MN have used my quote to promote a product I’ve never bought 🤔

[Wondermoomin]

AIBU to expect MN recommendations, where they quote a poster/member, to be genuine?

I like being able to rely on recommendations in MN swears by and other emails. I excitedly opened an email with the subject “Big bargains for our most loyal Mumsnetters” wondering what MN could make me buy this time (I should probably get other hobbies).

Imagine my surprise to see my own username quoted there with a recommendation! Imagine my further surprise when I realised it was a post I wrote almost 8 years ago, and it was being used directly under a specific product to give the impression I was recommending it - and I’ve never even owned that particular thing mine was more expensive.

I don’t like posts being misrepresented as a recommendation for a specific product. It makes me question the credibility of other MN recommendations.

Hoping I’ll manage to attach screenshots.

PS my gazebo broke but I’ve replaced it. Still not with the brand I supposedly recommended according to the MN email.

From my elevated position I would direct you to the post where the bona fides of MNEditor were confirmed and explained

“high standards”? 🤔 not really 😂. Just normal standards really.

So if the recommends are not based on actual reviews and also the brands don’t pay for them. Just who is actually recommending these products? Is it just some MN editors’ personal opinion? Or is it that if advertisers spend on advertising they will get a recommend (technically not paying for the recommend). This gets weirder and weirder.

But there are multiple examples on this thread, the original example from this is not a stand alone event.

It took all of 3 minutes to find 4 examples just on one product type

“Thank you for holding us to high standards.”

comedy gold

Who recommends the products then? If it was MN users, then you’d have their quotes for your adverts, right?

I have previously bought from recommendations that they attribute to products.

you’ll never catch me twice @mumsnet 😳

Agree with your sentiments. It’s like “sorry, not sorry” or worse. You get that a lot these days with businesses generally I notice ….

I'm utterly confused now @JustineMumsnet. Why do you do this as a company? You're choosing random products, like a pop-up gazebo, out of nowhere, hunting through the site's history to find a quote about that brand of gazebo, then picking a generic quote about a gazebo, and then recommending that product? That's just bizarre.

If you've had a thread and loads of recommendations for the same product came out of it, then that makes total sense and, like many people, I'd always assumed that was what the emails were doing (plus affiliate link, but fair enough). But this whole thing makes no sense at all as you describe.

Hi Wondermoomin — we recommend thousands of products each year, and in 99% of cases, the quote is directly related to the specific product we're featuring. Occasionally, though, we use a more general quote about the benefits of a type of product rather than a specific brand — as in your example — and in those instances, we absolutely need to be clearer about what’s happening every single time. And I promise we will.

Surprise surprise at that "sorry not sorry"
same old same old

Yep, everywhere I go!

So to be clear…..

MM promote products that no-one at all has recommended….and pretend they’ve been recommended by MN users… via slicing people’s words on old threads up… in order to make money from affiliate sales?

Just to be crystal clear, can you confirm this?

if so, this is shocking and likely illegal

I did. Glad you used it. 😊

So is it just coincidence that posters happened to check things that were in the 1%?

The company offer them money through affiliate links. So they don’t ’pay’ for the recommend but it’s the same outcome. MN make money from it.

Sometimes links are posted on site and we don't have any affiliate relationship (so we don't earn a commission) and sometimes we do.

Yep. They’re digging themselves further in. Just coming clean would look less bad.

Why do you go to all that bother if there’s no profit in it? Seems out of character for MN

And are MN themselves posting said links that don’t earn commission - or do you mean users post links on the site. Because that’s a different thing and your statement could mean that

I'd get it if that were the case - I've said myself I always assumed these were affiliate links.

But @JustineMumsnet seems to be suggesting they are not, which is why i'm confused.

She says "Sometimes we earn commission on sales via links, but our email picks are always based on organic reviews from the Mumsnet community", so sometimes they don't? So sometimes they are genuinely sharing a product that people have raved about, and not monetising that even through one of the open affiliate programmes that you or I could sign up to, and sometimes they are offered an affiliate link to something random they have to hunt for quotes on?

I'm feeling my own need for a G&T now to be honest.

Crossed posting with Justine's own clarification. If it can be called that.