Paul's A.
Not True Rankings
Reviews are based on how much you pay them. Companies pay for ranking. don’t trust them
Response from Merchant MaverickJun 23, 2020
Hi Paul, Thank you for this candid feedback. I really appreciate that you took the time to write it, and I’m sorry to hear that you left our site with a negative feeling about how we operate. We try to be transparent and clear about how payments do and do not influence the content on our site as well as how we maintain editorial integrity, but your feedback is evidence that we need to do a better job of putting this information front and center. I would like to clear up a few things about how we evaluate vendors and how we choose our partners. 1. Vendor Rating and Scoring: Our editorial team evaluates vendors solely based on merit. This is not controlled by our partnerships department whatsoever. A vendor’s status as an advertiser has zero bearing on the section ratings and the overall score of a review. Honesty and fairness are foundational values for Merchant Maverick, and we are committed to being a trustworthy resource that tells it like it is. 2. Partner Vendors: Some vendors listed on our site do pay us. These vendors are invited to become partners based largely on our editorial team’s ratings. We do not partner with a company unless our editorial team endorses it first. A vendor that has a negative editorial review is not eligible to become a partner. 3. Vendor Promotion: There are places on our site, such as our sidebar, where we display promotional content for our editorially endorsed partner vendors. We only allow high-quality vendors to appear here, and we have full control over what these placements look like and which vendors we list. There are also times when a partner may appear ahead of a non-partner on a list of vendors, but only when both are deemed to be good options by our editorial team. We will never promote a vendor to you unless we honestly believe that it has a high-quality product. Unlike many similar websites, we refuse to use automatic banner ads to monetize our site because we cannot in good conscience allow low-quality products or services to be advertised on our platform. We maintain an invite-only marketing platform that is always guided by the ratings of our unbiased editorial team. These writers receive no bonuses relative to the ratings and rankings they determine and are free to rate vendors as they see fit. We take their feedback seriously when determining which brands to partner with. Based on your feedback, we are going to make sure this information is more readily accessible to our readers. I know we can do better here and I truly hope you’ll give us another chance. Thank you again, Amad Ebrahimi - Founder/CEO