PayPal Honey extension has again "featured" flag in Chrome web store

I still don't understand why most people got so angry about this, the extension does what it says it does: search for coupons in some kind of database. It seldom works but you don't lose much by trying.

The ones getting "scammed" out of a few referral sales are the ones advertising shitty products with no care whatsoever. Maybe they should have read the fine prints? Maybe the real lesson here is to do your due diligence before pushing garbage products to your fans?

It also lies to its users - they will "affiliate" with stores and the stores can then choose which coupons are shown, so you don't actually get the best coupon.

Even if it's not a huge deal in the scheme of things it's definitely a case of false advertising

> does what it says it does

But it doesn't. What it says it does (or at least used to, maybe they've changed it) is "find the best coupons" for you in that database. Instead, they collude with merchants, and do not necessarily give you the best coupons they're aware of, or even falsely claim they do not have any coupons in their database at all.

> The ones getting "scammed" out of a few referral sales are the ones advertising shitty products with no care whatsoever

You're unable to know this / this is an opinion.

> Maybe they should have read the fine prints?

What fine prints are you referring to?

> Maybe the real lesson here is to do your due diligence before pushing garbage products to your fans?

In the original reporting there was another similar extension featured that did not use to do this, but has since started engaging in this same behavior. For all anyone knows, this could have happened to Honey as well.

I think I watched a video that showed the case when the user was indeed better off NOT using the extension. If you followed an affiliate link that came with a discount for a product that Honey didn't have one for they would still remove the affiliation, thus making you lose money.

Sounds like you are taking MegaLags’ video without a grain of salt.

Honey does not touch Amazon affiliate links (you can test this) and yet many enraged influencers just use Amazon affiliate links.

Did you ever test for yourself to see that Honey was not finding you the best coupon? You can test this too. There’s a reason the second video is taking so long.

Yes, some codes are requested to be removed by merchants. You’ll find that these typically are of the friends and family variety with steep discounts. In my experience, if the coupon is public, Honey will try to use it.

> Did you ever test for yourself to see that Honey was not finding you the best coupon? You can test this too. There’s a reason the second video is taking so long.

No. I further did not examine the extension's codebase or followed back its entire revision history. I also do not have access to their infrastructure, particularly their database of coupon codes, and any server side code. I also did not read through the multiple class action lawsuit documents. Not only that, but I also did not perform deeper examination of all the evidence provided. This would include:

- I did not reproduce his tests

- I did not listen to the hours of podcasts mentioned

- I did not independently research his claims

- I did not reach out to merchants for comments

- I did not try to gain insider information

- etc.

Instead, as you noticed, I'm discussing the points published by MegaLag and others, under the assumption that they're true, which the OP didn't claim otherwise - they instead were not even familiar with what was published seemingly. So whether what was published or not is actually true is actually a separate concern from my perspective.