Is Belkin Paying For Fake Favorable User Reviews?
By Harry McCracken | Saturday, January 17, 2009 at 8:19 pm
This is still a story in progress, but it looks just horrible: The Daily Background is reporting that a Belkin employee has been using Amazon’s Mechanical Turk piecework service to pay people to post fake positive reviews of Belkin products on Amazon, Newegg, and Buy.com for the princely sum of sixty-five cents per review. (From appearances, the gent behind the scheme isn’t too bright, since anyone who rummaged around in Mechanical Turk could uncover his plotting.) Belkin hasn’t yet responded; maybe there’s more here than meets the eye, and it’s certainly possible that the Belkin staffer in question is a renegade who’s violating corporate policy.
Assuming that the situation is as it appears to be, you gotta hope that Belkin will go to extraordinary means to make clear that what’s going on is profoundly unacceptable. And that it’s humiliated to such a degree that other companies that do this or contemplate doing this–and there are surely more than a few–get scared enough that they steer clear of lying to their customers in order to drum up business.
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Belkin Responds to Fake User Review Charges | Technologizer Says:
January 18th, 2009 at 6:04 pm[…] Belkin president Mark Reynoso has issued a statement in response to the discovery yesterday that one of its employees was paying people sixty-five cents to post fraudelent favorable user reviews on…. The gist of the statement: Belkin didn’t know it was happening, it’s sorry it […]
January 17th, 2009 at 9:55 pm
From his LinkedIn profile, he’s only been at Belkin for barely a year. If this deplorable story holds up, he will soon to be an ex-Business development employee. Maybe, Monster Cable is hiring? rimshot 🙂
January 17th, 2009 at 10:01 pm
The interesting thing to me is… that Belkin doesn’t need this kind of activity. I don’t know about anyone else, but I’ve found that what Belkin products I have are superior by far to ‘house’ brands and certain others. A prime example of this is the fact that I was constantly having troubles with USB on my computer with a pair of low-cost hubs. I finally decided I’d had enough of that grief and purchased a pair of Belkin models that actually stack together in a nice compact package. Wonder of wonders, my USB issues vanished completely!
If Belkin produces this kind of quality, why the heck was this individual having to fake reviews? I’m not saying he didn’t, but I can guarantee that if this turns out to be true, he’s going to be one very sorry employee. With his actions, he’s managed to seriously damage Belkin’s reputation.