Every month we have top level questions come into our FastTrack system (unlimited one-on-one email support from our top experts) by members looking for expert advice in tricky situations. Normally, we upgrade the best of these questions to the 'SE Bytes' section of our publication so that you can learn and grow together as a community within SearchEngineNews.

This month we are breaking the rules and upgrading one of our 'SE Bytes' to a featured article to be sure that you didn't miss it.

"We are a small but growing e-commerce operation with average annual sales of less than $500,000 a year. We started using Reseller Ratings in early 2012 and started at $99/mo and began accumulating reviews. Then, without notice, RS jacked up our monthly rate to $499/mo. When I contacted them, they said they had informed us of the price increase by a sneaky email but wouldn't provide more specifics. We can't afford them and dropped the service. Is this a recent issue with RS and can you provide us with an alternative that we can actually afford to use?"

Answer: You can take some solace in knowing that it isn't just you. Reseller Ratings implemented some very questionable marketing practices in 2012 when it implemented (and then buried) a massive price increase in marketing emails that negatively impacted small retailers like yourself. The changes caused a firestorm that came to boil just last month.

Briefly, problems arose when retailers that refused to pay the hiked monthly fees ended up having hundreds or even thousands of their reviews removed from the system without notice. Because Reseller Ratings is a very prominent ratings source used by Google Shopping, this was devastating to many small e-tailers.

Ripples of discontent first appeared in January 2011 via a Google Merchant Center help thread that is sti...