Comments on: Fake reviews prompt Belkin apology
Networking-equipment company says sorry after an employee offers to pay for good Amazon reviews.
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good comment. Here's your $0.65.
Regards,
Mark Bayard
Belkin business development representative
Belkin products have done me good and I have no ill will against them just because people here do "group-thinking".
I bought a wireless router, it was dog slow and dropped consistently. I contacted support via the website, they promised me something for using their site, then didn't deliver.
Their problem resolution both via electronic and voice means was non-existent and very unprofessional. When I complained that I did not recent the "product promotion" I was promised via the website support, they simply told me to try again. Did so, the website was broken.
they should stick to making cables, if they can even do that right these days...
why can't someone be paid for their labor to write reviews. cnet, techcrunch, etc. all write about a product they don't have a clue and rave about it. Personal opinions based on information are not the right of the individual to make qualifying statements because in the end, people are bias upon the capital they receive.
When do end users get capital for the products they use? The idea for end users to write reviews is to allow people to receive an opinion about a product in an every day setting. One thing you don't get from a corporate reviewing site is long term experience or compatibility to other equipment. In the end, why can't the world be a bit more honest and forth right?
Do you buy based on infomercial using PAID actors? I don't but you probably do. I don't see this as any different than people writing good reviews getting PAID.
Why there aren't as many users writing bad reviews about Belkin products, probably because the products aren't that bad or people aren't paid good enough to write bad reviews. Why would people spend the time writing a bad review when they get no benefit from it. Those who write that the company is unethical, give me a break, when you're trying to make money, you always want to put your product and/or service in the best light.
There's always an option to not buy. When you don't buy the product, you can't really write how bad it is. =) Kinda funny huh?
Why would people spend the time writing a bad review when they get no benefit from it.
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I can't believe I just read that. Are you serious? Do you really base every decision you make on whether or not someone is going to PAY you for it? Really?
People write bad reviews because they're mad at a company that they feel has wronged them. Sometimes they want to protect others from having the same bad experience, sometimes they just want to bring the company down. [CNET editor's note: Personal attack deleted.]
No I don't buy things from infomercials. Where the issues lies is in identification. I know a person is an actor in an infomercial. I don't know when an anonymous reviewer is being paid or not. The assumption is these are reviews from actual end users of the product. People write bad reviews to help other avoid the same pitfalls. People don't get anything extra for all the time wasted by companies having to deal with their problems or mistakes. People writes bad reviews are trying to get back at the company for wasting their time and money. You sound like a very money driven individual. I feel bad for you. I open the doors for others. I share my discounts. I donate money even when I don't get a tax receipt. You don't have to even be religous to see value in the Golden Rule. As for your option not to buy, then how is a person to chose from a variety of similiar products on the shelf? What should a person do after then have burned by the misrepresentations made by a company's false claims? Why do companies feel they have to put themselves in a "good light?" Does anyone label their product as a bad product? It would really help. Imagine if the rest of the world worked the way you described. I would never take another pill or eat another processed food. There is a reason why the word "fraud" exists.
But I am a happy convert to D-Link. Solid wifi connections that never ever get disconnects!
Amazon should simply remove all user reviews for all Belkin products and replace the review text with a simple statement that says
"We have removed and locked all reviews of this product because the manufacturer was caught paying for fake positive reviews"
A statement like that would be enough to rattle any other company thinking about doing it. It would also tell potential customers the truth.
Great thinking !
I Like It !
I think it is important for all companies to see what real consumers are saying about them.
From there, they should communicate with the disgruntled customers and try to resolve problems.
How many times do we see a company simply get flamed online, but through their market share they simply operate as business as usual?
If they don't, they are sending a message.
Astroturfing is nothing new - just that some folks are better at it than others. Google "Ferrari", "Laptop" and "Microsoft" as a search term sometime:
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=ferrari+laptop+microsoft&btnG=Google+Search&aq=f&oq=
Racecar drivers get free tires, Executives of just about every company gives out ball game tickets to clients yearly, politicans get free trips to resorts around the globe and all you can come up with are a few lousy laptops? Pathetic!
The point being that all these companies and products seems to be accused of it from time to time.
The phrase began in politics, but has extended to convey any fake campaign to influence opinion by a group or person with vested interests in the outcome.
Vegaman_Dan, I looked for examples of Astro turfing using Linux or Apple, and could not find any. Can you give some examples?
Sorry to burst your bubble, but seriously - in the tech world, "microsoft" and "astroturf" are almost synonymous.
