I have to agree that the post was low quality and did in fact deserve deletion, but the problem is that using the spam flag has some very harsh effects which could in the case of an honest (but low quality) recommendation be a bit over the top.

Spam flags [train the spam filter](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/192820/recent-mass-football-spam/192847#192847) and so may affect the users ability to post in future.

Amongst [other effects][1]:

> - 3 flags on a question (spam or offensive): question is banished from the front page and all question lists except search results.
> - 6 flags (spam or offensive): post is locked, deleted, and the first revision **owner loses 100 reputation**.
> - Each flag carries an implicit downvote for calculating the post's score (it does not affect the caster's reputation).

Additionally we have the low quality block mechanism which may or may not also be fed by a spam flag. I say *possibly* because the exact workings are known only to the SE team and we can only guess how the block works.

So you can see that out of preference we would prefer that honest posters do not get treated unduly harshly, as they could if the spam flag were considered valid. A single valid spam flag against a user who had only just gained the association bonus through another site would effectively wipe out all their reputation on our site.

As a result you may see an occasional spam flag declined, but the answer deleted anyway.  This would generally be why.

In this case I do remember having a quick glance at the user but I do not believe I was the one who handled the flag.  From what I saw there was no real evidence of us getting a lot of spam from Belarc and the user seemed, at a glance, to be genuine.  I didn't have time to investigate further and in the mean-time another mod handled the flag.

"Very low quality" does fit here but I have [my own dislike](http://meta.superuser.com/questions/10886/was-this-flag-declined-correctly/10887#10887) of the phrase as what constitutes *very* low quality is somewhat subjective.

This is a link-only answer though, which is [strongly discouraged][2] and in my opinion completely delete-worthy.  Generally a custom flag with "link only answer" may well see it gone.


  [1]: http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/58032/what-are-the-spam-and-offensive-flags-and-how-do-they-work
  [2]: http://meta.stackoverflow.com/q/8259