Corrections and right of reply

The right of reply here is standing rather than timed. A company can answer through the response form at any point, before or after a record goes up, and anything it sends is published verbatim in the company response block with the date it arrived. Nothing it sends is summarised, trimmed or answered in its place.

Publication is not held open waiting for that reply. Every finding is read from the company’s own storefront and from the laboratory that issued the report, and a week of silence makes neither of those less true. A reply that arrives after publication is added with its date, in full, and the record says when.

A reply is not the only remedy, and it is the weaker one. Evidence that a finding is wrong changes the finding, under the rules below.

Use the correction form and give the vendor domain, the record URL, the exhibit or finding you dispute, and the evidence. Vendors, laboratories and readers can all request a review.

A request that names a specific exhibit and states what is wrong with it is resolved fastest. A request to remove a record without naming a finding is answered with a pointer to this page.

• A response from the issuing laboratory, sent from the laboratory domain, confirming the report and its fields. We write to the laboratory ourselves to confirm.
• A verification portal result that differs from the one we captured. We repeat the lookup, capture it again with a new timestamp, and publish both.
• The original report file with a SHA-256 that matches the laboratory copy.
• Evidence that an identifier was misread, for example a task number or key we entered that differs from the one printed on the report.
• Evidence that a report we attributed to the vendor was not published by the vendor.

A vendor copy of a report, a screenshot with no source, or a statement that the report is genuine are not evidence on their own. They are published in the company response block if the company asks.

A review that names a specific exhibit and attaches evidence is usually resolved within a few days, and faster when the evidence is a laboratory response we can confirm ourselves. There is no queue to join and no window to catch: a correction request is worked as soon as it is read.

While a review is open the record stays live and carries a dated note saying a review is in progress. A finding that turns out to be wrong is corrected on the record, with what changed and when, rather than quietly replaced.

Every published record is also audited again once a month, so a storefront that fixes what a finding describes is re-checked whether or not anyone writes in.

• A correction appears directly beneath the finding it corrects, as a dated note that states what was wrong and what is now shown. The original text stays readable.
• A changed verdict is recorded in the timeline with the date and the reason. The earlier verdict, its date and its evidence stay on the timeline.
• New exhibits are added with their own capture time and SHA-256. Existing exhibits are never edited or replaced.
• The record header shows the date of the latest update.

A correction is a change to something we said. A new check after a vendor fixes an issue follows the methodology and produces a new timeline entry rather than a correction.

We do not remove a finding because a vendor has since taken the report down, because the vendor disputes it without evidence, or because the vendor prefers silence. A report that the issuing laboratory returned as not found on a stated date was not found on that date. The record says so with the evidence, and a later fix is recorded beside it with its own date.

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