A Note to Content and Consumer Electronics Providers

If you are here, you have either been given a link to a review of your product and wish to learn more about the site, or you are curious about establishing a relationship. To learn more about our unique site and review methodology, please start here.

My Existing Partners:

Many of you already have a working relationship with me, through my Youtube Channel, or unannounced follow up projects. This site is both an extension to that content, and a stand-alone repurposing of it. Likely you are here because I sent you the links to your content.

Potential Partners:

This site is unique. The number one rule around here is INTEGRITY. Due to this, I am cultivating a very unique and discerning audience. If you wish to be part of that, I welcome it, but do understand that you will have to agree to a number of conditions in place to assure the continued integrity of my operation.

Let me be very clear. I will accept submissions for reviews, but the following rules will apply, and there are NO exceptions.

Rules for Vendors:

You may submit product for review, but bear the following rules/caveats in mind:

1) Any product, content, or material sent to me must be sent at your expense. I do not possess the external budget to pay for shipping for products.

2) Do not ask to charge me for products. I will consider this base solicitation, and because I loathe this as a shady business practice, I will take this into account in any future review of your product or content. ( Regardless of whether you sent it or I bought it ) If you send me materials, they are at your expense. As part of my review process, I do give a final “Integrity” score as part of the review. This is not strictly a numbered score, but an unambiguous commentary on your company and my dealings with it. If your product is great, but your support is non-existent, I will tell people to steer clear of you.

3) All materials sent to me will not be returned. I realize that you sometimes “loan” materials to reviewers, but this is a hard rule. I have numerous reasons for this, but the main ones are budget and time. 

That said, I may make CERTAIN exceptions to this rule, but only under particular circumstances, and only if the review product sent to me has never been used or opened. I don't mess with used product. 

4 ) I will not, under any circumstances, release information about the demographics or even number of my readers. I consider this private. If you’re going to get hung up on whether or not sending me review materials makes sense based on a bunch of ROI info then don’t do it. If you utter the word "Alexa" you go STRAIGHT to the Warning List. Spending time parsing and sending that information out to dozens of vendors a month will simply take too much of my time. Suffice it to say that if my site is still up it’s profitable, and will continue to grow. As with 3, I have a couple of other specific reasons for this, but I will not disclose them. 

5) Information about my review of your material will not be released prior to going live on my site. If I have questions, problems, feel that something can be addressed beforehand, or you wish to add information, we will be in contact before I release the review. However, due to the nature of my rules, I will not compromise the integrity of my review system.

6)I f you are not 100% confident that your product/content will garner a positive review from me, feel free to not send me product. By sending product you are showing that you stand behind your product, and this will send a powerful message to my readers. I do take vendor relations into account when reviewing product. 

6a) Many reviews will be very negative, for a variety of reasons. If I publish a negative review, and you stop answering emails or refuse to send more product, I will correctly interpret this as a sign of immaturity and lack of confidence in your product. This WILL be mentioned on the site in both existing reviews, and future content about competitors. Suck it up and send more product, something might be improved, plus it shows that you're trying.

7) As my site grows, and demand on my time increases, I may not be able to do reviews or articles right away on certain things. If you are in a hurry, please do indicate it, but understand that I make NO PROMISE of a timeline for a review. I do promise that if I ACCEPT a shipment from you, I WILL run a review/story, but do email me first for my current workload. If you have pre-release product and wish to include me in the launch, wonderful, I will consider putting aside non-critical reviews to get it done.

8) Related to 7, if you wish to send me prerelease material, either a gold master game or movie, or even hardware that’s not finished, go for it, I would love to see it, but I WILL indicate the status of the item in my review. This is to maintain the integrity of the site and differentiate it from RETAIL product which is EXACTLY the same thing that a reader could buy.

9) There are going to be certain concessions made to some of these rules. I plan to include particularly ULTRA high end home theater or consumer electronics gear. I’ll be happy to arrange to review/return for example: TVs costing $10k+, Speaker systems costing $20k+, and other specialized gear which could not reasonably be expected to be provided. For such exceptions, I will alter the rules without an integrity penalty, but remember that we’re talking about very special cases here. Do not attempt to abuse this rule by trying to convince me that your $3500 TV is “ULTRA” high end. I will consider this an attempt to exploit my rules, and your request will be posted on my site as an integrity warning to my readers. That said; don’t be afraid that’s going to happen unless you’re really trying to bend this rule. If you have a borderline item, let’s say a speaker system costing about $6500 that could go either way we’ll discuss it. Be open, and you won’t have to worry about it.

10) On damaged goods: On a few occasions I've had review products that were faulty or damaged, and had to be returned. When this happens, I'm willing to return them, but only at your expense. If you shipped product in a non-reusable package, send money or a box, don't just send a label.

11) I will not, under any circumstances, return magnetic media. I put a variety of test data on drives and even though I use a 32 pass destruction algorithum, I will not release drives back once I have used them, EVEN IF they are faulty. I will instead destroy the item. No exceptions will be made. SSDs may be ok because they can be more thoroughly erased.

Rules for Readers:

Yup, you guys have a few rules as well. This is not some teen photo site, or rumor mill, or meme factory. ALL comments are moderated by me personally. Frankly, I'm extremely strict about what comments will be allowed. I hate internet memes with a passion. I hate "firsts", I hate asinine and retarded and irrelvant comments. None of this is going to make it through. 

For your comment to be approved, it must: 

Be at least somewhat relevant to the conversation. 

Must add something of value, even if it's a clever quip. 

Not be harassing of myself, other readers or the vendor of the product discussed. 

Be something more useful than "First!" or some other asinine nonsense. 

This doesn't mean that all negative comments are not approved. If it's well written, but provides an opposing commentary, fine. This is up to my discretion, but don't try to game the system, you'll just be banned and ignored. Just behave yourself, and add something to the converation, and you're fine. The rest of you can basically go elsewhere for that. 

Conclusion

These rules, and any future amendments are in place to create a unique review environment for my readers and a unique marketing opportunity for you.