Editorial Policy

Last updated September 29, 2026

Independence

• No manufacturer pays for placement on this site, in any form.
• No manufacturer sees content before publication. Nobody gets a preview, a right of reply before the fact, or an opportunity to correct a draft.
• We do not accept review units. Partly because we do not review by testing, and partly because a free chair creates an obligation that a disclosure line does not cancel.
• Affiliate commission does not affect ranking. The evidence for that claim, rather than the assertion of it, is in the affiliate disclosure.

Sourcing

Every specification on this site comes from the manufacturer's own published figures or from an authorized retailer's published specification table, and every product carries a link to where the figures came from.

• We do not estimate a missing figure. Where a maker publishes overall chair height and no seat height - which several budget brands do - the page says "not published" and explains why that matters.
• We do not transcribe a competitor's numbers. If we cannot find a figure at source, it does not appear.
• Anthropometric and medical claims are cited to a named, linked source. If a claim cannot be sourced, it is cut rather than softened.
• Our own arithmetic is shown. Where we derive an estimate from published data - the seat height and seat depth tables - the calculation is on the page so you can check it.

Authorship

Every article, review, comparison and guide on this site is written by Michael W., the hands-on owner behind The First Buyer. There is one byline and it is the real one.

No page on this site claims a clinical credential, a certification, a testing volume or a tenure figure, because none has been earned. Full position on the about page.

Update cadence

• Monthly: verify every featured product is still sold, and swap anything discontinued.
• Quarterly: re-check published specifications against the manufacturer's current figures and update the "specs verified" date.
• Every six months: full review of the main roundups - re-rank the picks against anything new, and rewrite where the reasoning has changed.
• Annually: rewrite the two fit-math guides against current model availability.

We never update the year in a page title without re-reviewing the page. Putting a current year on stale content is the most common dishonesty in this category and we will not do it.

Corrections

If something on this site is wrong, tell us at contact@spineandseat.com. What happens next:

1. We check the claim against the manufacturer's published figures, or against the original source for a cited statistic.
2. If it is wrong, we correct it and update the page's "last updated" date.
3. If the correction changes a recommendation - a spec was wrong and the pick no longer stands - we change the recommendation too, and note the change on the page.
4. We reply to tell you what we did.

A correction is not an embarrassment to be buried. A site built on published figures lives or dies on whether those figures are right, and a reader who reports an error is doing us a favor.

When a pick is removed

• The product is discontinued or no longer reliably available.
• A specification we published turns out to be wrong and the pick no longer stands.
• A better option appears in the same band at the six-month review.
• The manufacturer revises the product without changing the name, which happens often enough in this category to be a standing risk.

Health content

This site discusses pain, which raises the bar. The rules we hold ourselves to:

• We never say a chair treats, cures or fixes a condition. Chairs redistribute load. That is the claim, and it is a smaller one.
• We never diagnose. We do not tell a reader what is causing their pain.
• Every pain page carries a "when a chair will not fix this" section naming concrete signals that mean seeing a clinician, and saying plainly that a chair is not the answer for them.
• We never present a specification as a clinical outcome. "Adjustable lumbar height lets you place support at the point that hurts" is fine. A percentage reduction in pain is not, unless it is a cited finding clearly attributed to its study - and we have not published one.

Reviews and testimonials

There are none on this site. Spine & Seat is new and nobody has left us a review, so displaying one would mean inventing it. If that changes, any testimonial that appears here will carry the reviewer's real name and a link to the original.

Imagery

Product photographs on this site are licensed stock images, not photographs of the specific model under discussion, and every one is labeled as such. We will not let a generic chair photograph imply we have the product in front of us.