Belkin's President Apologizes For Faked Reviews

remove office writes "After I wrote about how Belkin's Amazon.com sales rep Mike Bayard had been paying for fake reviews of his company's products using Mechanical Turk, hundreds of readers across the Web expressed their outrage. As a result of the online outcry, Belkin's president Mark Reynoso has issued a statement apologizing and saying that 'this is an isolated incident' and that 'Belkin does not participate in, nor does it endorse, unethical practices like this.' Amazon moved swiftly to remove several reviews on Belkin products it believed were fraudulent. But now fresh evidence of astroturfing has surfaced, by the same Belkin executive."

Comments

Ah, yes, Belkin...

[SIGBUS]

...the same folks that gave us the spam router. Why am I not surprised?

isn't the statement contraditroy?

[quickOnTheUptake]

"Belkin does not participate in . . . unethical practices like this."
paraphrase: We don't do what we just did.

Re:isn't the statement contraditroy?

[Mechanik]

"Belkin does not participate in . . . unethical practices like this."

Emphasis mine. His statement doesn't preclude them participating in other unethical practices.

This is why scruples are good

[Mr.Zuka]

We've seen this over and over recently for companies and politics. Some underling gets caught doing underhanded stuff, the company/government hang them out to dry, then it comes to light they knew about it the whole time.
Just remember this the next time your boss asks for something ethically questionable but says they will take full responsibility.

Re:This is why scruples are good

[thue]

But Belkin has not even hung him dry. They have not fired the guy, as far as I can tell.

"I can truthfully say I'm very sorry . . .

[ZorbaTHut]

. . . that you found out. So very, very sorry. Luckily, we've stopped doing it now! So you can stop looking. There's nothing else to find."

"Goddammit, I told you to stop! I'm sorry you found out about this one also!"

Yeah, I'm sorry too, Belkin. After the whole spam router thing I stopped using your products for a few years, but then thought, hey, sometimes people screw up. Mistakes were made, I haven't heard anything bad about them for a while. Why not?

Well, now I know why not. One time is a mistake, two times is a failure to learn, three times is waiting for you to let your guard down to sneak a fast one past again. Won't make that mistake again!

Is this real or fake like the product reviews?

[VinylRecords]

How do we know this was the real President of the company and that it wasn't some actor hired to do a fake apology?

They never do what they just did.

[riggah]

Belkin's president Mark Reynoso has issued a statement apologizing and saying that 'this is an isolated incident' and that 'Belkin does not participate in, nor does it endorse, unethical practices like this.'

Phew, for a second I thought I was going to have to use some doublethink to convince myself that Belkin didn't do exactly what he just claimed they never do!!!

Mr. Reynoso's apology means nothing. He's only sorry because they were caught; as with most people.

It doesn't matter if they apologize because a business that engages in that sort of unethical behavior will not hesitate to do it again (unless it effects their pocketbooks, in that case they'll just be more careful to not be caught). Once a cheater always a cheater.

Re:RTFA PLEASE!

[morgan_greywolf]

Oh, sure. Just go ahead and ruin all of our Belkin-bashing fun with your "logic" and "reason"! Pffft! :-P

I loved this article 5 Stars

[Registered Coward v2]

I found this /. article very useful and informative. I road tested it on my iPhone and it exceeded my expectations. It exceeded my expectations and was a lot of fun to use. Works with my hard drive, too.

Five stars.

CDR Taco, where's my 65 cents?