Belkin Caught Shitting... as the Others Do Too, 2009-01-20 - Your reactions

[linathael]

Source : Engadget

Internet became the largest market for many companies, and gives the opportunity to make your products known by most potential users. While offering many advantages, it is also a double sided- knife, as unhappy customers can openly criticize your product or post negative evaluation about one of your product.
If manufacturers or distributors contribute to such evaluation and/or ranking, most of them do not do it openly, and use virtual users or customers to positively review their own products positively. This was not a secret, making most of such ranking biased and useless for new or potential customers. However, Belkin got caught openly recruiting "virtual" customers to promote its products on its website:



Of course with internet such mistake quickly went through all news network and Belkin CEO reacted by publishing an opened letter in which he apologizes for the mistake of one employee and an action taken by one person only not representing the policy of the company...
It is a bit hard to believe that one person will take such responsibility without a green light from the high management, especially considering that the procedure was well defined and explained. But one should not forget that if Belkin got caught, all other manufacturers are using those procedures too, they are maybe smarter, but most likely not innocents... even some distributors or resellers are suspected to shit in their internal ranking to promote products on which they have the biggest margins...

[translation by Linathael]