Trust
Review integrity
Every published review on The Aesthetic Index comes from a verified device owner. This page states exactly what verification requires, what manufacturers can never do, and what we refuse to publish.
Verified owners only
Verification requires ownership evidence: an invoice, purchase agreement, serial plate, financing statement, or manufacturer confirmation. Evidence is reviewed privately and is never displayed publicly.
Unverified submissions are never displayed publicly and never affect any score. They are held privately pending verification.
What manufacturers cannot do
Manufacturers cannot:
- pay to raise ratings
- alter scores
- remove or suppress legitimate verified reviews
- preview reviews before publication
- receive preferential editorial treatment
Ever.
We publish negative verified reviews under the same rules as positive ones. Editorial independence & conflicts.
Where review data comes from
Reviews from closed communities are never scraped or tallied. All review data comes from owners who submitted it to us directly.
Incentives
Founding reviewers may receive a thank-you gift card. The gift is for completing a verified review — positive, negative, or mixed — and is never conditioned on sentiment. Incentives are disclosed here and reviews carrying them follow identical verification and publication rules.
What we publish, and when
Individual verified reviews are published as they exist. Aggregates activate only at 10 verified owner reviews, and ownership-economics medians only at 20 verified economic responses. Below those sample sizes we publish no aggregate at all — no estimates, no placeholders.
Every published figure is a direct display of a single field owners answered. We never combine fields into a composite or weighted score. Read the methodology.