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Ad Soliciting Positive Belkin Reviews  (Source: Engadget)
Belkin quickly responds to allegations of paying for reviews on Amazon

When you read product reviews good or bad online, there is more than a little trust placed on both the reviewer and the site the review is posted on. Reviewers be it professionals or consumers can be unduly harsh or praising of a product for many reasons.

Belkin has now found itself in a bad position as one of its employees is accused of offering to pay consumers to review Belkin products on Amazon.com. The employee in question is one Michael Bayard, a Business Development Representative at Belkin.

Bayard allegedly posted an ad on the Mechanical Turk site offering to pay a paltry $0.65 per 5/5 review placed on Amazon of a Belkin product. The ad stipulated that the review must use US English and proper grammar, always give a 100% rating, and be written as if the user owns and uses the product. Another stipulation was down rating any negative reviews of the product on Amazon as not helpful.

As you can imagine, Belkin hasn’t come out and said definitively whether Bayard did in fact run the ads offering to pay for reviews or if it was some other person trying to smear his name and that of Belkin.

Belkin did step-up and post a public response to the allegations though and part of the statement said, "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 says that it has removed all postings from the Mechanical Turk system and is working with its channel partners to ensure that any reviews posted due to the ads have been removed. How exactly they will determine if the reviews are legit or not remains to be seen.

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Sounds fishy...
By Impackt on 1/19/2009 10:44:11 AM , Rating: 2
From what I understand, he is an average employee and not an executive. An average employee has absolutely nothing to gain by personally paying strangers to review his company's product.

I call BS. Either Belkin asked him to do it(in a more modest way), or someone is trying to make him/them look bad.




RE: Sounds fishy...
By TomZ on 1/19/2009 2:40:12 PM , Rating: 2
I agree, this whole story sounds like BS. Even if he is an executive, does anyone think he would be so dumb as to post an ad like that?


RE: Sounds fishy...
By mattflaschen on 1/19/2009 3:59:17 PM , Rating: 2
Yeah, I do think they would do it. If they thought they would get away with it, there wouldn't be a second's hesitation.


RE: Sounds fishy...
By mindless1 on 1/20/2009 1:31:44 AM , Rating: 2
No, they'd have a viral marketing firm do it for them like everyone else would. The fellow was either acting independently or more likely an immature dissatisfied customer dreamed up this scheme to smear their name.


RE: Sounds fishy...
By fbrdphreak on 1/19/2009 3:27:35 PM , Rating: 3
I'm assuming none of you work in a large corporation. It would be very easy for some overeager employee to go out and offer something like that if one of his Key Performance Indicators was to raise consumer reviews of Belkin products X%.


RE: Sounds fishy...
By sparvin on 1/19/2009 3:37:13 PM , Rating: 2
I second that! These sales reps who manage accounts like Amazon and NewEgg are measured on performance. Most of the time they work for a firm that represents several manufacturers at Amazon... regardless. Each company has a something called a co-op fund fund that gives the sales rep a percentage of sales to put back into Amazon for marketing purposes. If you manage an account, you decide where that moey goes... Youcan use it on discounts, emails blasts, banners, or even employee programs at Amazon, like a drawing for a cruise or some other prize-- he obviously used his marketing allocation in a very creative way.

At the end of the day, this guy is probably only getting paid a percentage of sales, so he's going to do whatever he can to increase that number...


RE: Sounds fishy...
By Oregonian2 on 1/19/2009 5:17:38 PM , Rating: 1
It would have to be somebody with an expense budget though, so it likely would have to be at least a low level manager -- don't think any flunky in a company would sponsor such a program out of their own pocket.

As to the "reviews", the star-voting surely can make a difference and be hid -- and fake reviews are definitely there and often are really obvious when read. Some sites, such as newEgg have a tag on reviews as to whether the reviewer bought it from them, and this helps identify fake ones from the better writers. :-)

On the other hand, there are those (particularly at Amazon that I've seen) where products are given one-star because the wrong item was shipped to them or if they purchased the wrong product for their usage. The one-star rating had nothing to do with the product itself. Some products have gotten reviews and ratings even before they've gotten released (but are shown on Amazon). Maybe they average out some. :-)


RE: Sounds fishy...
By mindless1 on 1/20/2009 1:36:19 AM , Rating: 2
Except that several times, reviews of products I bought from Newegg did not have the tag that indicated I'd bought it there.

