I could certainly understand if it was the vendor who made the first post. Clearly, that could or would be seen as self promotion and possibly an attempt to gain some free advertising.
In this case, and other cases like this, it was not the vendor who brought the subject to the attention of the readership, it was a happy customer. There's nothing wrong with doing that, and it can be of help to others or are considering doing the same operation and now will have more information with which to make a decision.
If the vendor does not want his identity disclosed or his pricing, that's also fine with but it certainly does detract from the value of the initial information - in fact, it makes it damned near worthless. Charlie just said that the vendor did not wish his identity be revealed on an open forum, most of us would have understood and that would have been that.
That was not the case here.
As long as the forum rules are followed, life is good.......