Nose well out of joint
One of the things that
honest
reviewers hate the most, writes
HEXUS.lifestyle
editor Bob Crabtree, is the email - or phone call -
that thanks them for a "great" review. An assessment that a
review
is fair or accurate makes no one squirm. But
calling
it "great" makes us worry that
we missed some
fundamental flaw the manufacturer expected us to spot. Either that or
they
think we went
easy on them - nudge, nudge - because they advertise with us.
Perversely, we have less trouble handling accusations of
having written a bad review or one that was unfair or had
serious
errors. We do fully investigate such accusations, though, and
absolutely do
put things right on the rare occassions where we've got them wrong
initially. We don't claim to be perfect, though that's what we'd say we
aspire
to being.
We're
also cool
about being told that what we've
published proves that we're out and out fan-boys of the
opposition's
products. We know such charges are false and can usually call
up a bunch of previous articles in which we gave a good kicking to who
ever it is we're supposed
to be in love with.
As a for-instance, our write-ups of the amazing performance of
Intel's new-generation processors have led us to be accused of
being Intel fan-boys. This is despite the fact
that, up until the time
these new CPUs came available for testing, we were regularly accused of
being AMD fan-boys because we pointed out the truth
about AMD's CPUs out-performing Intel's in most metrics.
All we do is tell it like it is - more accurately, as we see it - and
we are comfortable living with
criticism that results from our doing so and equally comfortable
putting right any errors of fact.
But we recently had a reaction to a review that
was new to us - at least in the form that it took.
What happened is that a company that was unable to
find genuine
fault, told us that we won't be receiving any
more product for
testing unless future reviews can be guaranteed to be more
favourable
than the last one.
We've received plenty of such threats but can't remember
anyone being stupid enough before to make it over a succession of
emails. Usually,
these things are implied - and only in conversation, whether
face-to-face or on the phone.
We terminate such
discussions very speedily but not before explaining
the facts of life - as they apply to HEXUS.
The person who makes the threat gets a king-size flea inserted in his
ear
with all due force and is made to understand that you can't buy a good
HEXUS review - the product itself has to earn it.
He's also told that if that means we don't get any further
product to review, then we'd regard that as the maker's loss, rather
than our own.
So what is our response to this astonishing threat? Well, you're
reading it now. We're naming names and will
let you draw your own conclusions.
So, let's start with the company concerned. To find out which it is,
turn to page two...
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