It becomes even more meaningless when you consider that some verified buyers haven't bought any competitive products so they can't really provide an informed opinion, and that if someone bought a product elsewhere from where they reviewed it, it no less makes their review of the product(if honest) any less valid.


RE: Sounds fishy...
By Oregonian2 on 1/21/2009 1:35:06 AM , Rating: 2
Were the non-indication ones reviewed relatively soon after your purchase (and after they started with the tags)? Just curious. In any case, so long as they DON'T tag ones that didn't buy it from there, it's still useful.

I disagree about the "informed opinion" part. If the review says that "this one" is much better than the alternatives, then I'd agree with you. But from my use of those reviews, they're more about whether "this" unit works or not as expected -- not a comparison with other units. This I think is valid (within other constraints, it's not super-reliable info, but better than the manufacturer specs which is all one often has to work with otherwise).

That one is tagged to have bought it from them isn't to mean that their buyers know more, it's just an indication that the person doing the review actually has one and isn't just making a completely fake review!


RE: Sounds fishy...
By hadifa on 1/19/2009 6:12:09 PM , Rating: 2
There is a Belkin apology so they admit it:

http://news.cnet.com/8301-1001_3-10145399-92.html


Asus
By bwave on 1/19/2009 7:20:31 PM , Rating: 2
I wouldn't be surprised to hear Asus does this all the time? Think about it, they always get glowing reviews on all the tech sites. From my personal experience, they have a super-high DOA rate (around 10%) and s super-high <1 year failure rate (with nearly 40% failing within 6-8 months). The ones that do work typically are VERY unstable, very picky about ram type. I can't think of when I've had the first set of ram ever work. Then the always seem to end up with flaky NIC or sound problems. Then even though they the "hottest" motherboard out there and you pay a premium price, sometimes $200-350, they don't even support the hot new processors (for $300 you think someone could open the box when they get to CA and flash them before sending to distribution) so if you aren't a computer shop, you've got to buy a low-end cpu, then flash the bios, then put your intended high-end cpu in. Also, for $200+ EVERY motherboard should be tested before shipping, not 1 in 100 or whatever their sample rate is. I'm sorry, I just don't see these problems with Gigabyte, or even "low-end" brands like Biostar. Give me a Biostar board anyday, they never seem to fail.




RE: Asus
By grath on 1/19/2009 8:26:40 PM , Rating: 2
Well, the professional reviewers on tech sites generally receive review samples of the product before its available to the public so the review is ready at or before the product release. You can be damn sure the samples they get have been cherry picked and wont be DOA, and the reviewers dont use them long enough to reflect other early failure issues. Just take one look at the "unprofessional" reviews on newegg or anywhere else they are user submitted. The DOA, failures, bad CS, slow RMA, and compatability issues are inescapably well documented.

On the other hand, when you get lucky and have a Asus component thats fully functional and stable, it works beautifully. There are enough of those legitimate good reviews, plus those from people who get a shaky component but dont know any better, to counterbalance the bad ones. If Asus doesnt care enough to pay a little more for better quality control I doubt they would bother paying for rgood reviews along with the associated risks.

For disclosure, I have bought or worked with many Asus, Gigabyte, and more recently EVGA products over the years, good, bad, and in between. I have seen similar failure rates for all, although the Asus boards were generally more expensive, so a failure feels more weighty than on another board, and I have defenetly got better customer service from Gigabyte and EVGA.

In any case its just a really stupid thing to do. The guy was probably just drunk and worried about getting laid off and thought it was a good idea at the time.


RE: Asus
By mindless1 on 1/20/2009 1:38:58 AM , Rating: 2
You're doing something terribly wrong, after many years of buying and supporting Asus boards they have had nowhere near 40% failure rate. 10% DOA, I can believe approaching 10% is possible but that it's not so different from other brands if DOA includes "inept owner couldn't get it to work so it was returned even though it works fine".


RE: Asus
By Sunner on 1/20/2009 2:08:13 AM , Rating: 2
Either you're doing something horribly wrong, you're very unlucky, or I'm very lucky.
With a few exceptions all of my graphics cards and motherboards have been Asus for the past 10 or so years.
That would probably be a good 10 motherboards and 10 graphics cards.
So far I've had 0 DOA's, and the only component that has given up on me is an 8800GTX that died after some 2 years of use.
Heck, my old TX97 motherboard still worked until I finally threw it away 6 months or so ago.

