Exposing the Honey Influencer Scam video by MegaLag

[gjbernat]

Name of Brand: Honey & Karma

 

An investigative video was posted here about the issue, It is a great watch, well worth anyone's time.

Gr

G

 

Description of your issue:

These two companies were active sponsors of the company in the past. And while the partnership has been terminated, awareness on their shady practices hasn't been exposed on the channel, so people know about it.

 

Have you tried solving your issue through the brand's customer support channel? If so, what was the result?

No.

 

What would an ideal resolution of your issue look like?

 

I feel like while the sponsorship is no longer active, they should be called out on WAN at least To raise awareness about the issues.

 

[Skiiwee29]

<-- Moved to General Discussion -->

 

LMG Sponsor Complaints is for active sponors.

[Sempai23]

I agree with this, very shady by honey and PayPal and at the same time not very mindful of ltt by not saying anything to the community.

[LeapFrogMasterRace]

Lol what? If you using an extension to give you a discount I fully expect it to take the referral. I disagree with content creators using affiliate links for various reasons  so I don't really care, let the rich people fight it out. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

[starsmine]

afaik they have called it on WAN
but I also dont really see what is shady about this.

now that honey is as big as it is though, its not as useful as it used to be, and yes coupon codes are not nearly as common as they used to be. 

[Carmichael42]

I feel like LTT should really cover this issue to bring this information to the wider tech audience.  This is the kind of shady stuff I have come to really respect LTT for tackling in the past.  I think this could make for a very good discussion on the WAN show if someone from the team sees this video.

[Sempai23]

  On 12/22/2024 at 9:55 AM, starsmine said:

afaik they have called it on WAN
but I also dont really see what is shady about this.

If you watch the video i think you will see that is pretty shady

[starsmine]

  On 12/22/2024 at 9:57 AM, Sempai23 said:

If you watch the video i think you will see that is pretty shady

You are right, I thought it was another video that was about grabbing user information. 
I jumped the gun and apologize for that. 

[GalaxyStudios]

I wonder if similar shopping extensions like Pie are doing this (Pie was made by the same person who made Honey). If someone knows, please tell me as I currently use Pie.

[Cheesewalker]

The video calls on LTT for never raising the alarm to the public when they found out that viewers and their fellow content creators are being scammed.
Its possible it never quite got in front on Linus in the way it needed to, but I really hope it gets some airtime on next weeks WAN show.

[Sickboy404]

This really needs to be a WAN show topic but LTT may be a bit conflicted on the topic as they did promote them and didn't expose them when they allegedly discovered their shady practices. There could be a valid reason for not exposing them but I feel the community really needs to know how scummy honey actually is... 

[gjbernat]

As far as it comes with overriding the affiliate links, that's something that's, in my opinion, kind of defensible. A bit scummy, but ultimately the content producers did get paid supposedly some money for promoting it, so they get some kind of compensation. However, where I cannot come up with any kind of defense is the company allowing affiliate partners to delete discount codes. At that point, their promises on what the tool does straight up can no longer be true and is indefensible.

[Needfuldoer]

There's no such thing as free money.

[kirashi]

  On 12/22/2024 at 11:27 AM, Needfuldoer said:

There's no such thing as free money.

I was gonna say... What Honey is doing is not much different than how affiliate marketing has worked for 25+ years.

 

  On 12/22/2024 at 9:15 AM, gjbernat said:

Name of Brand: Honey & Karma

 

Description of your issue:

These two companies were active sponsors of the company in the past. And while the partnership has been terminated, awareness on their shady practices hasn't been exposed on the channel, so people know about it.

 

Have you tried solving your issue through the brand's customer support channel? If so, what was the result?

No.

 

What would an ideal resolution of your issue look like?

I feel like while the sponsorship is no longer active, they should be called out on WAN at least To raise awareness about the issues.

Expand  

To be clear, sure, it's shady, only insomuch that used car dealerships are "shady" for taking in your 150,000km 2007 Toyota Corolla for $2,500 only to resell it for $8000 on their lot. Many consumers either have no idea or just don't think about the true cost of doing business, like how much a used car is worth vs. what it's being sold for. Truth is, all these "discount" and "rewards" systems actually end up costing us more money than if they didn't exist in the first place.

