Hello all,

Is there a place here with merchant reviews? or any external links?

I am interested to know people's experience with various merchants, but can only find bits and pieces scattered throughout other threads.

Thanks.

As far as I know, the closest thing you will get to merchant reviews is the Consumer Reviews on Coffee Geek. They include a section on "buying experience."

Home-Barista.com tries to avoid formalizing merchant feedback.

No, there intentionally isn't a section/forum/thread dedicated to merchant reviews. I see several problems with one:

• Unestablished e-commerce sites: It would attract spam from the EspressoBiz vendors
• Established e-commerce sites: It would attract shills (*)
• It would promote discord among the established membership as members argue for/against a given vendor (see the six steps in Guidelines for productive discussion).

Quoting myself from Grinder purchase experiences:

While I could be accused of bias, there's something to be said for shopping with HB sponsors. Although we have no written contract, I do have a gentleman's agreement with all the sponsors that they will "do the right thing" by the membership, or they will no longer be a sponsor. I can vouch for the businesses listed under Commerce on the Resource page since they have a long track record with the online community in general and this site in particular.

This isn't to say mistakes are never made and it certainly should not be interpreted as an open invitation to post service issues in the forums. It means they've committed to make every reasonable effort to meet your expectations.

(*) Coffeegeek dealt with this problem by banning any endorsement/criticism from anyone with less than 5 posts; it's a lot of work for the moderators and having their post deleted often offends new members.

I appreciate the feedback and understand the implications of such a board.

In saying that, I am assuming all HB sponsors are good choices for purchasing from. Thanks for the insight.

Rybolt wrote:In saying that, I am assuming all HB sponsors are good choices for purchasing from.

Yes, and they want to remain HB sponsors, if you catch my drift.