MaxTremors
2500 Club Member
I’m not sure if this is the right sub-forum for this post, so I apologize if it isn’t.
I recently received a PM from @Inkbird_Official asking me if I would like to test out their products. I replied that I would be happy to. They then wrote back saying that they wanted me to purchase their product on Amazon, leave a review, and they would then reimburse me for the price of the product.
First of all, that’s not an offer to ‘test out their product’, so the original PM/offer is misleading. They aren’t offering to have me/other users test out their products, they are trying to buy ‘verified purchase’ reviews on Amazon. This is against Amazon’s ToS, they banned incentivized reviews in 2016. It is unethical to incentivize ‘verified purchase’ reviews (or any reviews) that are then used to market their products by misleading people to think they are genuine reviews left by real people who bought the product organically and were pleased enough with the product to leave a review.
There has been a lot attention given to this practice recently, most consumer reporting/advocacy agencies, including Consumer Reports, have come out against this practice, calling it misleading, unethical, and unfair to consumers.
My intent in posting this is not to impugn Inkbird’s reputation, their products are actually pretty great, I’ve used them for years (which is why it’s perplexing to me that they’d want or need a bunch of fake/paid for reviews), but this kind of business practice is unethical and, IMO, shouldn’t be allowed by R2R sponsors.
I don’t know if other sponsors have done this here, or if the admins have allowed it (I can’t imagine they would), but this is my first time seeing a sponsor do it. I’m not trying to drag Inkbird, but I just don’t think it’s appropriate for them to be soliciting users here to help them game Amazon’s review system. I don’t know what should be done, I’m just a fairly new user here, so I don’t know what I expect to happen, but I couldn’t not say something.
I recently received a PM from @Inkbird_Official asking me if I would like to test out their products. I replied that I would be happy to. They then wrote back saying that they wanted me to purchase their product on Amazon, leave a review, and they would then reimburse me for the price of the product.
First of all, that’s not an offer to ‘test out their product’, so the original PM/offer is misleading. They aren’t offering to have me/other users test out their products, they are trying to buy ‘verified purchase’ reviews on Amazon. This is against Amazon’s ToS, they banned incentivized reviews in 2016. It is unethical to incentivize ‘verified purchase’ reviews (or any reviews) that are then used to market their products by misleading people to think they are genuine reviews left by real people who bought the product organically and were pleased enough with the product to leave a review.
There has been a lot attention given to this practice recently, most consumer reporting/advocacy agencies, including Consumer Reports, have come out against this practice, calling it misleading, unethical, and unfair to consumers.
My intent in posting this is not to impugn Inkbird’s reputation, their products are actually pretty great, I’ve used them for years (which is why it’s perplexing to me that they’d want or need a bunch of fake/paid for reviews), but this kind of business practice is unethical and, IMO, shouldn’t be allowed by R2R sponsors.
I don’t know if other sponsors have done this here, or if the admins have allowed it (I can’t imagine they would), but this is my first time seeing a sponsor do it. I’m not trying to drag Inkbird, but I just don’t think it’s appropriate for them to be soliciting users here to help them game Amazon’s review system. I don’t know what should be done, I’m just a fairly new user here, so I don’t know what I expect to happen, but I couldn’t not say something.
