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Monday, December 01, 2014

Tell us about you

I've been compiling a blog about Methylisothiazolinone and other related chemicals, as I have become more and more sensitive to its use in washing up liquids and other products, more and more of which are containing these chemicals.

In the course of compiling lists of those products containing MI and those which do not, I have been visiting a lot of company websites, which has started to make me very critical of the way that they use the "about us" page on their sites.  So often, companies use it to blow their own trumpet about their products, their ethical behaviour, their reason for making the product, without telling you a single thing about the people behind the company.

Quite often, you have to dig to discover whether a company is in the UK or not.  Having been stung by customs duty on a number of purchases abroad, and not wanting to waste a lot of money on postage and packing, I try to buy British where at all possible.  For others with the same problem, the contact us page usually - but not always - gives the company address.  Often it is a webform to allow one to ask questions.  I'm presuming that legally they need to give a company address somewhere on the website, but I'm not sure that this has been legislated about in the way that paper literature has been.

It's most frustrating when the companies put a picture of their people, or CEO or founder, and still tell you nothing about them.  The trouble is, descriptions of a company's ethical policy or philanthropic record is so much less interesting without the people.

Sometime people tell you almost too much.  Being a member of the Facebook group on MI allergy, I received a linkto a company selling products, in which the salesperson said more or less that selling the products was going to be her way to a life of luxury as it is a low risk high rewards business.  Making it sound like a pyramid scheme which overprices the products, it told me far more than she would have liked us to know, it seemed to me. 

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