False Review Epidemic

You HAVE to see this. Blackview company just sent me emails promoting their new products – they wanted me (and others) to follow their official store – so being me, I sent back an email to suggest that if they wanted to ship one to me, I’d have a play and write about it and/or put something on my YouTube channel.

Firstly they offered 50-80% refund for leaving a 5-star review… then it moved up to 80% discount but that would only be refunded AFTER I left a 5-star review in their official AliExpress store.

For some readers this may be hard to believe – but the above is COMMONPLACE in the industry and Iso I have to assume other industries – “Rave about our product on Amazon and you can have it cheaply – AFTER you’ve committed your support to print”.

This is my response:

The blog at https://tech.scargill.net offers realistic reviews and has done for several years – if you are happy with an honest review and would like to send either the XXX or the YYY [I won’t grace them by mentioning the actual products] to review, I will write about it. I do not do “discount for 5-star reviews” and am disappointed that you would ask me to potentially be dishonest.

They didn’t like that – and I’ve since written and told them not to send me ANY more communications.

Simply put, sometimes I buy products and if I like or hate them, I put something in print. WHY? To help readers and as a personal memory-jogger and log. Other times, manufacturers write to me to offer products – those who do this at no cost to me and with no pre-conditions do it only only the precondition that I commit to write about the product (I hope fairly) but with no attempt to bias my output.

I understand of course, having been in business all of my adult life, that companies are not there for the fun of it. I am however overjoyed to say that increasing numbers of companies have decided to send me stuff to play with and are happy to accept honest feedback. Many build long-term relationships which can be good for both of us as I get to publish useful information about good products – talking of which – the postlady has just been – and my new Xiaomi Mi 5 has just arrived from Banggood. I am VERY excited (as I already have and love the 4). Watch out for the next entry.