I also tried adding "apple" and/or "Linux" to search for instances where either of the two entities may have astroturfed... found nada. So you got any evidence that either of the two have been credibly accused of any such thing, or were you just reacting without thinking?
@Seaspray: Nice try, but not quite. Clients != journalists. Review machinery and demos are given out, yes - but with strict rules about the equipment being returned. The Acer Laptop scandal perpetrated by Microsoft was no such thing... and a software corp giving out free $2000 laptops to bloggers for them to keep? Puh-leeze... that ain't no demo.
@DrtyDogg: Hate to break it to you, but no one pays me to speak truth to power in this joint... I do this all on my own.
/P
How is that anything different this? " Apple supplied us with the 2.33GHz 15-inch model, which has a base price of $2,499."
"@DrtyDogg: Hate to break it to you, but no one pays me to speak truth to power in this joint... I do this all on my own.
"
MUAHAHAHAHAHAA! That's rich! You first claim to not own, use, or support *any* Microsoft products, yet just last week you admitted to having a Vista x64 machine that you were using. Interesting use of the term 'truth' there, Penguinisto. You give a new definition to it that the dictionary certainly does not agree with.
Also, I googled 'astroturf', 'Microsoft', 'Apple', and 'Linux'. Google came up with 6,310 hits. If you found no results at all, perhaps you had a typo in your query. You may want to try again. It took less than 10 seconds to debunk your claim right there. Really, you should try it yourself before making such silly comments. :)
Penguinisto, it would really be easy for you to improve your reputation and even gain credibility simply by stopping your bigoted hatred campaign against all things MIcrosoft and consider using honesty as a guide.
@Dan: Nice try, but you have no examples of where Apple or any Linux entity tried to bribe public opinion. None. So instead of whining about this imagined hatred you think I hold, how about you back up your claims?
I think you are justifying it as it is from Apple, but what it boils down to is the exact same thing.
And NO! I don't not work for Belkin! :-)
People tend to be really stupid at times and do stuff like this in their job without thinking about the consequences.
/P
History would disagree with you. This is not a new occurence. Look at Amazon's checkered history with reviews and ratings systems. Heck, look at Apple's own Appstore rating system when it was found some people were being paid to do reviews and raise the ratings.
Yes, some people really don't have anything better to do than stupid things like this.
So while you're throwing around accusations of "checkered history" and such to try and salvage your dead argument, how about some proof?
/P
For the perfect example of what I'm talking about just read the crap posted right here in this thread. Every company has its share of disgruntled customers and they always feel it's their mission to trash the object of their ire at every opportunity.
Again, just read the first few posts in this thread to see why user reviews are completely useless as a tool to make buying decisions.
Additionally, reviews of children's books, toys, games, etc. are often very helpful, as parents tend to offer reviews out of the goodness of their hearts, either to warn off other parents or to encourage them to buy a good product.
And book reviews can be helpful when dealing with technical texts, art books, etc.
Probably because 90% of the crap we buy is made in China. Yes, China - your work SUCKS.
Instead I go look at the support forums for a product, preferably not the OEM's. There I'm going to see people who bought the product and have questions on how it works, what happens when it doesn't, and get a better idea of the real world opinion of the product. It doesn't do any good if the reviews at a shopping site all say a laptop is fantastic, can't live without it, perfect in every way.... if you go to a support forum and find out that there are dozens of threads about how the machine tends to explode if you press the Option Key.
It's like asking Penguinisto to be open minded about a Microsoft product.
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Careful with that axe Dan, we wouldn't want you to hurt yourself on that very fine edge you're still grinding.
"Looking at support forums is a good idea. On the other hand, aren't support forums editable by the owners of that forum? "
True, the OEM forums are probably a bad choice there. Apple was accused of that very thing with the iPhone came out and threads complaining about activation hassles, dead units in the box, etc, all 'mysteriously' disappeared due to a technical glitch and later were cited by Apple as never having existed. That also isn't unusual. Going to a separate user enthusiast group is a better choice. For my Apple iPod Touch, I don't go to Apple's forums- those are scrubbed too often of disparaging comments. I prefer to go to www.ipodtouchfans.com instead where Apple has no input or control over what is being said. There is a site that I can get better information.
It's the same for anything- cameras, printers, laptops, cars, crochet needles, etc. I used to use epinions.com, but that site got too hard to make sense of over time.
No kidding... that obsession of yours is getting ugly, Dan.
