The Michigan Telephone blog

The Consumerist has posted an article entitled, Beware Buying Advice From Bloggers On The Take. The gist of the matter is that there is no “code of ethics” for bloggers, and therefore you get all sorts of opinions, some bought and paid for. And that is true, as far as it goes.

I will tell you this much up front. I have accepted freebies in the past, in two categories. One is books — publishers frequently send out review copies of books, and I’m not above reviewing one, once in a while. I did this 25 years ago when I was writing for a computer club newsletter and I’ll still very occasionally do it today. The difference today is I’m a lot more selective – usually I won’t even accept a book unless I think there’s at least some chance it will be interesting or useful to me. Just within the last week, I declined the opportunity to review a book because, frankly, I have a bias against both the company behind the product that is the subject of the book, and against the author of the book, due to (ironically enough) what I considered unethical practices by both.

To my way of thinking, once a book goes out to a reviewer it cannot be resold as new anyway, so why would the publisher want it back? At that point it has minimal value — sure, I suppose that I could resell it as a used book if I were so inclined, but I don’t ever do that. But more to the point, the fact that it’s a free book isn’t sufficient to cause me to write enthusiastic praise about it, particularly if the book is a real dog.

The other category is hardware. In the two cases where I have reviewed a hardware product since starting this blog, I have contacted the distributor of that product because it was something that I was interested in and because I thought the product was something more people should know about. I basically wanted to verify that the product worked as advertised. In one case the product was so interesting to me that what I had intended to be a one-post review turned into a seven-part series, and yet I still reported as honestly as I could on the subject (does anyone who read that series not get that I thought the documentation that came with the unit was deficient?). I didn’t say good things about the unit because I got to keep it after the review; instead I said good things about it because it works well and could solve a problem that many users have (getting VoIP to work through a difficult firewall setup).

The actual reason that I had become interested in that particular product was because I had recently tried (and failed) to help someone get a SIP connection working using a Linksys PAP2 on a connection that had to go through two routers. The double NAT setup just killed the audio in both directions, and the guy I was trying to help wasn’t inclined to spend a lot of time troubleshooting. I got to thinking how nice it would be to have a VoIP adapter available that uses the IAX protocol, which usually works quite well in that sort of situation. The Atcom AG-188N seemed like a good choice, but I didn’t have an immediate need for one, so I thought I’d try requesting a review sample. And when I received it, it was one of those happy situations where the unit actually delivered a lot more than I had expected (even if the documentation left something to be desired).

But would I ever write a bad review of a hardware product I had received for free? Oh, yes, I certainly would. Back in the early days of the TRS-80 computer, I had an early dot matrix printer (to this day I’m embarrassed to say what I paid for that thing – suffice it to say I could probably buy about ten laser printers today for what that underpowered dot-matrix printer cost back then). Anyway, a company that was advertising in one of the computer magazines was selling a device that, when inserted between the computer and the printer, was supposed to provide enhanced page-formatting capability (remember, back then most dot-matrix printers were LINE printers and had no text formatting capabilities whatsoever). I requested a review unit, and had it worked even reasonably well I would have reported that honestly. But frankly, the product sucked. Not only did it not work as advertised, it actually interfered with normal printing!

I reported that as accurately as I could, and advised people to avoid the unit. The manufacturer was very upset with me, to put it mildly, and wrote me a nasty letter demanding I return their product, which I was more than happy to do (who needs a piece of useless electronic junk lying around?), even though I was under no legal obligation to do so (I then wrote a followup article, noting the manufacturer’s petulance). Apparently they thought that by giving me a free unit, I could be bought – and they were wrong. Free or not, it still has to work as advertised.

There are two things I will not do. One is that I will not let someone else write a review for me and publish it in my blog. If and when I use someone else’s words, I clearly identify them (for example, I might include a list of product specifications from the manufacturer’s web site, but I will tell you the source, and usually include a link). The other is that I would never accept any payment to write a review. I guess I don’t consider being allowed to keep an under-$100 product as payment (now, if I were reviewing expensive wide-screen TV’s, that might be a different matter). Again, my reasoning is that once I’ve had the product in my possession, it can no longer be sold as new, and frankly I don’t want the bother and expense of having to ship it back, and I usually wouldn’t have requested it in the first place if I didn’t think it might be useful to me at some point. But think about it – if the only “compensation” I am getting is being allowed to keep the product, and the product is a piece of crap, what possible inducement would I have to say anything good about it?

I know that a few of the major print magazines make it a point to ship review products back to the manufacturer when they are finished with them, but they usually have a lot larger budgets than most bloggers (not to mention an in-house shipping department). But keep in mind that not all reviews you see in a magazine are necessarily the result of in-house testing. Some of them may be “work for hire”, which is to say, articles purchased from independent writers not directly affiliated with the magazine. In those cases, you (and perhaps the magazine publisher) have no way of knowing if the reviewer got to keep the product — or got any other form of compensation (beyond what the magazine paid) for writing the article.

Because the FTC and others are suddenly become concerned about this, I’m probably going to have to add a line to any future reviews, that says something like “Disclosure: The publisher let me keep the book after I was finished reviewing it”, or, “Disclosure: The distributor or manufacturer provided this product for review purposes and is not requiring me to return it” whenever that is the case. I’d suggest that other bloggers who accept books or products for review may want to do the same.

But what you really need to beware of are those bloggers that will publish “ghost written” reviews, or that actually accept money (or other compensation) to write positive reviews. The thing you are trying to detect is the “quid pro quo”, where there is an actual or implied understanding that the blogger will only write a positive review. One possible tipoff is when a review says only good things (nothing is perfect, after all), but on the other hand, keep in mind that it is possible that the reviewer was simply very impressed with the book or product (it does happen — sometimes a product really surprises you). Perhaps a larger clue is if the blog in question seems to deal almost exclusively in reviews and other “PR” type material — or has only one or two posts since creation, and they both just happen to be reviews! Of course, I would hope that (whenever possible) people would seek out multiple reviews before buying a product, and not just depend on a single blog posting.

Anyway, if anyone has a VoIP-related product they want reviewed, my conditions would generally be these: First, I don’t write reviews for hire, so expect an honest evaluation. Second, if the product costs under $100 (retail) and you decide you want it back after the review, I’m probably going to think you’re a little bit chintzy, but you’d best mention that fact up front. Third, in any case, if you want it back you’ll need to provide a prepaid UPS return shipping label (and be aware that I don’t live all that close to a UPS dropoff point, so it might be a little while before you get it back). Fourth, in the future I’ll probably have to add a disclosure line to my reviews, as mentioned above. And fifth, and most important, I don’t have the time or inclination to review anything and everything, so unless it’s something I have a particular interest in (such as a VoIP-related product) don’t be surprised if I decline — I do not want this to turn into a “review blog.”