Belkin employee caught rigging Amazon reviews

[PrntRhd]

A Belkin employee was offering money for people to write 100% satisfied reviews on Amazon, Newegg and other sites:
http://www.thedailybackground.com/2009/01/16/exclusive-belkins-development-rep-is-hiring-people-to-write-fake-positive-amazon-reviews/

The company removed the false reviews but so far has not announced his firing.

He wanted 100% satisfied reviews, and suggested posters enter "not helpful" comments to any negative reviews.

[mjc]

You know, this obsession with being #1 without really offering above average products or service will eventually come back to bite all these companies...probably sooner than later. (Ding-dong...that's CC's bell ringing.)

[karbon]

This is nothing new when companies do this kind of things.
I like Belkin products and prefer to buy theirs.
There was no need to do it. They make good quality product and anyone who used them know it.

[Angie1313]

This is nothing new when companies do this kind of things.
I like Belkin products and prefer to buy theirs.
There was no need to do it. They make good quality product and anyone who used them know it.

You know I really have to agree with you. I thought they made a decent product. Doing this and getting caught only does more harm than good.

[pave_spectre]

I have only owned one Belkin product, and I have to say I wasn't impressed.
8 port switch, with only 2 computers and a router plugged in and it would lock up with heavy internet activity from just one computer, requiring a reset.

Currently have a 5 port Netgear switch and a Netgear ADSL modem/router and so far no probs.

[mjc]

As far as I'm concerned Belkin is a cable manufacturer...that is what they were first and foremost, and where they earned a reputation of being top quality. The rest...mediocre at best. Most often their networking products are contract built or out right rebadged midrange products. Their tech support is mediocre, at best.

This is what comes from 'everyone is a winner'...

[rond36]

I have only 1 Belkin product, a N52 game pad and I still dont have 64bit drivers for it so I can only use it if I'm booted to a 32bit OS.

[saphalline]

I know someone who works for a company that had to replace a bunch of Belkin UPS units about 9 months back. They bought a couple dozen of them to shore up the remaining workstations that were exposed to raw building power - so admittedly a last minute workaround. As such, they bought the cheap consumer-grade 350VA units. :rolleyes: 6 months later, just as you'd expect, some of them started exhibiting unstable behavior. Random beep warnings, random shut-offs in the middle of the day, etc. My contact got management to wise up immediately, made them realise their mistake, and was able to replace all the consumer Belkin units with business-class APC units.

What really scared me, however, was the failure rate! I heard that the tickets on the Belkin units exceeded 50%! :eek: Consumer-grade units or not, over half of them became unstable after just 6 months! Of course since they cost the company $35 each (in bulk) it wasn't worth their time to follow up on the warranties... but still!

I guess all I can say at this point is: This explains a lot.

[PrntRhd]

There is a big difference between "promotion", where a company buys a good review from an outfit in return for paying an advertising fee and "astroturfing" where the company has hidden the payment and tries to make it look like their product is so great that volunteer users proclaim that to be factual.
The idea that Amazon would not catch on that Amazon's own Mechanical Turk application was being gamed was idiocy on the Belkin representative's part, and a violation of Amazon's MT TOS.

[karbon]

Not every Belkin product is flawless :)
I use Routers from them and never had a single issue with any of the router models. For Switch, I use Netgear, because it's better.
So, they make good products in some areas and maybe not as well made in others. It's the same story with all companies. Sometimes, they rushed to market a product and that's what happen.

I still pick Belkin over other products when am shopping.

Ya wanna hear a real lousy company and products?
Linksys!

Oh, man... it's sooooo bad that I'd not want it for free.
Got some of them many years ago and it was really bad.... faulty and just plain idiotic the way software UI was ; IE: router.
Then ya got the help-desk in India.... and could not understand a word they said.
heh.
Am sure you've been there as well :)

[jlreich]

Never had a problem with any of my Linksys products. And actually I have a Belkin UPS that has been going strong for over two years without issue.

[PrntRhd]

I currently have a Linksys WRT54G and have not had issues with it once I updated the firmware (an easy thing to accomplish), but this thread is not about Linksys quality.

[HewittC4]

Things like this end up backfiring. It degrades consumer confidence in their products.

My mother was using a Netgear wireless router and it was having problems. It would frequently just stop working and she had to unplug it to get it working again. This would happen about 10 times per day. I checked on a few consumer sites and found that the reviews were split 50/50. Half stated that this was the best wireless router ever, 5 stars, all written like they were from the company's PR department. The other half stated that it was the worst router ever, 1 star, listing the same problem we were having.

Now, I don't have any evidence that the positive reviews were faked, but given the style of the writing, it wouldn't surprise me. This makes me cautious about using Netgear ever again. I replaced it with a Linksys router that had generally good reviews and it has worked perfectly so far.