heads-up: PayPal Honey

[madires]

In case you're using or promoting PayPal Honey:

Exposing the Honey Influencer Scam

[Jackster]

Oh ffs this is a load of BS and is being blown out of proportion.

Honey was set up as a way for users to get a few % from the referral systems that are in place on many websites including Amazon, AliExpress, eBay etc.
Their who advertisement was about this.

Granted they did move more towards "coupons" and "discounts" as their main thing but the Honey Gold system was always the main thing. It is always mentioned in every ad.

Influencers were "sponsored" with referral links (such as https://joinhoney.com/ref/frlj5rv) which just gave them $5 when a user earned $5 in rewards.
Some got a higher reward per user and some got paid per video as well as the user referral reward.

One of my Honey accounts gets paid out regularly with just referral signups and is probably my 2nd or 3rd account due to the amount of signups.


Influencers should always vet what and who they are advertising, but as usual they don't because they don't care. They just want the money.
And when you have services like NordVPN, as shown in this video giving $30-60 per referral, you can see why every other video is "sponsored" by them.
You only need a tiny % of your viewers to sign up to one of those high payout services to be earning a fair chunk of money.

LTT has shown multiple times over the past few years that they do things like this without questioning or researching it before hand.
They use to earn a lot of money through Amazon referrals and did show off some stats a few years ago. I think it was in the $100-250k per year region, if I recall correctly.


This is not the first or last sort of service that does this with coupons either.
If you go on any of the top 10 coupon websites, when you click on the coupon to get the code it loads up the target webstore in another tab with their referral link. Most of the coupons are not real, they are just after you clicking on the hyperlink so you open their affiliate link.


Rule of thumb, if a YouTuber is promoting it, it is probably overpriced crap.
Earpods, wallets, shoes, VPNs, online counseling, online courses, ball and butt hair shavers etc

Of course there are exceptions. I hear the electronics and engineering YouTubers are very smart and do their due diligence. pls no ban me Dave

[thm_w]

Oh ffs this is a load of BS and is being blown out of proportion.

Not really no, if you watched the video, all of the explanation and proof is there.
Saying "its not true because I make money off of it" is not a counter point to what he presented.

This is not the first or last sort of service that does this with coupons either.
If you go on any of the top 10 coupon websites, when you click on the coupon to get the code it loads up the target webstore in another tab with their referral link. Most of the coupons are not real, they are just after you clicking on the hyperlink so you open their affiliate link.

Yes and those sites are arguably just as bad. But at least with those, you can open in a private window and avoid the cookie.
And those sites aren't being promoted by content creators, in the same way that honey was.

[kjr18]

Worst thing about Honey is that it replaces reference cookie even when it won't find ANY coupon. Also imagine situation like that: You own a small YT channel and never heard of Honey, not using any other plugins like that, but you have a couple of referral links in video description. Your viewers can click them and buy what you put there. And since your channel is small, you have no sponsors, so every amount of money you can get from these links helpful, but if 70% of those who click these links have honey plugin installed and try to find any coupon with no luck, you loose 70% of this income. Just watch this bit to understand.

Also this Honey Gold stuff is laughable, one gold point equal one cent.

They simply steal from everyone.

[pope]

and an update video...

[thm_w]

Not many details, just says he's getting reports from affected individuals.

[wraper]

Oh ffs this is a load of BS and is being blown out of proportion.

Honey was set up as a way for users to get a few % from the referral systems that are in place on many websites including Amazon, AliExpress, eBay etc.
Their who advertisement was about this.

Honey is scamming their users. Not only it replaces referral links when it has no discounts, it scams users with discounts. It lets partner companies control which discounts will be used and thus often apply much lower discount than actually available.

[SiliconWizard]

I don't know many online businesses which are not scams one way or another.

[tom66]

Apparently Honey has 17 million users.  If 50% of these users are impacted (since you have to click the plugin to find coupons), that isn't really that many affiliates stolen in the grand scheme of things.

