How Long Before Financial Advisors Rating Site Gets Sued?
from the the-rating-game dept
Back in June, the launch of Avvo, a site for rating lawyers, was met with a lot of controversy. Lawyers aren't used to being rated as if they were any other good on the market, and it didn't take long before the site was sued by one lawyer unhappy with his ranking. Now a similar site is getting set to launch, except this time it will focus on financial advisors, another group which isn't used to much scrutiny. It's not clear whether or not this will prove particularly useful, but hopefully the site has some money socked away for legal fees, since it's only a matter of time before one disgruntled advisor sues after a bad rating.
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Place Your Bets!
First
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Re: Place Your Bets!
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Re: Place Your Bets!
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Most people should just max out their 401k, and they'll be ok.
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"the raw returns of equally weighted mutual funds (net of all expenses) for 1996 to 2002 were 6.626% for the investors working on their own and were 2.924% for funds provided by advisors."
http://advisor.morningstar.com/articles/doc.asp?s=1&docId=4482&pgNo=0
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Re: Are you serious?
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RE: Matt
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Anyway, I know that, but they sell funds. That's another thing: A financial advisor basically "Advises" the same way a used car salesmen "adivises" you on a mode of transportation.
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Avvo still exists
(please don't sue for the snake comment) LOL
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Re: Avvo still exists
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Second, sites like these are set up to report good/bad experiences. The point is to report those that have ripped you off or were fantastic to deal with. Its for consumers to share their personal experiences with the general public, or plain and simple, a more concentrated place for 'Word of Mouth' to do its job.
As far as the site being sued, that is ridiculous, and only possible in the US. How can you sue someone for posting a personal opinion of a service? Is Freedom of Speech completely dead now???
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Re: Freedom of Speech completely dead now???
The word "freedom" has been so overused and misused that too many of us don't know its real meaning.
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Weak idea
Satisfied clients (patients, customers) don't go looking for ways to shout about their experiences; but dissatisfied ones do.
Worse than that, there will always be some clients who will be unsatisfied due to unreasonable expectations.
Some positives will come from lawyers planting posts under assumed names.
I don't think the site will work out the way the owners think it will.
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How Long Before Financial Advisors Rating Site Get
I suppose we should not be surprised when innovation (technological or otherwise) is met with litigation, but it’s still quite frustrating. Regardless, to the extent plaintiffs seek to hold these websites liable for statements posted by others, they’re likely in for an uphill battle.
-Michael
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The good news is that almost no one is using this site.
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On the flip side, there are those disgruntled clients who bash the advisor and tell others to stay away.
Either way, its one sided depended on who is sharing their thoughts about the advisor. At least now the site allows you to see both sides.
I looked at the site and it does need work. It’s lacking a professional appeal. What I did notice as apposed to the avvo site is the financial advisor one does not put any personal rating on the advisor, which means it is all user/client driven. (No different than this site, or any other that allows users to post their comments). So with that said, they are pretty safe. The avvo site was sued because the attorney put his softball awards up and it raised the score. The suit was not over the rating per say, but the faulty valuation lapse. Also, how can avvo say that an attorney is better based on the law school they attended? All that means is they attended a more prestige’s school, not that they’re a better attorney.
The site does need some work, but at least investors can now see both sides.
By the way, has anyone perfected internet users from signing up and posting. Yet be able to control the environment 100%. Nope! And this site is a prime example. Here on this subject a post is put up and calls someone an asshole, yet the site has no idea who did it?
I found another site that has been in business for 5+ years and it lets your rate contractors. www.angieslist.com
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smithsan
Make Money
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- Sep 7th, 2007 @ 9:53am
I looked at this site and it's a mess.... No control over input - - any broker can rate himself...... or have a buddy rate him. The questions are stupid ..... a bad broker could easily sucker a client into giving him a 100% rating. You can only see the 10 brokers that rated highest ..... none of the other rating are available. Of course it's the brainchild of a BROKER. Someone tried to give some suggestions and was told to leave the site.
The good news is that almost no one is using this site.
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Palin
How to make money
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Nice page
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fabeetle is giving it a try...
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Re: fabeetle is giving it a try...
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Re: Re: fabeetle is giving it a try...
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