If I am wrong perhaps one of the staff can correct me, It boils down to economics as well. Any business relies on advertising and sponsors. The products they sell depends on the word of mouth reports they get from the consumer. Now CR relies on it's sponsors as well, hence the "free to join membership". If members were allowed to slam any sponsor regarding product or service, the sponsors would pull out and advertise somewhere else. I also know that other reef forums will not allow or tolerate their advertising sponsors to be slammed by the members. As I stated before, if one or two members crack down on one sponsor/vendor it can put off other members from doing business and it may have not even been the sponsors fault. I will also point out that in my opinion the staff here are very relaxed about what they allow and don't allow. Check out some of the other reef sites and you will see what I mean. I enjoy the fact that you can have a spirited debate sometimes without having it yanked. Again, try that in some of the other sites. I am very happy with this site and as a business owner I do understand the staff's position. I would like to see a way of rating some vendors but this isn't Ebay. So as I was once told by a former boss when I questioned a companies policy, he said to me. "Don't fight the system, you wont win this one". He was right. The system is set up to what works for them.
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