Editorial Policy
This page sets out how reviews on Sway Blogs are researched, how the scores work, what we will not accept from brands, and how to get something corrected. It is written so you can hold us to it.
Where our information comes from
A review is only as good as what sits behind it. For each product we work through, in this order:
- Owner reviews at scale. We read the ratings on the retailer's own listing and on other places the product is sold, and we pay particular attention to the one and two star reviews, because that is where the recurring faults show up. A complaint that appears once is noise. The same complaint appearing fifty times is a finding.
- Independent testing. Where somebody has published measurements — ice retention hours, firmness ratings, wash-cycle durability — we use those figures and name who produced them.
- The manufacturer's documentation. Specification sheets, materials lists, warranty wording and care instructions. Marketing copy and the warranty document often disagree, and the warranty is the one that counts.
- Established editorial coverage. Where a publication with a testing operation has covered the product, we say what they found and where they disagree with us.
Naming sources
When a specific claim in a review rests on a source, the review names it in the sentence that makes the claim. "Independent testing found nine to eleven hours" is not good enough on its own; you should be able to see whose testing, so that you can weigh it yourself. Where we are drawing a conclusion from the general pattern of owner reviews rather than one document, we say that too.
What the scores mean
Category scores are out of ten and each one is tied to something specific — how well a lid seals, how a finish survives daily handling, whether a size fits the way the brand says it will. The overall score is our summary judgement of the product for the person most likely to buy it, not an average of the categories. A product can score badly on one attribute and still be the right buy for someone who does not care about that attribute, and the review says so in plain words.
We do not grade on a curve, and we do not have a quota of high scores to hand out.
Lines we do not cross
- No brand pays for a review, a score, a ranking position, or a place in a "best of" list. There is no rate card, because nothing is for sale.
- We do not send reviews to brands for approval before publishing, and we do not accept conditions on coverage in exchange for information or samples.
- Affiliate commission never changes a verdict. Where the better product for you pays us less, or pays us nothing at all, the review still says so.
- We do not publish content written by a brand and dressed up as our own review.
Being clear about what we did not do
Sway Blogs is a research operation, not a laboratory. We do not claim to have personally tested every product we write about, and you will not find us saying we did. When a review draws on somebody else's hands-on testing, it says whose. We think being straight about the limits of our evidence is worth more to you than a hands-on claim we cannot back.
Keeping reviews current
Products change, prices move, and a range gets discontinued. Prices shown against products are refreshed automatically each day from the retailer's own page. The written judgement is reviewed when we have reason to think it has aged — a redesign, a change in warranty terms, or a shift in what owners are reporting. Where a review has been substantially revised, the page shows an updated date.
Corrections
If we publish something wrong, we want to know. Write to us through the contact page with the review, the passage you are questioning and, if you have it, the source that shows the correct position. We read everything that comes in. Where we were wrong, we correct the review rather than quietly deleting it, and where the correction is significant we note what changed.
Who writes for Sway Blogs
Reviews are researched and written by the Sway Blogs editorial team and published under the site's name rather than an individual byline. The site is responsible for what it publishes, and the contact page reaches the people who wrote it.