It's shitty behaviour by PayPal but I suspect this will go nowhere as the claimants will be unable to prove substantial harm, the legal costs will exceed any payment due.

[mendip_discovery]

I don't know many online businesses which are not scams one way or another.

It is all part of the mentality of the modern world. In that, you can have or enjoy two desirable but mutually exclusive things at the same time. Just look at the gig economy that has blown up in recent years. The firms avoid responsibilities that the old systems used to have in place as that is one place the money went. They claim they have improved the system and made a wedge of cash at the same time. In this situation people all want to save on the price they see online so search for a discount, this springs up lots of sites offering discounts but not really, how do you think they were making money. Stealing referrals is as simple as that and it has been going on since year 0 of the creation of them. That plugin was just another, in a whole line that has been going on for years. It's just this time it's affected those that can be the most vocal about it.

[hwasti]

PayPal bought Honey for $4,000,000,000 in 2019. Remember, that was before the big step up in online shopping during the pandemic.

If you look at what Honey claims it does, can you justify that valuation? The answer is a resounding HELL NO.

So why did PayPal pay so much for them? What did they know, or what were they told, that the public does not know?

The obvious answer is that Honey had a revenue stream that was far far bigger than their stated business. That much should be obvious without looking at anything other than the purchase price.

Now people are exposing what Honey has really been up to and everything falls into place.

Or maybe these investigators are wrong and Honey is just an old fashioned money laundering front for the Russian Mob. That is easy to find out. If I stop posting in a few days because the mob had me killed for exposing them, then you will know

[Jackster]

Oh ffs this is a load of BS and is being blown out of proportion.

Honey was set up as a way for users to get a few % from the referral systems that are in place on many websites including Amazon, AliExpress, eBay etc.
Their who advertisement was about this.

Honey is scamming their users. Not only it replaces referral links when it has no discounts, it scams users with discounts. It lets partner companies control which discounts will be used and thus often apply much lower discount than actually available.

You have conflated 2 systems.

Honey Gold allows Honey to share a % of the referral commission with the user.
Honey coupons automates entering coupons for the end user.

It does not matter if the coupons work or not, if Honey has an affiliate account with the vendor, they will load their referral link so they share that money with the user.

Yes Honey not giving the user the best coupons is shitty. But using their referral link to reward the user with Honey Gold is not a scam.
It is how the system is designed.

The only reason this has blown up is because content creators, failed to do their due diligence (yet again) when they sold this to their followers without knowing how it worked. If they actually spent more than 5 mins looking at it, you could have seen it open a tab (use to be full size, not a locked tab before) and see that it was loading their ref link.
Anyone who has worked in the referral business would have figured it out. Especially has Honey use to say that is what they were doing.

[wilfred]

Anyone who has worked in the referral business would have figured it out. Especially has Honey use to say that is what they were doing.

Why should it be necessary to work in the referral business to be able to work it out? Why did openly transparent go out of vogue? And when you say Honey use (sic) to say they were doing this, does that mean they stopped saying it because they stopped doing it, or they still do it but no longer think it is in their best interests to disclose it anymore?

Not that I know from personal experience about Honey and I don't recall using an affiliate link on more than a handful of occasions but when you say they share their affiliate code with users is that like user 97% (for being the one spending money) and Honey 3% for doing nothing but a single automated transaction and spending none of their own money? Maybe I'll let that slide as valid. 50/50 is definitely dodgy and much more than 50% is well into scam territory.

[Jackster]

Why should it be necessary to work in the referral business to be able to work it out?

Because if influencers are being paid to promote something, they should do some level of research.
They already use affiliate systems themselves to promote goods on sites like Amazon, eBay and services like Nord VPN.
So it would not have taken more than 5 mins to work out that they were shooting themselves in the foot when they took the Honey promotional money.

