Emails suggest reviews from the Wirecutter are “pay to play” (2014)
xdesk.com
xdesk.com
Also NOT published and considered in this flame throwing is Wirecutter's response. There is a clear agenda. I only know this fiasco because I spent hours looking for a standing desk yesterday.
- In terms of durability: laminate > bamboo > powdercoat. Powdercoat feels EXTREMELY nice, but it's made of compacted shards so not really lasting.
- Most use Chinese motors but they're not really an issue.
- Just get whatever is the cheapest from a common brand. Fully (Jarvis), UPLIFT, VertDesk are all good. Jarvis and UPLIFT are similarly priced but UPLIFT's bamboo table is thicker. Xdesk is personally too expensive for something I would go to Herman Miller or Steelcase for a similarly priced desk.
- The wobble at high heights for the ones above ^ exists but is in practice not really an issue (at like the maximum height where your arms would be at an uncomfortable position then). Personally, I only want a standing desk so I can adjust to a good height for my chair, so I would never use it to stand at 5' for hours at a time. BTOD produces good reviews on YouTube and their site but keep in mind they create the VertDesk.
I just found out about it, and thought others might be interested. I have used The Wirecutter reviews to make purchasing decisions. For me, this incident just a few years ago makes me doubt their objectivity today.
I put 2014 based on the date of the original emails. I see no "published on" date on the page.
They started a tech oriented site and I would tend to trust it: https://www.techgearlab.com/
From their FAQ:
Q: Do companies pay you to review their gear? A: No, we never receive money from companies for reviewing their gear.
Q: How do you get the gear for your reviews? A: We buy all the products we review ourselves, at retail just like you, to help assure complete objectivity and independence in our ratings. We won't accept any free evaluation units from manufacturers.
Picking signal out of the shill review background noise is really hard these days.
Requesting affiliate marketing when it's not offered, is another (but still OK).
Pushing for affiliate marketing and when not getting it, changing your review, is something totally else and NOT OK.
And of course, considering only products with affiliate marketing, is the opposite of "objective review site".
(They claimed their new top pick also didn't have an affiliate relationship. But the way back machine archive showed that they were in fact linking to the new desk via an Amazon affiliate link.)
I'd ask what proportion of recommendations didn't have affiliate links, as a marker.
From the proof in TFA, for one.
So that right there proves they are lying about keeping editorial and business separate.
As for top products without an affiliate link, I am yet to find one.
IE: Check out our review for the tastiest dog shit of 2018.
There was something else I bought (can't recall which) that I was disappointed with, so when I was looking at treadmills and security cameras, I looked at their reviews more carefully. Trying to corroborate their positive reviews elsewhere turned me off their conclusions.
I don’t think there is anything wrong for Wirecutter to say “hey, we make money from affiliate sales - do you guys have a program we can sign up to?”. That’s totally cool. But he does such an awful job of saying that and makes it sound so much worse.
From the about on their site (https://thewirecutter.com/about/): "Do your affiliate commissions make you biased?
Up front: Our writers and editors are never made aware of which companies may have established affiliate relationships with our business team prior to making their picks. If readers choose to buy the products we recommend as a result of our research, analysis, interviews, and testing, our work is often (but not always) supported through an affiliate commission from the _retailer_ when they make a purchase. If readers return their purchases because they’re dissatisfied or the recommendation is bad, we make nothing. There’s no incentive for us to pick inferior products or respond to pressure from manufacturers—in fact, it’s quite the opposite. We think that’s a pretty fair system that keeps us committed to serving our readers first.
The most important thing to us is the trust we have from readers. If we were to recommend something because we are biased or lazy, readers like you wouldn’t support our work. We also invite you to fact-check our pieces, which carefully outline the time, logic, and energy spent researching, interviewing experts, and testing the gear. Often, this takes dozens—sometimes even hundreds—of hours. Each guide plainly lays out all the evidence for why we made our picks so you can judge for yourself."
I think the distinction that this is affiliate marketing for the retailers -- not the product manufacturers themselves -- is an important one to make. Also, I think their path of separating business from editorial is entirely sensible for a NYTimes company.
That being said, reviews (and review sites) always fall under "buyer beware" in my mind (I once read a 1 star review of a DVD player stating that it gave it 1 star because it wasn't a VHS player...seriously).
Also, getting a commission on sales encourages the reviewers to select more expensive options.
I usually like Wirecutter reviews. But I do find that they sometimes seem to favor more expensive options when cheaper alternatives are nearly the same or better. (Even their budget pick tends to be high and sometimes I think the budget pick should be the overall pick).
You will see a lot of products frequently at the top of review lists (not just Wirecutter) that are not sold on Amazon. These are usually sold at a premium direct from the manufacturer and a higher commission can be paid. (15-25%)
The thermapen thermometer is one of these. They will always link directly to thermoworks website, who is the sole distributor in the US. I'm sure they pay a higher commission than Amazon's 8% for comparable but cheaper alternatives like the javelin.
This doesn't mean the reviews are worthless though. By checking several sources of reviews for the same product type one can often get a sense of which are really the top products. After all, a review site would look pretty bad if it really promoted a dog product that no other reviewer liked. What does often get over looked though are the really good products from small suppliers.