On the subject of our grade system

Deirdre:
We try hard to avoid doing this, but it seems we've offended someone.

A recent grade was perceived as not good, and resulted in a designer being mad.

I'm not trivializing this. We don't intend to make anyone unhappy, so we will try to clarify things.

First, discussing with lelo, we agreed on our meanings.

Regular readers will have noted that I am generally looser in my grades than my dear doll is - I'm an easygoing domme, what can I say? But since we're making things clearer, I'll probably get a little tougher in the future.

Since we have the luxury of choosing what we review, it will be very rare that we will give out bad reviews - we just don't mention the bad stuff.

Here's exactly what our rankings mean :

A dash ( - ) means no opinion. We got the item from an automatic vendor, so we have no opinion on service, for example.

6 is passable. Okay quality, passable service. I wouldn't throw this item away if someone gave it to me. Price is high, I would probably shop around for another designer making a similar item.

7 is good. Good quality, good service. I would buy again, I was well treated. Price is decent. A 7 is not a bad grade at all.

8 is remarkable, above average. The work stands out from similar designs, the service was very, very good. Price is good, no strenuous shopping required.

9 is extraordinary. The quality leaves everyone else in the dust, the people are extraordinarily nice and perhaps even became close personal friends of ours. Price is awesome. As an example, when I buy Sirena hair at 195L$, I'm thinking, price 8. If I got the same for 100L$, I'd think price 9.

10 is beyond any expectations. The quality is unmatched, the service is stellar. We give 10 on price to good freebies.. free is hard to beat.
PHD's Alyssa Jessop interrupting her design work to immediately replace our pony cart (vanished in an inventory bug) and custom-fitting the new cart to lelo's long legs for free is a good example.

Based on this new understanding, we even went back and looked at some older grades, at either extreme end, and we'll be revising them today.