Benchmark Reviews was born at its own domain back on March 2007, and built into a popular website with thousands of product review articles written by dozens of authors and published over the course of twelve years. That domain, along with many others I purchased over the years, belonged to websites that were hosted at different providers depending on hardware needs, but all domains were managed through the same registrar.

On October 2018, I decided to place the techplayboy.com domain for sale at a modest price, as the project had gone without updates for several years. This would have been a non-event, but unfortunately one day after posting that domain for sale it was somehow replaced in their system with benchmarkreviews.com. Needless to say, a fully developed domain with plenty of trust and traffic sold instantly for far less than it would have been valued.

No email was generated, and I was never notified. After many long hours on the phone, it became clear that a technical issue caused the sales cancellation of techplayboy and replaced it with benchmarkreviews. It was only after I received a sold notification that I learned benchmarkreviews was the domain in question. The provider claimed they could not reverse the sale, even though I contacted them only moments later. After many days spent attempting to retain the domain, it was clear I was not getting it back. A week later Google notified me of a new owner for the domain, and although I sent emails offering to buy back the domain, my messages were not responded to.

So here we are. The benchmarkreviews domain was sold, when it should have been techplayboy. There was never more than a few pages of content at Tech Playboy, while Benchmark Reviews had tens of thousands of pages. I am making the most of a terrible situation, one that has been heart breaking after more than a decade of work, and I will not be relegated into a victim. Benchmark Reviews has been restored to Tech Playboy, where all of our previously published work will live on for the benefit of our tech community.

As of now, it is uncertain if we will publish new review, or post manufacturer and affiliate news. Regardless, it has been our pleasure to have your support and feedback over the years, and wish for it to continue.

Olin Coles
Executive Editor
Benchmark Reviews