Comment on LegalEagle Suing PayPal's Honey
FundMECFSResearch@lemmy.blahaj.zone 4 days ago
Can someone ELI5 what honey was actually doing?
Everyone else is only talking about the scummy affiliate revenue stealing, but that’s been public info for a while.
The more alarming stuff is that they partner with businesses to manage the coupon codes shown on Honey. If a business doesn’t want consumers to have discounts below a certain percentage, they can remove those coupons from Honey. This means that Honey no longer does the thing that it’s advertised to do, and they’re getting paid affiliate revenue after lying to consumers.
That was my assumption all along IMO. Any time a coupon company gets big, it’ll end up becoming an advertising platform, because there’s a lot more money in that than saving people money, especially if you make people think they’re saving money.
That’s why I don’t use Honey or any other coupon service, unless I’m actually about to buy something specific and looking for a discount (e.g. I’m happy with the price, but I’d be happier with a 10% discount).
Here’s the best way I’ve seen it illustrated:
Imagine walking into a physical retail store, something like Best Buy. You want to buy a TV. A blue shit salesman talks to you for awhile, helping you pick out the TV you want with the features you like. He says “Okay, so take this slip to the register, pay for it there and they’ll bring out the TV to your car.” The slip has the salesman’s name on it so he gets a commission on the sale.
On your way to the register, a slimy guy in a suit says “Hey let me see that sales ticket, maybe I’ve got a coupon for that TV, save you some money.” So you hand him the sales slip, he says “Yeah, here’s one for $2 off on this $900 television.” And he hands you that coupon plus a sales ticket…not the original one, another one with HIS name on it instead of the salesman. The slimy guy in the suit is stealing the salesman’s commission.
Now imagine doing this with software on the internet and you’ve got a class action lawsuit from Legal Eagle.
The reason so many people are mad is sometimes the suit guy even comes back saying, sorry man didn’t find a discount, but here is your slip. Meanwhile he has changed the slip and added his name and would get the commission without doing anything.
I think the folks suing are going to be the ones whose commissions were stolen. I’m kinda hoping someone gets their head sewn to the carpet over this, it’s a very business major thing to have done.
I’m sure, I was pointing out why even as a customer you should be mad
My problem here, and I don’t mean to victim blame but I don’t understand why anybody thought Honey had a business model that was trustworthy. Most people would see through the slimy guy in your example, so why would they install a slimy guy in their browser? Why would people take sponsorship from a slimy guy? Why would they read our copy that tells kids to “install it on every computer in the house”?
Nobody asked themselves “How does Honey make money out of this?” because at the very least they were going to be data scraping! That much was obvious.
It’s simple, Honey connects you with coupons, which drives you to store B instead of store A, and Honey makes a commission. If you follow a different affiliate link, and Honey gives you a coupon, they should share the commission with the affiliate.
That’s how it should work. But instead, Honey just hijacks the commission.
They’d replace affiliate link cookies with their own. So if you’re watching a makeup tutorial and you use their referral code but then use Honey to look for deals, Honey takes the commission instead of the person actually doing the work.
It’s like if the finance person at a car lot decided to take everyone’s commissions because they touched the paperwork last.
They’d replace affiliate link cookies with their own
Practically every coupon site does this too though, as do other coupon extensions.
They should also be sued. They should merely add their own, not replace what’s there.
Lying and stealing
Who did they steal from? How did they steal? I never used them but didn’t they provide coupon codes or smth?
They stole referrals. I’ll explain like you’re 10, it’s a bit much for a 5 year old.
Let’s say you watch a video with a link to a product in the description. Normally, when you click that link, a referral code is embedded so the person who made the video gets a referral fee when you make a purchase.
Honey would remove those referral codes and replace it with their own.
like you’re 10
Then uses embedded and referral. Not sure I know many ten year olds that would get those meanings. 😊
EncryptKeeper@lemmy.world 4 days ago
Using browser exploits to steal commissions from affiliate links without even the user knowing.
Then if you used PayPal checkout, they would also “find” you discounts but swap them out with lower ones and pocket the difference. For example you buy something for $10 and they find a 30% off coupon, but tell you it’s a 10% off coupon. You go to checkout with PayPal and they charge your card $9 but only pay the merchant $7 and pocket the other $2.