Honey, which is owned by PayPal, is a popular browser extension—with 19 million users on Chrome alone—but the shopping tool is being accused of some seriously shady practices, including keeping users away from the lowest online prices and blocking creator affiliate links to deprive them of revenue. The scandal surfaced through a comprehensive video posted by MegaLag, who calls it “the biggest influencer scam of all time” based on an investigation that’s apparently been ongoing for several years. MegaLag claims to have reviewed masses of documents, emails, and online ads in the course of the investigation, as well as having spoken to victims and personally falling foul of Honey’s methods.
What is “the Honey trap” influencer scam?
Honey is a browser extension meant to give you any relevant discount codes available when you shop online and automatically apply them to your checkout price, instantly saving you money. The idea is that using the extension means you don’t have to hunt for coupons and codes, and in several influencer video promotions, it’s described as free money. But Honey seems too good to be true: In tests across multiple sites, MegaLag was able to manually find working coupon codes when Honey couldn’t find any, or better coupon codes than the ones automatically Honey applied. What’s more, when bigger discounts are applied at checkout, Honey doesn’t appear to add these codes to its database.
This is allegedly how Honey strikes deals with retailers, by giving them control over the discount codes that shoppers can access. MegaLag found further evidence in Honey’s own FAQs and in a podcast produced by Honey, which was intended to promote its services to online businesses. In certain cases, users are limited in what coupon codes they can use if Honey is installed.
The practice of limiting coupon codes that users can use obviously doesn’t fit with Honey’s promise to “search for the internet’s best coupons,” which is the claim on its homepage at the time of writing. “If we find working codes, we’ll automatically apply the best one to your cart,” Honey says. The extension will certainly find you codes, sometimes—just not always the best ones.
It seems that the extension has an influence on revenue sharing too. Honey has been heavily promoted by a long list of online influencers in the past, including MrBeast and Marques Brownlee. According to MegaLag, the Honey extension deletes affiliate link cookies from these influencers when people click through to products from their YouTube videos and other sites, which would mean the influencers aren’t paid for the referral. Instead, Honey would get their commission. This allegedly happens even if no discounts are applied, and when users go for the PayPal Rewards cashback scheme too: The original affiliate link data is edited, and Honey pockets the bonus. In one example, Honey intercepts a $35 commission for a NordVPN subscription, leaving the original affiliate with nothing, then returns $0.89 of that back to the customer as cashback reward.
In an email to MegaLag, Honey confirmed this is how the extension works, as Honey ultimately directs the customer to the best possible deal, not the influencer. The extension “follows industry rules and practices, including last-click attribution” PayPal’s Josh Criscoe told The Verge. As yet, PayPal hasn’t commented on the practice of limiting access to coupon codes.
MegaLag is promising additional videos soon, so there’s more to come on this—but Honey’s reputation has already taken a serious hit. It seems you might be better off trying to find discount codes yourself.