 

Credit card rewards programs are the same sort of idea: they might look good on paper, but they must source their funding from somewhere - credit card companies don't just give away points for using their cards for nothing - there's a cost to these points. Credit card discounts and rewards programs are largely funded by the fees paid by businesses, who in-turn just pass on said fees to you, the consumer, by increasing the regular price of everyday goods.

 

Again, I support anything that opens consumers eyes to any form of shady business practices, but nothing about how Honey operates is new. Instead, I patiently await government bodies like the FTC to implement regulations that protect consumers, though I highly doubt we'll see a huge shift in this area so long as people can be financially motivated to look the other way. There is no free lunch. Alas, tis a conversation for another place and time.

[AngryPandaPC]

When did LTT drop Honey?

[Dion615]

There's a lot of power in payment processors like Paypal. There's not many of them and causing bad blood over the Honey sponsorship might have a real serious effect on the business financially.  But it does look bad, and it's honestly kind of weird that LMG made no attempt to come out ahead of this.

 

Also the first responses above are seriously out of touch, lol.  This is not like shady car salesmen at all

[starsmine]

  On 12/22/2024 at 11:27 AM, Needfuldoer said:

There's no such thing as free money.

No one assumed that there was. Its that people assumed it was through data. This is not data. 

 

  On 12/22/2024 at 11:45 AM, kirashi said:

To be clear, sure, it's shady, only insomuch that used car dealerships are "shady" for taking in your 150,000km 2007 Toyota Corolla for $2,500 only to resell it for $8000 on their lot.

This isn't that though, its a salesman selling you a car. and someone else who was not involved in the deal whatsoever getting the commission who was not involved in any way whatsoever and then lying about getting you the best deals, as well as you can see in the follow up to this, something I already alluded to in my post, Discount codes that are not public being applied to any company that is not a partner with honey. 

Buying inventory and selling it back is not this, I don't see how even with data this analogy would fit. 

Non sequitur: I do have to ask, What the hell is with the influx of brand new accounts posting this video/commenting on this thread.

[Spotty]

Interesting video. Seems like he's put a decent amount of effort in to researching it.

 

Quick summary:

• Honey replaces affiliate codes with their own. For example if you click a youtuber's affiliate link to buy a product Honey would replace the youtuber's code with Honey's own affiliate code during checkout without telling the customer. This was the reason LMG dropped Honey as a sponsor several years ago.
• Honey allows businesses to control which discounts Honey applies, despite Honey advertising themselves as always applying the best discount code. The BBB investigated and Honey ceased making those claims in advertising, and BBB dropped the investigation.

... The video goes in to more detail and has the receipts to back up those claims, so check the video out.

 

 

I'm not at all surprised that Honey was claiming affiliate commissions, they have to make money somehow, though I never would have really considered what would happen when it came to situations where a different affiliate link was already used.

 

Seeing that Honey allows businesses to control which coupons can be applied through Honey, while Honey was advertised as always "applying the best coupon codes" and "If Honey can't find a code it doesn't exist" was pretty wild. I'm surprised the BBB investigation didn't get more attention.

 

I tried Honey very briefly a few years back, back when LMG was promoting it. I installed it, tried to use it when ordering a pizza, and from memory I don't think it was able to find any discount codes even though there were plenty of coupon codes that were available and listed on other coupon tracking websites. I think I just came to the conclusion that Honey probably just didn't work [as well] for Australian websites and uninstalled it soon after. Now I'm wondering if it was actually Dominos limiting which coupons it would apply.

 

 

I've updated the thread title from "Honey & Karma" to "Exposing the Honey Influencer Scam video by MegaLag". We're getting a couple of reposts and a few new users looking for this. I'm hoping if the thread title is the same as the video title people might notice this topic before posting new topics about it.

Edited 18 hours ago by Spotty
Correction: BBB not FTC

[Spotty]

  On 12/22/2024 at 11:48 AM, AngryPandaPC said:

When did LTT drop Honey?

About 3 years ago. The forum post where LMG said they had dropped Honey as a sponsor was made back in March 2022, but they had likely already been dropped some time before that post was made. The most recent videos I could find that had a Honey sponsorship was in late 2021. That would put the time they dropped them sometime around 3 years ago in either late 2021 or early 2022.

 

  On 12/22/2024 at 12:17 PM, starsmine said:

Non sequitur: I do have to ask, What the hell is with the influx of brand new accounts posting this video/commenting on this thread.

It's only been like 6 people... But it makes sense new people would join to discuss it as LMG was mentioned a few times in the video.

