How ApplianceWatchDog Makes Money (Affiliate Disclosure)

The short version, in compliance with the FTC's endorsement guides (16 CFR Part 255): some links on this site earn us a commission. Our rankings and scores are never for sale. Here's exactly how it works.

When you click a button like "Get a free quote" or "Shop parts" and then buy something, the company may pay us a commission. It costs you nothing extra — the price is the same whether you arrive through our link or type the URL yourself. Those commissions are how we pay for the research, the writers, and the quarterly re-verification of every number on this site, without paywalls or sponsored posts.

Links that start with /go/ (for example, /go/liberty-home-guard) are our affiliate redirects. The /go/ prefix exists so you can always tell a commercial link from an editorial one — every /go/ link is an affiliate link, no exceptions. When you click one, you're sent to the company's site through a tracking link so the sale can be attributed to us. Pages with these links also carry a disclosure near the top, because you deserve to know before you click, not after.

Anyone can claim independence. We'd rather show receipts:

• Our scoring formula is public. Every score is reproducible from /methodology — weights, anchors, and worked examples. A bought ranking can't survive published math.
• One of the industry's highest-paying affiliate programs is excluded from our rankings. Choice Home Warranty pays affiliates handsomely. After its $11.8M Arizona consumer-fraud settlement (February 2026), our review scores it 2.9/5, recommends alternatives — and carries no affiliate link to Choice at all.
• Our winners' flaws are printed in their reviews. Our #1 pick's BBB pattern-of-complaints note is disclosed above the fold in its review.
• The wall is real. Writers and editors score brands without access to commission data. Commercial conversations happen after publication, never as a condition of it.

Can: determine which brands we hold affiliate relationships with; fund the site; occasionally get readers exclusive quotes or promos, which we label.

Cannot: create a score, move a rank, soften a con, remove a complaint statistic, keep a settlement out of a review, or buy inclusion in — or exclusion from — any list. If a brand ends its program over a bad review, the review stands. If we rate a brand we have no deal with, the review runs anyway (and several on our list pay us little or nothing).

Links to guides, sources, regulators, and most external references are plain links. Only /go/ links and clearly marked partner CTAs earn commissions.

Ask us directly via /contact. Related reading: how we rate · our editorial standards · about us.