Which links
The links that can earn us a commission are the ones that send you to a brand or a retailer to buy something — the Visit site buttons and the links inside the Where to buy block at the end of a report. They are marked up as sponsored links so that search engines and browsers can see what they are, not only human readers.
Links between pages on this site earn us nothing. Links to a brand's own documentation, to a safety notice, or to a source we are citing earn us nothing either.
What it costs you
Nothing. The commission is paid by the retailer out of its own margin. You pay the same price you would pay walking in through the front door, and if there is a cheaper route to the same product we would rather tell you about it and lose the commission — a site nobody trusts has nothing left to sell.
What it does not change
- Scores. A score is set after the writing is done, by somebody who is not the writer, and it is not weighed against what a link pays.
- Who gets covered. Subjects are chosen from what people are searching for. A brand cannot buy its way into a report, and plenty of brands we cover pay us nothing at all because they have no programme to join.
- What we write. Nothing has been softened for commercial reasons, and no report has been held back because the conclusion was unhelpful to us.
- The recommendation. Where the honest answer is "buy the cheaper one" or "do not buy this at all", that is what the report says.
Who we have arrangements with
We work with affiliate programmes run by brands directly and with the networks that administer them on a brand's behalf. The arrangement is the ordinary one: a percentage of a sale that originated from a link on this site. There are no fixed fees, no monthly retainers, and no agreement anywhere that requires us to write anything in particular or to maintain a minimum rating.
Prices and offers we mention
Any price or saving in a report was accurate when we wrote it and may not be accurate now. Retailers change prices constantly. Treat everything we quote as a snapshot and confirm the current figure at the checkout before you commit.
Why we tell you all this
Partly because disclosure rules in most of the markets we write for require it, which is a perfectly good reason on its own. Mostly because a review is only worth reading if you know how the person writing it gets paid. You now know exactly how we get paid, which means you can read everything else here with the right amount of scepticism.
Questions about any of this go to [email protected].