Honey (owned by paypal) is a massive scam. Who would have guessed?

[Belly Buster]

[JeffDime]

This is fucking insane. If this isn’t criminal behavior then what is? I can’t even imagine how much PayPal has stolen with this. Unbelievable. People need to watch this video.

[The Boz]

Definitely a scam but zero sympathy for “influencers” getting screwed. They are some of the worst people on Earth.

[1dollarboxcar]

so the scammers got scammed...

[JeffDime]

Definitely a scam but zero sympathy for “influencers” getting screwed. They are some of the worst people on Earth.

Boz I agree with you that I don’t have much, if at all, sympathy for these influencers. They even make a good amount of money doing a sponsorship for Honey on these videos in the first place. The consumer was misled that they were getting “the best” deal. While they weren’t getting the best deal, it doesn’t look like they were getting ripped off.

So in essence this is what makes Honey/Paypal scheme so diabolical. The lack of “victims” to truly care about. So although what PayPal did was beyond disgraceful, they likely will get through this.

I remember this story about a company that handled advertisements for podcasts not paying out 4 Million bucks. This was posted over a year ago by Coffeezilla and I have seen 0 follow-up. Not a lot of sympathy out there for rich YouTubers.

[Dan Druff]

I became aware of Honey through Ben Shapiro. He was advertising it several times a week for awhile.

Shapiro is known to advertise things without vetting them carefully. I doubt he personally looks into any of this, and leaves it up to his buddy/co-CEO Jeremy Boering, who has always been on the reckless/arrogant side.

I guess this explains why Honey isn't advertised on Shapiro's show anymore.

For a short time they were advertising MyBookie, which had just screwed over Bart Hanson. We had Bart on radio about this.

Anyway, I was so irritated seeing these MyBookie ads that I got a hold of someone fairly high up at Daily Wire through a mutual friend, and explained to them how shady this company was. I also linked this person to various negative reviews of MyBookie. I closed with something like, "I have a lot of respect for Ben, and I wouldn't want to see his good name sullied by associating himself with a company like this, which cheats people."

Apparently that had an impact, and the ads immediately disappeared.

Most of these coupon code applying apps are shitty, anyway. They just do the equivalent of googling for codes in the background, and then you have to sit there while it tries them all. Also, you often don't even get the best code, because it misses some. Also, if you're one of those people who cares about codes being used for which you're not authorized, this will definitely be occurring. Furthermore, you may not be aware of what code is being used, so it can be embarrassing if you show up in person for a product/service and they make reference to your affiliation. Imagine not even knowing what you're supposed to be affiliated with!

Capital One has a similar service, and it constantly pressures me to add it to my browser. I always decline. Tried it for like 1 day and it was awful.

[Sanlmar]

Watch your tone Druff or scammy PayPal will seize your funds.

[Dan Druff]

Okay, so I watched the video, and I have more to say.

I mostly agree with the guy, but one part of his video bugs me. He complained that Honey allowed partner companies to restrict certain codes from being used via their suggestions, and that was somehow screwing the consumer.

Well, not really.

Not every code is something you're supposed to use. Let's say Caesars Entertainment is offering a discount on stays with Marriott, but only to employees. (I'm making this up, btw, as there's no such partnership.) Let's say that you get this discount by using the code CAESARS30 on the purchase page for Marriott. If Honey were to find that code, and use it for the general public, that would be against the terms of the partnership, and in fact the customer's code could be revoked if this were to be caught (since it was only for Caesars employees). So it would make sense for Marriott to have a way to prevent CAESARS30 from showing up through Honey.

The guy in the video was complaining about the above as if it's shady and scammy, but it's really not. However, I do agree with him that Honey's claim that it "scoured the internet for the very best deal" was a lie, if it is excluding these codes. The language should have been more accurate, such as "We are scouring the internet for the best available deal open to the public." But they didn't want to say that, as it would make Honey appear less valuable.

When I saw Honey advertised on Shapiro, I knew there had to be a catch, which is why I never installed it. The Capital One version I figured was just a service of the huge bank in order to keep customers happy, and thus I was less suspicious (though ultimately uninstalled it anyway, because it sucked). Honey, however, was a different animal. I asked myself, "If it's free, and if it's simply grabbing coupon codes from the internet, how are they making money?" I figured it was some kind of data harvesting scheme, and I wasn't interested. I also figured that, like Capital One, it would often fail to find the best codes.



One other thing the guy said wasn't completely accurate. He said that Honey was always poaching the affiliate codes, but that's not true. Many coupon codes ARE affiliate codes. That is, it's impossible for Honey to get credit for the sale if the coupon they're using is also what gives the third party their commission. Honey can only get commission if:

1) It's their own coupon code
-or-
2) There's no coupon code (or at least they claim there isn't one), and they insert their affiliate code into the URL/cookies
-or-
3) The coupon code is publicly promoted by the company, and not attached to any particular partner. Then Honey can use their affiliate code while still providing the coupon.

The guy in the video didn't explain this, and just made it look like Honey was poaching the commission 100% of the time, which doesn't appear to be true.

With that said, it was still an interesting and informative video, and it doesn't surprise me that a now-subsidiary of PayPal is acting shady.

[aayjay]

anyone ever use honey? did it save you any money?

I remember getting spammed for Honey by some youtuber like 5 yrs ago and so download it and try it and it didnt do anything i saved 0 dollars after like 1 week of my typical heavy online shopping, so i deleted it and just forgot about it. But I deleted it because i dont like having programs or extensions or apps or anything on any of my systems if im not using it, clean and lean and thankfully been pretty ok as far as cyber attacks, so i thought it sucked for the week i used it and that was it, I also thought it was probably data harvest type thing like Druff stated, wasnt worth worrying about.