Reef hobby owned by vendors?

[martinmcnally]

I can throw a little light on this as a vendor, who spends money with these sites.

The only site I have had negative experience with was ReefCentral. I was actually in discussions with them to setup a sponsorship agreement. Its really expensive minimum $500 a month. Before the agreement was completed a few people had stumbled across my site and were discussing on the boards. I even had a customer post some pictures of Modular LED stuff. All of the posts were removed, and one customer was banned. Their other LED sponsor had an existing agreement and we were not setup yet. I complained about this; that it seemed weird to me people were only permitted to discuss LED if it was related to one of their sponsors. Their reaction was to ban me and our pending agreement was terminated.

As for ReefBuilders. They did a unsolicited review for us and it was not paid for. I had a great experience with them.
http://reefbuilders.com/2011/09/29/m...asy-diy-demon/

I have not had any other problems with any other sites. Most are pretty reasonable, you get a sponsor forum and a banner ad. Its like any advertising, you have to pay for it.

ReefCentral is the only one I came across where it is a total capitalist system were you cannot discuss items if there is a competing sponsor.

[Myka]

Originally Posted by martinmcnally

I can throw a little light on this as a vendor, who spends money with these sites.

The only site I have had negative experience with was ReefCentral.

I've heard of these negative experiences from other vendors in regards to ReefCentral as well. Not the same issue as you, but varying disagreements.

[lastlight]

on the flip side when I was trying to sell t-shirts reefbuilders did a blurb on me free of charge and reef-central offered to give me a discounted rate.

[fishytime]

Originally Posted by lastlight

on the flip side when I was trying to sell t-shirts reefbuilders did a blurb on me free of charge and reef-central offered to give me a discounted rate.

thats cuz everybody loves "Fishbrains"

[Lampshade]

I do really like the new rule that if you get free/discounted merchandise you have to claim it in your blog review. There are still positive/negative reviews on everything, but having that out there seems to make me feel a little better about the "advertising" side of a lot of the reviews.

[StirCrazy]

Canreef originaly started as a forum for "Canreef Aquatics" (Titus' company) who made skimmers, Ca reactors and a few other things, some good ideas and designs. when that stopped Titus turned to sponsers to prevent closing down the board as it has caught on way better than other "store forums" and continues to be probably the most informative board in Canada.

If he had policys like the other boards I would have been banned a long time ago

the only board I have experiance with on that list and I can tell you they go as far as removing posts that make there sponcers look bad is RC.

I was banned and a whole thread was removed when I exposed that IceCap was missleading customers with falce and deceptive information. I called them on it and when they were confronted with the numbers and tests that I had obtained they went to the reef central board owners and had my thread and some of my other posts removed and me banned for 6 months. needless to say I have been back there 3 times in the last 8 years because of there policys.

Steve

[Aquattro]

Originally Posted by StirCrazy

If he had policys like the other boards I would have been banned a long time ago

I think you haven't got banned because you bought me pizza...