DirectDeals.com offering bribe for good review?

[EmperorRob]

I got an e-mail today from DirectDeals.com. It said basically if I would go to this site and give them a 5 star review, they would give me some software for free. I would give them 5 stars anyway, but is this legal? It just seemed to make me suspicious.

Here's the e-mail (w/my name omitted of course)





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Free Software Giveaway

Dear Rob :

Thank you for your recent order from DirectDeals.com. We hope you were satisfied with our low price, quality of product, and service. If you feel that you were, we would greatly appreciate it if you would review us on www.nextag.com. Here is a link which will take you to the review page:

Click here to go to our Nextag.com review page

We would like to offer you a free piece of software from the list below once we see your excellent 5 star review posted to www.nextag.com. Once you have completed the review and you see that it has been posted on nextag, please email freesoftware@directdeals.com with


The username you used to post the review
The software you decided you want for free
Your customer number which is: *****************
The address where you want the software shipped
If you give us a particularly stellar review that provides a lot of in depth detail about your experience with DirectDeals.com, we will send you out 2 free pieces of software of your choice. Below is a list of the software available to you for free:


Intuit Quicken 2004 Deluxe (CD only)
Nero Express 6.0 Suite CD/DVD Burning Rom (oem)
Nero Express 5.5 CD/DVD Burning Rom OEM
Roxio Easy CD & DVD Creator 6.0 (OEM)
Microsoft Money 2004 Standard - OEM
Pinnacle Instant CD/DVD Burning Software 7.06 OEM
Symantec Norton SystemWorks 2003 Std OEM CD
Corel Wordperfect 11 & Quattro 11 OEM
Symantec PCAnywhere 10.0 - Host only (OEM)
Lotus SmartSuite Millennium 9.7 (OEM)
Intuit Quicken Lawyer 2003 Business Deluxe
Mavis Beacon Teaches Typing 15 Deluxe (CD)
Microsoft PS/2 Mouse - USED
Microsoft Bookshelf 2000 (OEM-CD)
World Book Encyclopedia 2004 OEM
Microsoft Money / Encarta / Works 2000 OEM (3 CDs)
CyberLink Power DVD 5.0 (OEM)
Encyclopedia Britannica 2003 Ready Reference CD
Corel Photo Paint 8 OEM

We appreciate your continued patronage and hope to earn your business in the future.

Sincerely,

DirectDeals.com

 

They can give away anything they want.

 

[crypticlogin]

Yeah, but they're basically undermining the purpose of customer reviews and the review site. It's not like they're giving you the software for ANY review, but in particular a 5 star review.

If it walks like a bribe, quacks like a bribe, uh... you get the idea.

 

[ClueLis]

Personally, I would give them a bad review for attempting to bribe me. It's not illegal, but I consider it highly unethical.

 

[Nitemare]

Wasn't neweggs giving away free stuff awhile back if you left them a good review on resellerratings.com?