By necessity, our
Forum Rules are stricter for those members who have a commercial interest in a product or service which is hearth related.
Member Contact
Commercial members (
Manufacturers, retailers, distributors, importers, contractors, agents) should not INITIATE contact with our members by email, PM or other methods.
If a commercial member desires promotion on hearth.com, they should contact the webmaster at
[email protected] for paid sponsorships.
Note: if a member initiates a conversation with PM or email, etc., please feel free to work with them, preferably taking it to your private emails if it is a longer conversation.
Signatures: In general,
we discourage the use of links to your sales-orientated business or web site in your sig. We will make exceptions once members have established themselves as long term visitors who are here to help
People...as opposed to those looking to promote their product or web site.
First Rule:
The first rule is effectively the GOLDEN RULE of any respectable forum. If what you are doing here could not easily be done by every one of the hundreds of industry employed forum members......without degrading the forum conversations singly or a a whole...then DON'T DO IT. This should be easy to apply. This means
no pushing your product over others, announcing sales, etc.
Second Rule:
If one of your primary reasons for being on the Forums is to get more business for your company, then we would ask that you contact us for paid advertising sponsorship programs as opposed to using and abusing the Forums and membership to push your product or service. This is effectively covered under the First Rule, but repeated just in case you didn't understand the first time.
Third Rule:
If you are a commercial member here,
please refrain from attempts to cast a bad light on competitors products. Even if you have a legitimate gripe, this is not the place to express it since there are often many sides to such issues, and most manufacturers refrain from participation here - as they well should. Again, the forums are
primarily for person to person (consumer/end user) advice.
Discussion:
The Forum is for helping people person to person. It is not a free-for-all which you can manipulate to achieve your goals and desires. Any abuse of the Forum lowers it's value (knowledge wise AND financially) to the owners and members of the web site.
The Forums and the entire Hearth.com site are a commercial enterprise, just like yours! As such, we rely on providing a good product to our customers...our readers! This product is called trust. Although we have commercial ads, they are always clearly separated from our advice and content. However, commercial members who abuse the Forums make it much more difficult for our members to assume that the advice or discussion is from an independent viewpoint.
Using the Forums for commercial gain contrary to the rules and guidelines is, in effect, theft of service.
Thanks for understanding.
Note: For inquiries regarding paid sponsorship, email to
[email protected];Forum_Rules_for_Commercial_Members