ReviewMe Sells Non-Existent BoingBoing Reviews (Never mind)

March 6th, 2007

TechnologyReviewMe is a service that matches up companies with bloggers. Bloggers sign up for the service so companies can pay them, per review, to blog about their products.

Anyhow, supposedly ReviewMe listed BoingBoing as a blog that would do reviews for $400 a pop. Unfortunately, it isn’t true, and BoingBoing called them out on this.

Why on earth would ReviewMe list a blog that wasn’t participating in their program? Maybe they needed more high-profile blogs (meaning, ones people have actually heard of) in their system. Maybe they just wanted to take people’s money.

Antics like this make the whole blog world look stupid. So I’m posting about it in the interest of public humiliation in regards to ReviewMe. If blog monetization is ever to get respect, this is clearly not the way to do it.

Update: I guess this was not intentionally malicious. Still, negative buzz spreads fast in the blogosphere. Here’s a comment from ReviewMe that was posted on The Consumerist:

Hey Guys, Patrick Gavin from ReviewMe here, first sorry for this, we are fixing the problem now. This was not an attempt by ReviewMe of trying to deceive advertisers but was a case where we left a loophole in our system where a blog could be added by someone who did not own the blog.

Advertisers cannot be charged for reviews that were not completed on the blog they purchased a review from so the advertiser was pre approved but never charged. It was a mistake on our end for allowing this loophole and again sorry about that. We are fixing it now. If you need any help please email us at support (at) reviewme.com thx! Patrick

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2 comments!

  1. comment Gravatar David Bruce Murray - March 6th, 2007

    They may have cleared up the issue regarding Boing Boing, but their business model remains ethically reprehensible It is WRONG for advertisers to PAY for “reviews.” Always has been…always will be.

    Any site that receives cash in exchange for reviewing products should fully disclose that fact to their readers. I went to the site in question and looked at several examples of actual reviews that had been written on various blogs. NONE disclosed the fact that they received cash in exchange for expressing their opinion about a product.

    Of course, Reviewme.com is merely acting as the conduit for the exchange of funds to take place, but it’s the ONLY service they’re selling. Unfortunately, I don’t guess it’s illegal…just highly unethical.

  2. comment Gravatar webomatica - March 6th, 2007

    David, I totally agree there - personally I haven’t signed up with either ReviewMe or PPP even though on this blog I could easily get some extra clams.

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