FC Manufacturer Rules

As a representative of a company, you’re allowed to provide information on your product(s), but a post hyping your product that doesn’t include any new info, or isn’t in response to a member’s question (basically a “sales” oriented post), would not be allowed. Your posts should be professional and fairly impersonal. Even saying that you think your product is the best value, best performer, whatever, is likely to spark a response from someone and put you in a bad position, since it would be difficult to detail why your product is better without downgrading another brand/model. If you do so, fine, but don’t be surprised if you get a response that challenges your opinion and makes a good response from you out of bounds with the rules.

You can’t mention another company’s product unless it’s an informational post in response to a member question or incorrect statement, like “our design uses …, while the xyz design uses…”. Even there, you’d be better be absolutely certain that your statement about the other company’s design is 100% factual, and that your statement doesn’t imply in any way that your design is better. Members though, are free to compare your product to another company’s product. They should not be asking you for a response that involves comparing your product to someone else’s, and you should either ignore the post, or just state that you’re only allowed to provide info, not comparisons to other brands.

You can’t post in a thread that’s about another company’s product unless it’s a 100% positive post, and you can’t mention your products at all unless the thread is about a product your company produces. Members will have more freedom in what they can post than you will. I’m sure it’ll be a little frustrating, but we know where we want to draw the lines in order to keep discussion civil. We’ve structured our rules and moderation to maintain a friendly, peaceful atmosphere, and that will continue to be our goal.

If a member gets personal with you, as far as losing their temper or getting out of line in any way, as far as proper forum protocol, you should ignore the post and not respond. We urge all members to report an out of line post and not respond to it, since a response tends to start an argument, and it often gets out of bounds.

If any member sends you an email and wants to discuss or ask about anything that’s out of bounds on the forum, feel free to say whatever you want. We don’t intend to extend forum rules to private communications. However, anything discussed off the forum that’s outside the forum rules, can’t be brought back into the forum for discussion. We won’t allow members to do that either.

If a member has a problem with one of your products, as far as it not working right, didn’t get delivery yet, etc., and addresses you with the issue, feel free to just tell them to contact you-giving them an email address and/or phone number is fine. You’re not here to deal with specific customer issues, and we’d rather not subject other members to reading about some problem that they have no interest in. This type of thing does happen, and we continue to discourage members from bringing these personal issues to the forum.

We expect products to meet basic electrical safety standards, and we reserve the right to label a product as potentially unsafe if we determine that the standards aren’t met.

These manufacturer rules are a work in progress and if any of these restrictions aren’t clear, or you have any questions on anything, please feel free to contact vtac. As far as I know we’re the only mj/vape forum that allows manufacturers to post (without being a paid sponsor anyway), so we’re having to adust the rules as we go to an extent. While we welcome manufacturers, the forum has to be set up primarily for members. We feel that there are pluses when manufacturers post, both for them and the members. We require a little more from members when a manufacturer is posting, as far as civility and respect, but we require more still from the manufacturer, because we’ve found that it’s necessary in some cases, and unfortunately, the rules have to apply to all manufacturers, not just the ones who have given us trouble.

If you’d like to check out a couple of threads where the manufacturer is posting with no problems that we know of, I’d suggest these two:

I hope you can work within our restrictions. I can’t promise that things will go as smoothly as you’d like. We have some tough members here, but they should be tough because they’re knowledgeable, not tough because they’re troublemakers. Feel free to ignore any posts that don’t require factual info as a response. If a member specifically addresses you about info, it’d be a good idea to respond (within your limitations), but if it’s just an opinion that you don’t agree with, even if addressed to you, responding may just be argumentative and not a good idea. In general, opinions are for members, and you're here to provide info. Keep in mind that you have no ownership of the thread, even if you'd started it.

Good luck and best wishes for success on the forum!