Oh, and Nota Bene: ipodtouchfans.com is a jailbreaking site. Little wonder the inhabitants there would be more often disgruntled than not... ;)
Where is the outrage that MS pays morons like vegehead, seaspray and futureboy to do basically the same thing here?
There is little outrage against M$ for the same practices because we expect that from M$ these days.
by Penguinisto December 9, 2008 2:44 PM PST
Jon? Dude... the "security through obscurity" argument (and its corollary, "marketshare") will more often than not get you laughed out of any gathering of CISSPs or GSEC holders.
Seriously - when any 13-year-old in Eastern Europe can write a script or rig a webpage to pop a Windows box, but has to really work at it (or pray for unpatched PHP installations) to compromise any other OS installation? When Apache has majority marketshare among web servers (and has since the original ISCA version gave up its marketshare ghost), yet has less exploits around for it? Are you frickin' insane to push that tired old PR-driven argument?
by Seaspray0 December 10, 2008 10:41 AM PST
Penquin, Prove to me that any 13 year old can write a script to pop a windows box. Quote: "any 13 year old can write a script"... "any" - not just one isolated 13 year old, but any 13 year old in existence picked at random, "write" - meaning not use something that was created by someone else and given to him/her but actually write it without plagerism. Back up your quote. PROVE IT becuase I'm tired of you spouting this FUD. Put up or shut up.
What I won't do is sit idly by and let the mud sling campaign initiated by apple corp and perpetuated by fanboys continue unchallenged. If the only thing you can do is sling mud (that includes fanboys of any OS), then don't expect me to be nice to you. If you repeatedly lie and skew the truth, you can count on me challenging you and harrassing you until you stop. If you don't like it, then too bad.
So you;re a blind worshipper, then?
(before you shout "J'Accuse!", note that I don't support any one particular OS, unlike yourself ;) )
PS: nice to see you're still obsessed with me, claiming "lies" and such. Hope you don't start sleeping at night with a plush penguin curled under your arm or anything...
Why?
Because the router would randomly redirect you an ADVERTISEMENT instead of the web page you requested! It was programmed to do this, and I'm sure they received generous ad revenue for it. Want to give me a free router that does this? I'll think about it. But to charge me for a router, then have it hijack my connection to deliver ads, is absolutely inexcusable.
Here's one article on CNET about it: http://news.cnet.com/2100-1039_3-5104863.html
I'll tell you this: It happened WAY more frequently than the "every 8 hours" mentioned in the article. It happened several times an hour for us.
Never again, Belkin.
Though, did you check your system to make sure it wasn't spyware/adware on your computers?
Just a thought, and I hope you have better luck with your future purchases :)
I found that I couldn't set up or effectively run a Linksys router a few years ago, and I've been a fan of Belkin ever since...and I've never gotten any advertising!
Should not matter if it was an Apple Laptop to review and keep afterward ( wink * wink ) or any compensation of more worth, or 65 cents or less. It is a paid for advertisement !
The CUSTOMER/USER review sections of Amazon, BUY.com and others had better become off limits to paid advertising or paid product reviewers ASAP.
Having to shuffle through dozens of fanboy reviews is bad enough... allowing paid reviews on those forums defeats the entire purpose of those forums.
Everyone knows ( or should know ) that advertisers lie. Even stretching the truth and omitting certain derogatory facts is lying.
Thus the creation of the user comments sections. Regular users can review their products and point out those products that do not meet expectations. The things that we NEVER hear about from the companies selling those products. These user comment sections can be the ONLY place where the average consumer can get a fair idea of what to expect when we are considering buying a particular product. What the product can do, can't do, how well it's built, how comfortable it is, everything !
A real life, real user review that one cannot find anywhere else.
As such, These forums should be protected from any abuse such as padded or paid reviews from company shills. Can't do much about the fanboys or their counterparts, I guess, except to recognize them for who they are and move on to the the next review.
Any reviewer that received any kind of compensation for their comments should be clearly labeled as an Paid Advertisement from top to bottom, as it is in every other medium.
...in other words, it ain't gonna happen
- by lobo65 January 21, 2009 8:33 AM PST
- I bought a Belkin home theater surge suppressor that failed after about a month. To the company's credit they sent me a new one, and the customer service lady was very polite. The replacement has worked just fine. I originally gave it a poor review on Amazon, but changed it to a more positive one after this incident, and no I wasn't paid to do so.
- Like this Reply to this comment
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Showing 1 of 2 pages (67 Comments)I am not a shill for Belkin, but I won't automatically denigrate their products to people either.