They should have known better. They do not get to then complain years later like they are victims of some scam, when it is not a scam.

Not that I know from personal experience about Honey and I don't recall using an affiliate link on more than a handful of occasions but when you say they share their affiliate code with users is that like user 97% (for being the one spending money) and Honey 3% for doing nothing but a single automated transaction and spending none of their own money? Maybe I'll let that slide as valid. 50/50 is definitely dodgy and much more than 50% is well into scam territory.

It is about 50% to the user, 50% to Honey. Though some have reported it being much lower. The video shows a single example of someone getting a tiny %.
You can track yourself how much of a percentage you are getting by looking at the activity page.

I just checked one of my accounts:
BitDefender offers 25% referral, Honey gave me 12%
EaseUS offers up to 60% referral, Honey gave me 20%
AliExpress offers 0-14% referral though most of their items are 3-5%. Honey gave me anywhere from 1-5%.

eBay offer about 1-4% referral. Honey has only ever given me 1%. But eBay rates vary depending on category. Probably the stuff I buy when I am not bothering loading a referral link myself is in the lower % category because it is just random crap, not like I buy car parts or any other high value item from eBay.

They are providing a service at the end of the day. They have to take a cut to cover running costs, salary, profit.
You can sign up for most of these programs yourself and self refer ever time you checkout. I do it for Amazon, AliExpress and eBay all the time.
It takes time. You have to signup for the service and the payout can take months to years depending on how much business you do via them.

I would not have gotten that 12% via BitDefender or EaseUS without Honey. There were other sites as well that you would not have thought they would offer referral, but they do.
Loving my 2% cashback from Farnell right now with the amount of business I do with them at work. 
Pays for stupid hobbies...

It is not a scam. People are just uninformed on how it works and content creators are just stupid.

[wilfred]

It is not a scam. People are just uninformed on how it works and content creators are just stupid.

OK. I didn't realise at first that you participated in some way. But you focus too much on affiliate links and programs which are fine by me and not really at issue.

It is a scam none-the-less when Honey converts affiliate links to benefit themselves and when they coerce suppliers to cooperate with them or else have their affiliate links/coupons set aside and hence don't necessarily give the customers buying stuff the best available couple discount.

The way you describe and defend it reminds me of a Ponzi scheme. This isn't one but still it is a scam as were Ponzi schemes.

[Ranayna]

When i first heard about Honey in a YT Video (i don't remember if that was before or after the aquisition by Paypal) i looked into it a bit, trying to find the catch.
Back then i was not able to find out how they make their money (though i have to admit i only looked on their webpage), and overall it *felt* dodgy.

I came back to one of my guiding principles: If a service does not cost any money, you are not the customer, you are the product. Combined with "noone has something to give away for free" (Offtopic: I am looking for a catchy english translation for the common german idiom "Niemand hat etwas zu verschenken")

I avoided it and never looked back. That it is now to be revealed to be at least in part scammy does not surprise me at all.

The big issue with Honey is, if i understand the kerfluffle correctly, is not as much that it does not properly pay it's partners.
The addon apparently removes *any* present affiliate tag and replaces it with it's own, wether it found a discount or not. So it affects the income of unrelated content creators that get their legtimiate affiliate tags removed. Added to that are some issues with their promise of always finding the biggest discounts, which is apparently untrue as well.

[kjr18]

When i first heard about Honey in a YT Video (i don't remember if that was before or after the aquisition by Paypal) i looked into it a bit, trying to find the catch.
Back then i was not able to find out how they make their money (though i have to admit i only looked on their webpage), and overall it *felt* dodgy.

I came back to one of my guiding principles: If a service does not cost any money, you are not the customer, you are the product. Combined with "noone has something to give away for free" (Offtopic: I am looking for a catchy english translation for the common german idiom "Niemand hat etwas zu verschenken")

I avoided it and never looked back. That it is now to be revealed to be at least in part scammy does not surprise me at all.