[gjbernat]

I have been a long time supporter of the channel and listener of the WAN show, 3 times buyer on LTT store. I never really had a reason to join the forum until now, this was the first time where I felt like I should voice my opinion that LTT should do better more to shed like to this issue, considering they promoted this company so heavily in the past. I understand that they voiced their concerns over a forum post in the past but let's be real there's a lot less people that read the forum than watch the videos and for those people this would never be discovered. Perhaps it is time to update how LTT announces when they are dropping sponsorship and for what reason in a video form so these would also reach people not reading the forum. I don't have a great solution, however, if, let's say, a sponsor appeared five times in the last six months or a year and they do something dodgy, they should be called out in a video, not just a forum post.

 

LTT is generally doing a great job in investigating a lot of the sponsors so there's some implicit trust built in when they promote something because of that and it's kind of like unfortunate that when something gets discovered those sponsors can get away with it Without any kind of public reprimand for people not reading the forum, but only watching the videos. Especially considering that they have been shouted out in a video and not over the forum originally.

[UnawareBlaire]

Taking credit for a sale when they only appear during the checkout process by hijacking the cookie is messed up.

[ChenShohry]

A few hours ago MegaLag has uploaded a video diving into how Honey (PayPal) is "scamming" creators and customers who use their chrome extension.
Video
Is this something that will affect Honey as a Sub-Company? how will creators approach this issue?

[fritzmg]

  On 12/22/2024 at 9:53 AM, LeapFrogMasterRace said:

Lol what? If you using an extension to give you a discount I fully expect it to take the referral. I disagree with content creators using affiliate links for various reasons  so I don't really care, let the rich people fight it out. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

You'd really rather have the money go to PayPal than to a small YouTuber for example?

[rogafe]

Hello, after watching the video, I had the idea to search "honey linus tech tips" and I show that honey still use Linus in promotion material 

https://get.joinhoney.com/page/dr-us-simplified-yellow-linustechtips/.

[wanderingfool2]

  On 12/22/2024 at 1:29 PM, Spotty said:

Honey replaces affiliate codes with their own. For example if you click a youtuber's affiliate link to buy a product Honey would replace the youtuber's code with Honey's own affiliate code during checkout without telling the customer. This was the reason LMG dropped Honey as a sponsor several years ago.

Honestly, I wouldn't have an issue with this if Honey replaced the affiliate code when a saving was actually realized to the customer.  When it's done though even when no coupons were found, that's I think a major issue/red flag.

 

Watching the video though, boy does Honey sound like a company that needs some serious raiding and charging of crimes.  Some of the things it seems they have done seem outright illegal.

 

  On 12/22/2024 at 1:29 PM, Spotty said:

Honey allows businesses to control which discounts Honey applies, despite Honey advertising themselves as always applying the best discount code. The FCC investigated and Honey ceased making those claims in advertising, and FCC dropped the investigation.

I sort of wonder if this will eventually lead to a class action, they made claims and if enough people find that they would have potentially saved a bit of money then I could see Honey being liable (and with a good lawyer they could get discovery to find all affected users as well).  Would love to see that kind of lawsuit, as if they suppressed discounts that could mean they could be liable for the differences between what could have been saved.

 

  

  On 12/22/2024 at 11:10 AM, Sickboy404 said:

This really needs to be a WAN show topic but LTT may be a bit conflicted on the topic as they did promote them and didn't expose them when they allegedly discovered their shady practices. There could be a valid reason for not exposing them but I feel the community really needs to know how scummy honey actually is... 

Honestly, I don't think it's too big of an issue that LTT never addressed it at the time, as for them they probably just realized there was the affiliate link issue...although I do think they should address why they went and partnered instead with a company that apparently was doing the same thing (the affiliate link portion)

 

  On 12/22/2024 at 2:01 PM, gjbernat said:

LTT is generally doing a great job in investigating a lot of the sponsors so there's some implicit trust built in when they promote something because of that and it's kind of like unfortunate that when something gets discovered those sponsors can get away with it Without any kind of public reprimand for people not reading the forum, but only watching the videos.

I would say LTT is more of a reactionary state it seems like for many sponsors (at least it appears).  PIA is a prime example of this, they made a whole video about going back to PIA...but if they had even looked at the link they provided at all they would realize PIA had terribly deceptive (to the point that I feel is illegal) pricing.