Editorial policy

A dealer, and only for an introduction. This is the line from our page on how we make money, word for word:

Dealerships pay us for customer introductions. When you send one of our forms, a price request, a quiz or the course, we follow up with you, and with your OK we introduce you to one dealer near you who sells what you're looking for. That dealer pays us a referral fee for the introduction. We introduce you to a second dealer, or switch you to a different one, only if you ask or say yes. That is the whole business. No manufacturer pays us, and none ever has.

Reading the site, the quizzes, the course and the price range are free to you.

No. We take no money from manufacturers in any form, and placement is not for sale. A maker or dealer who thinks a specification of theirs is out of date can send the current document through the contact page, and it is checked like anyone else's report.

On published facts only. Best pages rank tubs on build checks passed, shell warranty years and standby power against same-size tubs, and each one shows its method. In those rankings, no brand is placed first by anything but a published fact.

Prices work the same way. A brand's prices are shown because its maker posts them, or because they are reported prices, dated by month. A price is never a ranking input, for any brand.

Nowhere in the picks. Best pages and the quizzes rank on published facts only. The quizzes' first result, “Best build”, is the close match whose maker passes the most build checks, from every brand. Comparison verdicts and grades of build methods are judgments, and each one shows the facts it rests on.

By their records. We grade build methods, not brands, and there is no list of brands to avoid. Recalls, complaint records and who owns a company are reported as facts with their sources, where a buyer needs them.

When a maker's own documents disagree, we publish both answers with both sources: 2,379 so far. Every brand gets the same treatment.

Only ones you can check. A maker's list price appears when the maker posts it openly on its own website, labeled as a list price, linked, with the date we checked it (8 brands so far, across hot tubs and swim spas). Other printed prices are reported prices, dated by month. Every other brand reads “Price on request”; we never estimate a price or print a reported price as a maker's. A general cost range, such as installation or wiring, appears only with its public source named.

With the authority named and no medical claims. Health and safety guidance comes from public bodies such as the CDC and the CPSC, or from the maker's manual, cited in the sentence. We don't say a hot tub treats or relieves anything.

Electrical and structural pages give the code or the maker's requirement and stop there: a licensed electrician sizes the circuit, and a builder checks the deck.

We paraphrase and link; we don't copy a source's text. We don't name reviewers or private people. Product photos belong to their manufacturers and are shown to identify the model, never swapped between models.

Openly. Tell us what is wrong through the contact page. If we got it wrong, we fix the page, move its updated date and log the fix on corrections. A maker changing its own specification is an update rather than a correction, and it shows in the update log.

How the research itself is done is on how we research, and who does it on the research desk.