Quote:
Originally Posted by Billi
Yes, it has not been necessary at all. Onyx and Pocketbook representatives are active here too, but they do it openly, without any disguise, everybody knows who they are.
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I bought an Astak Pocket Pro because of RobertB's advocacy. He had told everyone he was involved in promotions for the company; he obviously loved the ereaders and was happy to tell people why he thought they were awesome. He also took complaints seriously and offered to hand them off to someone who might be able to deal with them--didn't make promises that he'd get them fixed, and didn't try to pretend the users were doing something wrong.
There's nothing wrong with workers for a company promoting their products, or even doing it here; we're happy to see employees of ereader companies involved in the conversation. But there's something downright slimy about pretending to be a random person who just "discovered" the awesomeness of [product] and is dying to share it.
Also, if anyone bought a product because of their endorsement, and isn't happy with it, they may have grounds to sue Ectaco. Not revealing a commercial tie to a review could be
deceptive advertising; while most of the hype about blog and forum advertising has to do with reviewers getting free copies, employees of the company--who get directly paid for advertising--definitely have a motive to hide negative info and may be misleading potential customers.