The Daily Background

The technology blog Gizmodo just published an email from a person it says is a Belkin employee who wishes to remain anonymous. The email, reprinted in full below, alleges systemic wrongdoing on the part of corporate higher-ups, who the person says encourage dodgy marketing tactics for products which the employee feels are of poor quality:

While never mentioned in an “official” policy, for years it has been pressed upon ALL Belkin employees to do whatever is needed to get good product reviews and good press. Everything from sending blog writers a device with custom firmware that hides known bugs yet claiming it to be official release firmware, faking hardware logo certifications (specifically Apple and MSFT), releasing blatantly inaccurate data from test results making our devices look superior to others, to placing “tailored” reviews of our products into places visible to consumers (as reported Amazon, etc), as well as writing poor reviews of competitors products. In the past there have even monthly awards given to Business Units who achieved the most positive reviews, regardless as to the products rate of customer returns. The concept being that even if a consumer has been mislead by a review or data on the box, the chance that they will return the product is very little. Infact, our products are such junk, when an internal survey was done, it was found that the majority of Belkin employees purchased competitors products for home use, even with ours being offered free, as they are of such poor quality.

We have paid magazines for positive reviews, made custom devices or fixtures for use at trade shows to ensure quality demos. One such example would be a fixture that runs hidden cable to a TV or audio receiver, yet claiming the broadcast is coming from a wireless transmitter, or through a USB hub.

This has been going on for years. Over the past several years office moral has been dwindling, as it seems to be a common feeling that the company is clearly in a death spiral. In the past month over 10% of the workforce has been laid off (including all QC) as profits have dropped significantly. Further more, the company has been trying to activly back out of paying for the brand new HQ being built in L.A., however they are unable to do so, stretching the companies limited cash even further. Recently, the purchasing of pens, paper clips and post it notes was halted in order to save money. In fact, the company has lost so much money, it was announced in November that a booth at CES 09 would be economically impossible.

Two of the three co-founders of the company quit over the poor direction Belkin as taken, over 70% of the employees in certain business units have quit. It is commonly accepted that current CEO Mark Reynoso is running everything into the ground, while increasing his salary year after year.

This only scratches the surface of the shady tactics and slimy methods Belkin uses. One thing I will say is that this is not the fault of the employees. The average employee makes a very honest attempt at releasing high quality products, however, upper management generally pushes employees so hard to release more products at a faster rate, with a lower production cost, that it is impossible to produce a quality product. It is very common upper management to force a product to be released even though major concerns about the product are well known.

It’s worth saying that I have no information personally to corroborate any of this, although it certainly is an interesting development.

Oh, and on a personal note, I just did an interview with an e-commerce publication for a story they’re doing on this Belkin pay-for-reviews situation (I’ll link to it when published). One of the questions I was asked, and one of the questions that I imagine my regular readers (who are used to me blogging about politics) might be wondering was, what got you so interested in this story anyway?

The answer is that it has to do with consumer advocacy, and as a progressive, I take these issues pretty seriously. Whether it’s with stuff like net neutrality, or a company’s employees acting in a way to deceive consumers, this is stuff that people interested in protecting the little guy should be concerned with.

Filed under: Z-TDB Blog