Ethics of reviewing a camera provided free without disclosing it was received free

Adamsdaddy

Adamsdaddy

Young grasshopper
Feb 1, 2018
37
21
About 1 1/2 months ago I was contacted by a new Amazon seller who had read my review of a Yi Home indoor camera and they wanted me to review their camera. They sent me via PayPal the cost of the camera plus an extra $5 (they didn't pay attention when I told them a coupon had lowered the price). I finally got around to uploading my review (4/5 stars and I disclosed that I'd received the camera for free plus $5. The seller asked me to delete the sentence about the terms under which I received the camera and if I could upgrade the review to 5/5 stars. The seller said Amazon will suspend them as a seller if they read the comment that I was compensated to review the product. I called Amazon and they confirmed that the seller would be suspended for violating their seller agreement.

I ignored the seller's requests as unethical. On ipcamtalk Looney and others freely disclose when Andy sends them a camera - I appreciate their honesty and their critical reviews.

I don't think I'll be getting another free camera anytime soon to review!
 
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Amazon is a test bed for both Consumers and Temporary Start-up companies, choose wisely ;)
 
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Adamsdaddy said:
About 1 1/2 months ago I was contacted by a new Amazon seller who had read my review of a Yi Home indoor camera and they wanted me to review their camera. They sent me via PayPal the cost of the camera plus an extra $5 (they didn't pay attention when I told them a coupon had lowered the price). I finally got around to uploading my review (4/5 stars and I disclosed that I'd received the camera for free plus $5. The seller asked me to delete the sentence about the terms under which I received the camera and if I could upgrade the review to 5/5 stars. The seller said Amazon will suspend them as a seller if they read the comment that I was compensated to review the product. I called Amazon and they confirmed that the seller would be suspended for violating their seller agreement.

I ignored the seller's requests as unethical. On ipcamtalk Looney and others freely disclose when Andy sends them a camera - I appreciate their honesty and their critical reviews.

I don't think I'll be getting another free camera anytime soon to review!
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To be frank, I don't believe in the word free; there's always a string attached, and that is karma. As humans, its a psychological mentality to be biased on things provided without cost. And then its always desirable to leave positive feedback and say great things about a seller.

The correct way to review a camera provided "free" is to review it with full heart and honesty (if its trash, its trash, and I mean it). When another customer wants to buy that camera (in-spite of negative feedback), the seller should provide that review-unit to the new customer at a discounted price; the seller should be held accountable for arranging shipping the unit from the reviewer to the other customer. This way, the new customer acknowledges that its a low-performance camera, but still has plans of deploying it because of cost, ego, and other reasons.

There's a ton of crap that comes from overseas, in recent news, some products, especially plastic toys have been known to contain heavy traces of carcinogens / metals. One needs to think twice before buying in this fashion; wouldn't it be nice to buy a device that can instantly give you the chemical composition of what you buy (instead of relying on the FTC, FCC, and FDA)? :lol:

Hope you all know what I mean ;)
 
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A product, "provided in exchange for an honest review", is still compensation for the review and IMO presents a certain unspoken pressure to provide a good review. The Amazon Vine program does that and you see many reviews stating as such...and often the reviews are 4&5\5 stars. The people that make it into the Vine program also continue to get more products to review, so IMO it's kind of hard to accept them all as honest. If the reviewer's comments over a series of products were mostly negative for example, they likely would not continue to receive future products from that mfg or seller even if this was never stated as part of the terms.
The nice thing about being part of such a forum as this though is those who contribute regularly and provide both fact and opinion with passion and devote a lot of their free time here make this place feel more like family and not an unidentifiable stranger on the net with unknown intent. Thus I tend to lend much more credence to product reviews and opinions here than say, an Amazon or even a well known tech web site.
Good for you @Adamsdaddy for taking the high road!
 
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