BELKIN – Online Reputation Management

• One representative from Belkin, a global manufacturer of computer hardware, was caught offering money to anybody who posted a 100% positive review of certain Belkin products .

•  He also asked the reviewers to vote down negative comments on Amazon.com and other e-commerce sites.

• The employee was busted after The Daily Background found an ad on Amazon’s Mechanical Turk service, offering users monetary incentives to write false positive reviews for some Belkin products.

• The request was signed by Mike Bayard who was in charge of sales to e-retailers. Apparently, he used the same methodology in other e-commerce sites.

• An angry crowd forced Belkin president Mark Reynoso to issue a press release.
• Even though Reynoso insisted that this was an isolated incident, The Daily Background discovered a second Belkin employee making false Belkin product reviews.

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• Click on the above image to see the screenshot of the advertisement.

• Do companies really think that false reviews are able to turn the situation around for bad products? This is certainly not a long term solution for any business.
• If consumers hate your products, just face it and move on. The social media audience isn’t really very forgiving when it comes to dishonesty.

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