Small sample size, but I'm assuming yours is as well.

No idea about customer service since I never turn to the manufacturer, I just turn to the place where I bought stuff, and let them deal with Asus(or whatever company it may be).


RE: Asus
By bwave on 1/20/2009 8:47:04 AM , Rating: 2
Shrug, we've sold about ~75 asus boards in past 18 months, guess that might be considered small. (don't sell many cause always get burned) We've sold about 5 gigabyte boards and 15 biostar boards a week during that time. With your normal smattering of MSI, Asrock, etc. (used to be Abit before they closed up) I'm certainly willing to admit it's bad luck, but these are board sold and installed by us, not just ones returned by inept end-users. We've been in business 14 years tomorrow.

On the other hand, we sell Asus video cards like crazy with very good luck. Had a few 5200/6200 that had blown caps within a year which is unusual, haven't seen that happen on other brands except the dell oem ones. But other than that never a problem, <1% failure rate.


This reminds me of something...
By gevorg on 1/19/2009 4:28:33 PM , Rating: 2
Audiophile forums that are full of shills.




By mindless1 on 1/20/2009 1:40:28 AM , Rating: 2
Yep, and people so insane they don't even realize their illogical bias.


Either way...
By excrucio on 1/19/2009 10:29:47 AM , Rating: 2
No one bought it.

But then again, if he got the money to do that. Go for it.




Any PR
By Jimbo1234 on 1/19/2009 11:52:08 PM , Rating: 2
Any PR is good PR is it not? Maybe they did this to get into the news. Now you'll think of the company name every time you read a product user review.




By SunAngel on 1/19/2009 3:15:23 PM , Rating: 2
I need some help. Can some please paraphrase or translate the language? I am having a hard time understanding what is being said.


By akugami on 1/19/2009 8:53:27 PM , Rating: 3
He's a forum troll that has gotten banned numerous times on here. From "Playstation Three" to the current incarnation which is "Playstation Three 6", next would add a 7. His goal is to get the lowest rating possible. DT should just ban his IP# and be done with it.


By foolsgambit11 on 1/19/2009 9:16:19 PM , Rating: 2
Yeah, the first time I saw him post (with the 6), I thought it was somebody making fun of him, like FATCamaro and their ilk. With 6 is even worse than without, I think. But I think the addition of the 6 makes a pretty clever name. It simultaneously makes reference to the highest rating a post can get, and to the number of the beast. Although I don't think that's what he had in mind.


By foolsgambit11 on 1/19/2009 9:12:40 PM , Rating: 2
I'll do my best. It's amazing, by the way - PLAYSTATION THREE 6 seems even less comprehensible than PLAYSTATION THREE. Additionally, I'm not quite sure why you want to know what he was saying - he never seems to have anything of value to contribute.

quote:
Yay yay, don't you know that internet become commercial trashplace? Internet become trash! Internet is not what it was before.
(Onomatopoeic interjection of cheer), aren't you aware that the internet has become a place full of commercial trash? The internet has become corrupted, and is no longer what it once was.
quote:
Just read any review or comments , they are full of positivness,LOL!!!!
As a demonstration of what I allege the internet has become, please refer to any review, or to the comments on any review. They are all glowing praise of the reviewed product.
quote:
Well, if you want to know the real truth about any product you have to pay for it. Too bad there is only one website ---> www.negativereviews.com , so the price to know the truth is quite high.
However, there is still one place where, for a fee, you can receive honest reviews of any product. It is unfortunate that there is only one site like this, and that is http://www.negativereviews.com (208.73.210.50). The truth hurts - in this case, it hurts the pocketbook.
quote:
By the way that Belkin trash i had also, it was a sourge protector which almost put on fire my floor by short circuit. Too bad i dont have original box where it says to refund me 50.000 euros for any damage it cause.
I myself have suffered the scourge of poorly-made Belkin products. In my case, it was a surge protector which almost set my floor alight due to a short circuit. Unfortunately, I don't have the original packaging that waranted the product to the tune of €50 for damages related to its use.


By SunAngel on 1/19/2009 11:13:54 PM , Rating: 2
thanks.

after reading your translation and going back and comparing it to his i am all tuckered out.

i should have just left it alone and not commented at all.


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