO is more than just ratings. I encourage anyone looking for information about a professional to run a search on the site. There are some amazing resources put together on the site through the News and Equine Court features.
As always, if you need to reach us directly we are always here to help, but rarely on the message boards. Feel free to contact us at info@ratemyhorsepro.com.
Our own Debbie Hanson can be found on COTH occasionally.
Please join our almost 65K Facebook fans too and stay up to date with everything we do. https://www.facebook.com/HorseTrainerRatings[/QUOTE]
I think making the ratings public would be a big plus and maybe get more people to rate. The facebook thing means nothing to me, I don’t engage in that or other “social media”.
Never used it, but find it curious that a one-time poster asked the original question.
I’m pretty sure it charged me a $5 fee to register… is that something different?
RMHO was brought up on another thread so maybe this is a spin off or self generated by RMHO? It does have some good news reports but the best site for that is NZ horsetalk - they know more about what nefarious things happen here in the states than we who live here do!
I certainly can understand the desire to be sure trainers/horse professionals are not creating dummy ratings to boost their ratings and I guess that CC thing is a good way to verify that. Maybe they can find a different mechanism of checks and balances like maybe email verification before you get to rate. The concept is quite good and they certainly have enough free information on their regular site and Facebook wall to add to the industry, both good and bad stories. Hopefully RMHP will find a mechanism that works that will comfort horse people to offer honest information. It is like Angie’s List but for the horse industry. I cannot say that I frequent COTH much anymore but from what I recall I do not see much of RMHP placing comments on COTH for self promotion. I see their own COTH name only has 35 posts.
[QUOTE=dotneko;7365200]
Never used it, but find it curious that a one-time poster asked the original question.[/QUOTE]
Hey! I’m real, just happened to be my first post 
I’ve been reading the forum for a year or so and decided to join in. In regard to ratemyhorsepro, I had same issue with not seeing trainers even listed, but you can add a barn or trainer and review them. Actually, the whole Nick Peronace thread motivated me to try the website. FYI, he was on the site and had two negative reviews. I’ve had some good and really back experiences with trainers in my area (that I’m new to) The bad experiences, one was with an excellent trainer but I would see her run of out grain and hay all the time, after charging $700 a month to her boarders. I was only taking lessons but couldn’t respect someone who was more into going to horse shows then feeding her horses! Another trainer I only had one lesson bc her lesson horse was clearly lame she was using every day. The list goes on… Finally found a good one but I had to kiss a bunch of frogs. I don’t ever want to get nasty slamming people but it’s been very frustrating getting back into horses after 15 years.
