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.

Maybe MN could recommend a brand of gin and tonic?

I hope they'd get a good percentage deal on it.

No they're not random choices but the comments aren't always that helpful or quotable - so the team will very occasionally try to get a quote that explains why eg a gazebo might be a great category product to own (like they're easy to fold and store or put up etc) And to reiterate this occurs on a tiny fraction of our recommended products. But I agree that we need to be clear when this does occur.

Why that gazebo?

MI5 here. Glad someone is taking this matter seriously enough for the both of us!

Category endorsement? So just because I like my cat, does that mean I endorse all cats? 🤔 That's the only category I can think of where that would possibly be true.

I don't like all fridges.
I don't like all pop-up gazebos.
I don't like all lawnmowers.
I don't like all tablets.
I don't like all washing lines.

I'm not a real parent*, so you wouldn't want to use my recommendations anyway.

*not of human children

So if not a random choice
what drives the decision?

the percentage of money they get from the affiliate links. On another thread a year or so ago MN stated this is between 3-8% of the product cost.

below, they talk about how they get hundreds of approaches a day to do this. I’d assume those with the higher % become the brands that the random MN editor then ‘likes’ and recommends.

www.skimlinks.com/resources/case-studies/mumsnet-case-study/

Which is what many of us assumed. It's business. But Justine's post totally obfuscates that.

Technically there are a number of examples of times when we don't earn commission - Amazon, for instance, has a 24 hour cookie window, so if someone clinks a link and adds something to their basket but doesn't buy it for 24 hours then we don't earn commission. And if we promote a brand via editorial content (always labelled 'in partnership with' etc) then we typically don't earn a commission.

I'm not trying to suggest we're not generally trying to earn an affiliate commission when we send out product recommendations in newsletters. The point is we don't pick products on that basis. We choose things that Mnetters have said they like and we think others will too.

I don't think the OP questioned the existence of affiliate links at an existential level. It's okay to want to make money off that - I doubt MN Premium fees pay the bills.

But using quotes that are about a different product than the one you're advertising is wrong.

But who said they liked that particular gazebo (in order for it to be chosen for promotion)? What was unusable/unprintable about their recommendation(s) that meant you had to rely on the OP’s generic comments from 8 years ago?

But you're NOT choosing those specific "things that Mnetters have said they like" - you're choosing different things! It's not like 'this jumper comes in red and blue', it's 'this is a merino jumper and this is a polyester jumper'. They are not like-for-like products.

I think what may not be clear is that we don't tend to negotiate commissions on a product by product basis - there are affiliate networks and most online products are covered by them. So we don't really think too hard about commission rates. We really are trying to surface the products or categories that users are liking in any particular week.

So on this occasion can we correctly assume you were trying to earn affiliate income, hence promoting the product and illegally attributing quotes to it to make it seem more attractive?

trying to claim you don’t always earn income just because sometimes you miss out on a technicality is a bit disingenuous.

In any particular week? I mean… you’re a bit late to the party, I posted that 8 years ago. I don’t think I’m being difficult here, the explanations are tying things in knots.

That's not the case. We occasionally might focus on a seasonal category - eg it's a heatwave so lets recommend the fans our users have said they like this week, but in general we're surfacing whats been discussed in the previous week.

typically 40% or above