Belkin Rep Buys Good Reviews

[The_root_of_all_evil]

Belkin Rep Buys Good Reviews

How do you go about getting a good review for your product? Simple - hire people to write you sparkling reviews on Amazon.

The Daily Background [http://www.thedailybackground.com]discovered a listing on Amazon's Mechanical Turk [https://www.mturk.com/mturk/welcome] - which advertises basic jobs that computers can't do, like identifying graphic samples - that called for people to write glowingly positive reviews:

A request from somebody named Mike Bayard to review a product and "give [it] a 100% rating (as high as possible)." It doesn't matter if the reviewer doesn't own the product or has never tried it- the requester has helpfully written, "Write as if you own the product and are using it." It even goes a step further, asking the Mechanical Turk user to "Mark any other negative reviews as "not helpful" once you post yours."

Now, while this may be dubious in its legality, it's very misleading and unethical.

Who, you may ask, is Mike Bayard [http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3129/3202255933_a2a286d83e_b.jpg]? None other than the Business Development Rep for Belkin; the product he was trying to give a boost was the Belkin Router [http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/ASIN/B000LP9RQC?tag=airmazon-20], which got slammed harder than Spore [http://www.amazon.com/Spore-Pc/dp/B000FKBCX4/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1?ie=UTF8&s=videogames&qid=1220998529&sr=8-1] by the regular Amazon-goers given that it's "loaded with Bugs, goes on & off whenever it feels like, and comes at a hefty price."

There were dozens of these requests on Mechanical Turk, paying a measly 65 cents per review. Belkin has since yanked the listings. Bayard's personal pages are also gone.

Belkin's president, Mark Reynoso, expressed regret for the situation, calling it an "isolated incident":

Belkin has always held itself to the highest standards of corporate ethics and its employees to the highest standards of personal integrity. Similarly, we support our online user community in discussion and reviews of our products, whether the commentary is good or bad. So, it was with great surprise and dismay when we discovered that one of our employees may have posted a number of queries on the Amazon Mechanical Turk website inviting users to post positive reviews of Belkin products in exchange for payment.

Belkin does not participate in, nor does it endorse, unethical practices like this. We know that people look to online user reviews for unbiased opinions from fellow users and instances like this challenge the implicit trust that is placed in this interaction. We regard our responsibility to our user community as sacred, and we are extremely sorry that this happened.

We want to stress that this is an isolated incident and to re-instill trust with you, we have taken the following courses of action:

- We've acted swiftly to remove all associated postings from the Mechanical Turk system.
- We're working closely with our online channel partners to ensure that any reviews that may have been placed due to these postings have been removed.

It's also important to recognize that our retail partners had no knowledge of, or participation in, these postings.

Once again, we apologize for this occurrence, and we will work earnestly to regain the trust we have lost.

The letter is up on Belkin's website as well. [http://www.belkin.com/pressroom/letter.html]

No news as of yet, no news of Bayard's future with Belkin, but an eagle-eyed poster also spotted R.Wood and B.Ekim (Reverse ftw!) who also spam positive reviews on Belkin products.

Let the E-buyer beware.

Source: The Daily Background [http://www.thedailybackground.com/2009/01/16/exclusive-belkins-development-rep-is-hiring-people-to-write-fake-positive-amazon-reviews/]

Permalink

 

[PedroSteckecilo]

Take my word for it, Belkin SUCKS! They made my wireless card... and it really sucks, I can barely maintain a connection on a good day.

 

[curlycrouton]

Take my word for it, Belkin SUCKS! They made my wireless card... and it really sucks, I can barely maintain a connection on a good day.

I second this. I don't think I could have survived much longer had I not switched to Netgear.

 

[Cousin_IT]

:-( my flatmates bought a belkin router which only last week started working properly (having been behaving erratically for 2months). 65c for a review though, whose that gonna appeal to that doesnt live in the 3rd world & consequently probably doesnt have access to Amazon?

 

[Galletea]

Just to prove that I was right and reviews on Amazon mean very little.
Oh, and yeah, Belkin don't seem to make very good products, so I guess they need the help pushing stuff onto the ignorant masses.

 

[Break]

Take my word for it, Belkin SUCKS! They made my wireless card... and it really sucks, I can barely maintain a connection on a good day.

Yeah, I had one of those, once. The computer was, at most, eight metres from the router, and the connection was terrible. It would cut me off for no reason. The difference when I got a card that wasn't garbage was an astonishing improvement.

Also...

No news as of yet, no news of Bayard's future with Belkin, but an eagle-eyed poster also spotted R.Wood and B.Ekim (Reverse ftw!) who also spam positive reviews on Belkin products.

B.Ekim? I see someone studied at the Count Dracula school of pseudonyms.

 

[Volucer]

Dammit, I just bought a Belkin router too, based partially on the Amazon reviews...curse my laziness to look around, but my SMC one just annoyed me too much.

 

[Dom Camus]

Ironically my Belkin wireless router is the only one I could find that actually works (having previously experienced epic failure from Netgear, DLink and Linksys in that order). Evidently I just got lucky.

Unfortunately I'm pretty sure they're not going to sack this guy... because what he was doing is likely standard practice not just at Belkin but throughout the industry.

 

[The_root_of_all_evil]

"Belkin router is good. I am making the best pancakes with it right now. It also trims nose hairs better than the stuff on TV. My cat loves it. It is significantly smaller than the dumptruck I previously used to carry my network traffic around. Personal grooming, lawn and pet care, makes breakfast, what can't it do!

- John Q Public"

 

[Damien the Pigeon]

Ugh, my friends have a belkin, and it never works. That guy was really dumb. How on earth can you advertise it blatantly to the internet community and not expect somebody to call you out on it? That guy deserves to lose his job, if not for the immoral aspect of his actions, then at least for his stupidity.

 

[neoman10]

Belkin? What is that I must ask? An electronics company?