Who or What is PetInsuranceReview.com anyway?

Wednesday, December 17, 2008

Who or What is PetInsuranceReview.com anyway?

There was a very interesting comment from Chris on a post I did about PetInsuranceReview.com as follows:

I am skeptical about this petinsurancereview site as it does not give any indication as to who is responsible for it's content. Who decides which reviews make it onto the site, and who makes sure that there is no bias. What's more, how does this site pay for its operating costs as it has no visible advertisements, and we all know that no one would maintain a site without a bit of payback... Are the companies themselves involved in this site? Are some companies more involved than others? Very odd...

These are very valid questions that need answers so I asked Mike Hemstreet who runs the site to respond so I could post the answers. Here's his reply to me:

Hi Laura,

Thanks for giving me a chance to respond to the post. I suppose I could do a better job at clarifying these issues on my site. Anyway, here is my answer:

PetinsuranceReview.com is run by Michael Hemstreet and is not affiliated with any insurance company. The goal of the site is to provide objective information and customer reviews to assist pet owners researching pet insurance. The site makes money when a user fills out a form requesting quotes from multiple insurers. This service is available to any pet insurance company that wishes to participate. Whether or not an insurance company chooses to participate has no effect on the content of the site. (Embrace does not participate and they are prominently featured and have one of the highest ratings.)

I take several steps to weed out fraudulent reviews, including scanning the reviewer’s IP address and looking for similar language or sentence structure in multiple posts. While I can’t guarantee the legitimacy of every review, I believe a reader can obtain an accurate view of a company by looking at the cumulative effect of dozens (or hundreds) of reviews.

Mike

I only know Mike from when he contacted us back in September 2006 when he launched the site.

Hope that helps clarify the situation - hopefully Mike will put something up on the site as well.

Posted by Laura on Wednesday, December 17, 2008 at 12:46 PM in Embrace Pet Insurance, entrepreneurship, pet health, pet insurance news | Permalink

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Comments

There was a very interesting comment from Chris on a post I did about PetInsuranceReview.com as follows:

I am skeptical about this petinsurancereview site as it does not give any indication as to who is responsible for it's content. Who decides which reviews make it onto the site, and who makes sure that there is no bias. What's more, how does this site pay for its operating costs as it has no visible advertisements, and we all know that no one would maintain a site without a bit of payback... Are the companies themselves involved in this site? Are some companies more involved than others? Very odd...

These are very valid questions that need answers so I asked Mike Hemstreet who runs the site to respond so I could post the answers. Here's his reply to me:

Hi Laura,

Thanks for giving me a chance to respond to the post. I suppose I could do a better job at clarifying these issues on my site. Anyway, here is my answer:

PetinsuranceReview.com is run by Michael Hemstreet and is not affiliated with any insurance company. The goal of the site is to provide objective information and customer reviews to assist pet owners researching pet insurance. The site makes money when a user fills out a form requesting quotes from multiple insurers. This service is available to any pet insurance company that wishes to participate. Whether or not an insurance company chooses to participate has no effect on the content of the site. (Embrace does not participate and they are prominently featured and have one of the highest ratings.)

I take several steps to weed out fraudulent reviews, including scanning the reviewer’s IP address and looking for similar language or sentence structure in multiple posts. While I can’t guarantee the legitimacy of every review, I believe a reader can obtain an accurate view of a company by looking at the cumulative effect of dozens (or hundreds) of reviews.

Mike

I only know Mike from when he contacted us back in September 2006 when he launched the site.

Hope that helps clarify the situation - hopefully Mike will put something up on the site as well.