We never kept a pit from Performance Testing, nor a product after a Product Review. At least I did not, cant speak for Larry. Always let the Manufacture know that, and always made sure they knew the results were gonna be posted, good or bad. I never worried about it, I guess if the product had flaws, I figured they should not have sent it!
I know this thread is specific to this one item, but...
This is a departure from the the way it was done before. Previously, performance tests were done on equipment that was submitted by the manufacturer. The manufacturer not only wanted you to review their product(s), they requested you do it and provided the piece to be performance tested. The method outlined in this thread is providing unsolicited reviews / critiques that the manufacturer may, or may not, want you (pelletfan) to do. No one can decline being performance tested.
Personally, I like the idea and feel that you could review pretty much anything you want, at any time it was convenient for you. You do not have to wait for a manufacturer to decide if they want to be performance tested. You just have to wait for enough contributors to purchase the item. You could have a sub-forum with a list of items that PF would like to performance test, with a link to purchase tickets for that item. People can purchase tickets for whatever items you have listed and once you have enough tickets sold to cover your expenses, you purchase, review and then send the item to the lucky raffle ticket winner. Rinse and repeat for the next raffle item. This is something that is definitely a departure from the way Larry ran his site and I think I would like to see it play out, especially if you sold the tickets online and could purchase them with a credit card. Manually keeping track of who said they would purchase tickets and then accounting for the payments via "check in the mail" stuff and then associating log in names with the actual names /addresses of ticket holders seems like a pain in the butt.