Honey, owned by PayPal, is a popular browser extension – with 19 million users on Chrome alone– However, the shopping tool has been accused of some extremely shady practices, including depriving users of the lowest online prices and blocking creator affiliate links to deprive them of revenue. The scandal came to light through a tell-all video posted by MegaLagwho calls it “the biggest influencer scam of all time” based on an investigation that has apparently been ongoing for several years. During the course of the investigation, MegaLag claims to have reviewed numerous documents, emails and online advertisements, spoken to victims and personally encountered Honey’s methods.
What is “The Honey Trap” influencer scam?
Honey is a browser extension that provides you with relevant discount codes when shopping online and automatically applies them to your checkout price, saving you money instantly. The idea is that by using the extension you don’t have to search for coupons and codes, and several influencer video promotions describe this as free money. But Honey seems too good to be true: In tests on multiple sites, MegaLag was able to manually find working coupon codes when Honey couldn’t find any, or better coupon codes than the ones Honey automatically applied. Additionally, Honey does not appear to add these codes to its database when larger discounts are applied at checkout.
This is how Honey supposedly closes deals with retailers by giving them control over the discount codes shoppers can access. MegaLag found further evidence in Honey’s own FAQs and in a podcast Honey produced to promote its services to online businesses. In certain cases, users are limited in their ability to use coupon codes when Honey is installed.
The practice of limiting the coupon codes users can use obviously does not fit with Honey’s promise to “search the internet for the best coupons,” as it claims on his homepage at the time of writing. “When we find working codes, we automatically apply the best one to your cart,” says Honey. The extension will certainly sometimes find you codes – but not always the best ones.
It appears that the extension also has an impact on revenue sharing. Honey has been heavily promoted in the past by a long list of online influencers, including MrBeast and Marques Brownlee. According to MegaLag, the Honey extension deletes affiliate link cookies from these influencers when people click on products on their YouTube videos and other websites, which would mean the influencers are not paid for the recommendation. Instead, Honey would get her commission. This allegedly happens even when no discounts are provided and when users opt in to the PayPal Rewards cashback program: the original affiliate link data is processed and Honey collects the bonus. In one example, Honey takes a $35 commission on a NordVPN subscription, leaves nothing to the original affiliate, and then returns $0.89 of that to the customer as a cashback reward.
In an email to MegaLag, Honey confirmed that the extension works this way because Honey ultimately guides the customer to the best possible deal, not the influencer. The extension “follows industry rules and practices, including last-click attribution,” said PayPal’s Josh Criscoe The edge. To date, PayPal has not commented on the practice of restricting access to voucher codes.
MegaLag promises more videos soon, so there will be more to come – but Honey’s reputation has already taken a serious hit. It seems that it would be better for you to look for discount codes yourself.
