October 8, 2007

CHEVY CHASE, Md – (October 8, 2007) – ValueStar®, the leading online aggregator of consumer ratings of service businesses in the San Francisco Bay Area and a pioneer in certifying the quality of local service businesses, today announced the launch of Powered by ValueStar, a new feature of the company's ValueStar Customer-Rated program that permits local service businesses to automatically gather and display customer ratings and reviews on their own websites.  Customer reviews, long an expected feature of online retailers' websites, have been noticeably absent from the websites of local service businesses, even though consumers seek such reviews as the most important indicator of a businesses' reliability and suitability for a particular job.  Believed to be a first for the world of offline services, Powered by ValueStar enables a service business to easily display customer ratings and reviews confirmed by ValueStar and finally get credit with online visitors to their website for delivering high levels of customer satisfaction.  Meanwhile, consumers gain the peace of mind of knowing they're dealing with a business they can trust, as demonstrated by the ValueStar Customer-Rated seal and numerous ratings from confirmed customers.

According to Lou Morsberger, President & CEO of ValueStar, "Recent studies have shown that nearly 60% of consumers now look online first for information about local purchasing needs, and once online 80% report they trust businesses that display customer ratings and reviews much more than those that don't.  It's difficult for local service businesses to distinguish themselves in this online environment, as even the best of them have very modest ad budgets and web development resources.  What it comes down to is, 'Online, you are your reviews.'"  Morsberger added, "With our new Powered by ValueStar feature, the ValueStar Customer-Rated program has taken yet another step in helping quality-focused service businesses stand out from their lesser competitors.  Not only can ValueStar businesses use the ValueStar Customer-Rated seal in all their advertising—print, offline, online—as a reflection of ratings from numerous confirmed customers, now they can easily display those reviews on their own websites.  And we do all this in a way that is transparent and can be trusted by both consumers and businesses."

ValueStar and websites incorporating the Powered by ValueStar feature accept and display service business reviews whether flattering or not, but only from confirmed customers of the business in question, and only for ValueStar Customer-Rated service businesses that ValueStar, through telephone and online customer surveys, has already confirmed deliver a consistently high level of customer satisfaction.  A business that's confident of its quality and is eligible to display the ValueStar Customer-Rated seal can enhance its business all the more with Powered by ValueStar reviews displayed on their own website.  The credibility of the ValueStar Customer-Rated seal and ValueStar reviews is further enhanced by ValueStar's $1,000 Money-Back Satisfaction Guarantee and ValueStar Rewards points provided to customers who submit feedback on a ValueStar business.

To install the Powered by ValueStar feature on its own website, a business need only have its web manager cut and paste a small piece of computer code from the business' ValueStar Account Management page onto a page on its own website (a page for "Customer Feedback", for example).  The process takes only a few minutes.  Thereafter, that page of the business' site will display the business' own web header, footer, and other branding, while also displaying:

• the actual ratings submitted by a minimum of 25 confirmed customers, including comments and a numerical score (expressed in both a 10-point scale and a 5-star scale), all sortable by date and score;
• the business' Customer Satisfaction Score as calculated by ValueStar based on ratings by confirmed customers;
• a summary of the business' ValueStar Customer-Rated status and the criteria for ValueStar eligibility which the business has satisfied (including state licensing, insurance, good credit standing, no pattern of adverse legal judgments, and high customer satisfaction scores in surveys of at least 25 randomly selected confirmed customers);
• a link to the business' profile at the ValueStar.com website for further confirmation of the business' status with ValueStar in its role as an independent, 3^rd party rating service; and
• an invitation for customers to submit feedback directly at the business' website and earn a $1,000 money-back guarantee and loyalty points.