The big issue with Honey is, if i understand the kerfluffle correctly, is not as much that it does not properly pay it's partners.
The addon apparently removes *any* present affiliate tag and replaces it with it's own, wether it found a discount or not. So it affects the income of unrelated content creators that get their legtimiate affiliate tags removed. Added to that are some issues with their promise of always finding the biggest discounts, which is apparently untrue as well.

There is one more thing that someone mentioned: These affiliate links track how much traffic they generate, and it's tied to sponsored content creator. If company sees that links bring more business, they could sponsor content creator again, but if Honey hijacks those links, companies see that those links do not bring any profit to them, because of that content creator won't be sponsored in future.

[SeanB]

When i first heard about Honey in a YT Video (i don't remember if that was before or after the aquisition by Paypal) i looked into it a bit, trying to find the catch.
Back then i was not able to find out how they make their money (though i have to admit i only looked on their webpage), and overall it *felt* dodgy.

I came back to one of my guiding principles: If a service does not cost any money, you are not the customer, you are the product. Combined with "noone has something to give away for free" (Offtopic: I am looking for a catchy english translation for the common german idiom "Niemand hat etwas zu verschenken")

I avoided it and never looked back. That it is now to be revealed to be at least in part scammy does not surprise me at all.

The big issue with Honey is, if i understand the kerfluffle correctly, is not as much that it does not properly pay it's partners.
The addon apparently removes *any* present affiliate tag and replaces it with it's own, wether it found a discount or not. So it affects the income of unrelated content creators that get their legtimiate affiliate tags removed. Added to that are some issues with their promise of always finding the biggest discounts, which is apparently untrue as well.

The English phrase you are looking for is "there is no such thing as a free lunch", which is a common enough phrase in use.

[Ranayna]

The English phrase you are looking for is "there is no such thing as a free lunch", which is a common enough phrase in use.

Spot on. Yes, that conveys what i mean better. And of course i know that phrase. But since it is so different from the german equivalent i couldn't match them.

[Jackster]

When i first heard about Honey in a YT Video (i don't remember if that was before or after the aquisition by Paypal) i looked into it a bit, trying to find the catch.
Back then i was not able to find out how they make their money (though i have to admit i only looked on their webpage), and overall it *felt* dodgy.

I came back to one of my guiding principles: If a service does not cost any money, you are not the customer, you are the product. Combined with "noone has something to give away for free" (Offtopic: I am looking for a catchy english translation for the common german idiom "Niemand hat etwas zu verschenken")

I avoided it and never looked back. That it is now to be revealed to be at least in part scammy does not surprise me at all.

The big issue with Honey is, if i understand the kerfluffle correctly, is not as much that it does not properly pay it's partners.
The addon apparently removes *any* present affiliate tag and replaces it with it's own, wether it found a discount or not. So it affects the income of unrelated content creators that get their legtimiate affiliate tags removed. Added to that are some issues with their promise of always finding the biggest discounts, which is apparently untrue as well.

There is one more thing that someone mentioned: These affiliate links track how much traffic they generate, and it's tied to sponsored content creator. If company sees that links bring more business, they could sponsor content creator again, but if Honey hijacks those links, companies see that those links do not bring any profit to them, because of that content creator won't be sponsored in future.

Honey does not hijack the links.
The user goes to that website via the content creators link, and then honey opens up a new tab at the user's request which then loads their tracking link.

The referral system then grants the referral, typically to who ever was the last to link, in this case that would be Honey.

The sponsors can still see how many people visit the site from the content creators link.
But if the user has activated Honey, Honey will get the referral and share those funds with the user.

[krish2487]

The user goes to that website via the content creators link, and then honey opens up a new tab at the user's request which then loads their tracking link.

The referral system then grants the referral, typically to who ever was the last to link, in this case that would be Honey.

So.... man in the middle attack....
A rose by any other name and all...