Why you see this
Declined affiliate, same ranking
You clicked a Declined affiliate or Did not take up partnership badge. Here is exactly what each means and why we show it.
Some of the vendors we rank were offered an affiliate partnership with us and declined it. A partnership would earn us a commission when we send a buyer their way. Some said no outright. Others never took it up, in several cases after repeated approaches from us. Either way the result is the same, and it is the part that matters to you: we earn nothing when you buy from them.
We put a small badge on those vendors on purpose: Declined affiliate where the vendor turned the offer down in writing, and Did not take up partnership where it never replied. We show it because of where many of them still land: near the top of our rankings. That is the whole point. A vendor that pays us nothing at all can still outrank the vendors who do pay us.
Affiliate status never changes a vendor’s rank or rating. Every score comes from our published methodology: primarily third party lab testing and COA verification, then shipping and refunds, pricing, operating history, and transparency. Whether a vendor pays us, declined to, ignored us, or was never asked has zero weight in that formula.
Plenty of review sites quietly bury paid placements at the top. We would rather show you the opposite: proof, on the vendor’s own card, that our ranking is not for sale.
Vendors that declined or did not take up a partnership, and where they rank
Live from our current rankings. We have no affiliate arrangement with any of them and earn nothing from their sales. They hold these positions purely on merit.