How Can I Become A Trusted Vendor?
First of all, thank you for your interest! Here at Kratomaton, we think working with online vendors to ensure accountability will help to further legitimize kratom and keep the community safe.
Unfortunately, nearly anyone can sell kratom online with little regulation, often leading to poor quality, service, and security options for customers.
To combat this, we’ve established five of these common pitfalls as criteria that we use to evaluate all online vendors. If a vendor meets or excels a standard, they are eligible for the respective badge, which will be displayed on their vendor profile page here at Kratomaton.
If a vendor meets all five criteria, they will be listed as a trusted vendor on Kratomaton and their products may be promoted on this site. We also supply downloadable badges for trusted vendors that they can display on their own websites.
The five badges are:
Are the vendor’s prices fair?
To qualify for this badge, a vendor’s price-per-gram ratio for ground kratom products should not be above 0.5. This does not apply to extracts, “premium” strains, blends, or any other type of kratom product.
To check if your prices meet this standard, you can use the following simple formula:
Product Price ($X.XX) / Weight of product (g)
Individual strain pricing may vary, but in general, if products are frequently priced higher than this, the badge cannot apply. Taxes are not included.
Are the vendor’s products consistently high quality?
For quality, we evaluate online customer reviews via democratic, non-biased sources like Reddit. We only take reviews that are under a year old into consideration, as anything older than that may no longer reflect a vendor’s current quality accurately.
We do not and will not under any circumstances take customer reviews on a vendor’s site into consideration. This is because these reviews are often anonymous or unverified, and in some cases, forged. These factors make evaluating these reviews ill-advised, and so instead, we choose to rely on more democratic sources of information (although these reviews are also handled with the same level of scrutiny).
If the majority of recent reviews are positive, this badge will be awarded. As a general rule, if If over a third of customer reviews are unfavorable, this badge cannot apply.
Does the vendor offer full money-back refunds on opened products in the case of customer dissatisfaction?
Due to the fickle and subjective nature of kratom, as well as the variance in quality, we believe customers should have the right to return their purchase for a full refund if they are at all dissatisfied with the product.
Refunds must be available on all kratom products to qualify for this badge, even if opened. The buyer must be able to receive a full money-back refund, not just store credit.
In addition:
- The Vendor may opt to pay for return shipping, or not at their discretion – this does not affect eligibility.
- Refunds must be available to all countries.
- Some vendors accept returns only if a certain percentage of the product remains – this is fine as long as the percentage isn’t higher than 95%.
- To prevent abuse of their return policies, vendors may reserve the right to allow a customer one return per each individual product.
Does the site handle private data with a valid HTTPS certificate? Does the vendor support at least one third-party e-payment service during checkout?
In order to protect customer information, a vendor’s checkout process should be encrypted with a valid HTTPS certificate. In addition, at least one third-party e-payment service must be offered as an option during checkout.
Why HTTPS?
Most vendors allow for payments to be made with a credit or debit card. However, this is not always optimal for the customer. Without proper encryption, payment information such as credit card numbers, security codes, and shipping addresses may be exchanged in an unsecured manner, making it increasingly likely to be stolen by malicious hackers and scammers.
To prevent these issues and ensure a customer’s payment details are handled securely, a valid HTTPS certificate is necessary when checking out.
Why do I need support for a third-party e-payment service?
An option for a third-party e-payment service is also required in order to provide customers with an additional, optional layer of anonymity and protection. Because these services act as “e-wallets” and do not share payment details directly with vendors, the risk of data theft is lowered.
What third-party e-payment services are available? Which should I use?
We use the term third-party e-payment services to include platforms like Bitcoin, Amazon Pay, Walmart Pay, etc. Many other similar services can count towards this criteria but may be subject to further evaluation. As a vendor, we recommend a big-name service like Bitcoin or Amazon Pay to maximize convenience and ensure security.
Does the vendor consistently ship on-time? Are they transparent and responsive?
To evaluate a vendor’s quality of service, we once again look at democratic review sources such as Reddit. Although user reviews on a vendor’s site can often be favorable, we cannot take these into consideration due to the possibility of fraudulence.
Only reviews that are less than a year old are assessed. This is because any information older than a year may not accurately reflect the contemporary quality of a vendor’s service.
Some of the factors we look for when evaluating vendor service are:
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Shipping speed/pricing
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Customer service and communication
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Responsiveness
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Disposition
If the majority of recent reviews are positive, this badge will be awarded. As a general rule, if If over a third of customer reviews are unfavorable, this badge cannot apply.
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To affirm your status as a trusted vendor, you will have to meet or excel each standard. We have currently evaluated over 291 vendors. However, if your site has not yet been evaluated, or you would like to be re-evaluated, we encourage you to apply below!
If you have any further questions about the trusted vendor status, badges, or methods of evaluation – please don’t hesitate to contact us. We’d love to work with you!
