How we rate: 12 criteria, published weights, no exceptions

Quotable verdict: Nobody on this team scores a brand based on what it pays us - the ranking model is published, the sourcing rules are fixed, and we say when we're wrong.

A review site in a commission-funded category has an obvious conflict built into its business model. We don't pretend otherwise. This policy is how we manage it: fixed testing standards, sourcing rules that don't bend for a partner brand, and a public record of every correction we've made.

How we test

Every brand on our full rankings is registered, played, and - where the brand's own terms allow it - actually redeemed by a named member of our testing team, scored against the same 12 published criteria regardless of whether we have a commercial relationship with that operator. We list brands that pay us nothing. A brand that fails testing doesn't get listed with a low score as a courtesy; it doesn't appear on the site, or it appears specifically on our blacklist if there's something readers should be actively warned about.

Sourcing rules

For anything factual - a welcome offer, a redemption minimum, a Trustpilot score - we verify directly against the operator's own current page wherever possible, per the hierarchy and cadence described on our verification page. For legal claims specifically, the bar is higher: a statute, a bill's own text, a regulator's or attorney general's filing, or direct trade-press reporting we can attribute to a named outlet and date. We do not build a legal claim - a ban's effective date, a lawsuit's allegations, a penalty figure - on a secondary aggregator alone, and where our own sources genuinely conflict, we say so in the text rather than quietly picking one.

FTC-compliant review policy

We don't accept payment in exchange for a specific sentiment, positive or negative, in any review - commercial relationships affect nothing beyond which brands we're paid a commission on when a reader clicks through, which is disclosed on every page that carries an affiliate link. We don't suppress honest negative reader feedback, and any staff or family review of a brand we cover would be disclosed as such rather than presented as an independent one. This isn't a courtesy policy; it's built directly around the FTC's rule on consumer reviews and testimonials (16 CFR Part 465) and the FTC's Endorsement Guides, both of which carry real penalty exposure for the categories of conduct they prohibit.

Corrections policy

We get things wrong sometimes, in a category where the underlying facts move weekly. When a reader or an operator flags an error, we verify the correction against a primary source, fix the page, and log what changed in the relevant changelog - visible, dated, not edited away quietly. See our contact form for the fastest way to flag something; a correction is the message we'd genuinely rather receive than any other, because an error caught and fixed is worth more to us than one nobody mentions.

Affiliate independence

Our rankings are produced by the weighted model described in our rating methodology, full stop. Affiliate commercial terms - how much a brand pays us, or whether it pays us at all - never touch a score or a ranking position. Where that independence runs into a genuine trust concern regardless of score, our published trust gate keeps any brand facing an unresolved government enforcement action out of our top 10, and our blacklist documents brands we won't recommend at all.

AI-assistance disclosure

Drafts on this site may use writing tools. Every fact is human-verified, and every page carries a named accountable author and fact-checker - see our team page for who that is. We'd rather say this plainly once, here, than have a reader wonder and assume the worse explanation.

This policy governs every page on the site. Questions about a specific piece of content: contact us directly rather than guessing at our process.