I understand that point but my counter is that if someone sends you a product/video in private to review you have more reson to contact them about what you will say before you do than if the product/video is publicly available.

Do you think LTT should contact the companies that they do secret shopping before releasing the video? Any comments that they might have won't change what happened on their experience, and any promises of improvement won't prevent them from publishing the video so it's kind of pointless.

Even if GN had contacted and they had explained what they already explained, the GN video would be the exact same with an added part for LTT's response, which LTT is perfectly capable of doing themselves, and would do regardless of GN's video.