There are a few lines that hold up to scrutiny in tech. “If it’s free, you’re the product” and “if it seems too good to be true, it probably is”. A recent YouTube video from MegaLag proves this is true for Honey. Honey is a “free” web browser extension (Chrome extension, Firefox extension etc) promoted by influencers to you, the consumer. But MegaLag investigation has found a bunch of shady practices that are costing you money.
What is Honey (the web browser extension)?
Honey was founded in 2012 before it got leaked on Reddit and went viral. By 2014 the extension had grown to over 900,000 users. No wonder.
Online shopping was also growing during this period and discount codes were emerging as a powerful tool for online stores to use. Discount codes simply let companies give generic or personalised discounts to customers to encourage a sale.
The promise to customers was so simple. Install Honey and you’ll always get the best deal. Honey would apply discount codes even if you missed them. Something that’s happened to me before and something that’s super annoying.
Honey went on to raise millions of dollars in funding as the idea grew. Funding that PayPal saw, buying the company in 2020 for $4 billion and renaming the app PayPal Honey.
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Why Honey is Bad for Consumers
While the promise of Honey is simple, in reality the extension was misleading customers, to the benefit of businesses and Honey. This is what MegaLag found out in his investigation.
Much of the promotion around PayPal Honey was about you always getting the best deal just by having the extension installed. Honey would always have the latest and best discount codes, so why bother searching the internet for them yourself.
Well I’ve worked in many ecommerce companies and I can tell you discount codes cause as many problems as they solve. Every time a discount code is created the same conversation happens.
“Okay we’re creating a 50% off code for existing customers, but what if this leaks on Reddit?”.
The idea of PayPal Honey is that if a discount code leaks and is working, Honey will pick it up and make sure any customer with the extension gets that discount, even if the company selling didn’t really want that to happen.
But then PayPal Honey started partnering with businesses. This means businesses would offer Honey specific discounts, like “HONEY10” to give 10% off. MegaLag’s video shows examples where the Honey extension would promote the 10% off discount and ignore bigger discount codes.
Now the extension that promised to save you money was costing you money by giving you a false sense of security and mislead you with smaller discounts.
Influencers Also Getting Caught Out By Honey
A lot of MegaLag’s investigation doesn’t focus on consumers at all. It focuses on influencers and specifically influencers that have promoted Honey like Linus Tech Tips and Marques Brownlee.
In a pretty technical deep dive, MegaLag shows us how Honey steals the credit for sales from influencers and platforms that use affiliate marketing.
Affiliate marketing is super common, we use it here at Goosed. Basically when we like a product we’ll recommend some places you can buy it. If one of those places you can buy from has an affiliate program we’ll use a special link to the product on that site. You don’t pay anything extra but this link means we get a tiny percentage of the sale for sending you over to that shop.
We haven’t seen this ourselves but what MegaLag shows in his video is pretty wild. When customers click affiliate links from a YouTube or a media outlet like ourselves and they have the Honey extension installed, through some behind the scenes programming magic, Honey reattributes the sale to itself, taking the credit from the influencer or platform that did all the work.
I’m not going into the nitty gritty of this part even though it’s the meat of MegaLag video. I am not on a personal mission to protect a revenue stream for Goosed. I’m more annoyed that Honey is mislead consumers with lowball discount codes to protect businesses.
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Should You Uninstall Honey Browser Extension?
I’ve just uninstalled Honey but I was probably going to anyway. It hardly ever comes up with any actual discount codes for me and is a waste of space on my browser toolbar. But this video was the final straw. When good ideas get bought out by big companies for big money the consumer rarely benefits.
Honey was a great idea in it’s early days. But PayPal Honey has become a trojan horse. A trojan horse where I’m not entirely sure who’s losing out most, businesses, influencers and other outlets or you, the consumer.
The only thing I know for sure is that if you want the best deals all the time you’re better off doing some research instead of relying on just Honey.
MegaLag’s Honey Video
Watch the full video here. It’s a bit over 20 minutes but it shows the dark side of online business. As I said at the start if something seems too good to be true your defences should be on high alert.
Also in one part of the video we see MrWhoseTheBoss promoting Honey while wearing a Huel t-shirt. Double whammy of warning!
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