Information Changes

As I've mentioned before, as the reviews grow, so do the complexities of maintaining them, and interacting with companies and fans. Less than a year after starting the reviews, companies started changing:

1. Company Names
2. Physical Addresses and PO Boxes
3. Phone Numbers
4. Webpage Addresses
5. Email Addresses
6. Pricing Information

Companis seem to expect whenever they change any of this, that we should spend whatever time it takes to update it for them, and not be bothered doing so.

The original thought behind doing each review was that we would provide accurate information, as of when the review was done. Since we started the reviews, a couple of people have changed their contact information several times, and expect we should go into their review, however often they want to do this, and change that info for them.

Here's our thought process on all this. When a company supplied us a tape to review, they in essence paid for one review, and a one time listing of their company information. Each time I have to go into a webpage, make any changes, and re-post the page, it takes me a minimum of 5 minutes per review to do so. So let's say we have a guy that sends us 10 tapes, and wants us to go in and do changes on his company information. That's roughly 50 minutes of work to get that done. And this doesn't even begin to tell you how long it would take to make changes on some of the companies that have sent 20, 30 or 40 tapes. Now I don't know what most people's time is worth, but I do place a value on mine. I've got tons of new reviews to do, my own training, students to teach, other hobbies, and a family to tend too. The last thing I need is more responsibility and work, just because someone decides to change their company information. I don't think it's fair that someone elses decision to change things within their company, should create more of a burden on my time.

So here's our policy on this. Personally, I don't like making changes to reviews. I'd rather leave them the way they are, and if the info is old, so be it. We have found that the average webpage programmer (HTML author) makes $60/hour, or $1 a minute. Some make more, some make less. However we will accomdate these requests, and make changes to reviews, but at the rate of $5.00 per review. That's $5.00 each time anyone wants to change anything, per review, in US Funds, drawn on a US financial entity, made payable to Erik Mann.....not MAVR or Martial Arts Video Reviews. I hate having to charge companies, but with the huge number of tapes we've already reviewed, and the number of companies we're dealing with, this is starting to become a real burden. We are at 300 reviews, and that number is growing. I hope everyone can understand our reasons for doing this.

Just to make sure you clearly understand why we're doing this, I'll give you one example. One certain individual, whose tapes we love, has twice now made changes to his company information. We've reviewed 15 tapes of his. If we do changes to all 15 reviews of his, and each change takes 5 minutes, that's 75 minutes of work. Not something I get real excited about sitting down and doing. But if he or someone else wants it done, and is willing to pay for my time, I'll do it. I'm sure he and others are not excited about having to pay for this, but there's just too many tapes weve reviewed, and too little of my time available, for me to offer doing this free whenever someone wants it, especially when we're at 300+ reviews and growing. Sometimes it scares me thinking about how I'll be able to handle all the webpage stuff when we get to 500 or 600 reviews!

* Note to our fans*

Please be aware that some information on each of our reviews may not currently be accurate. I can assure you it was when each review was originally posted. So should you be unable to locate a company through the physical address, website address, phone number, or email address we show, or should their pricing on their tapes change, please don't blame us. We have no control over the changes these companies make, nor how often they make them. Should you be unable to find a company whose products we've reviewed, please, don't contact us about that. I sometimes get 2-3 requests about that per day. I do not have any kind of "handy reference" that provides up-to-the-minute info for all 50+ companies we're dealing with. 99% of the time these companies forget to contact me about their changes, and so when they do change, I don't even have a way of reaching them. If you can't locate a company, my best suggestion would be for you to go to a search engine and try finding them that way.

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