Blogger Beware!

If you are hoping to review for an e-reader or have one to giveaway to fans, there is one brand you should be aware is unprofessional in their PR.

This is not to say anything about the actual product, because I have not reviewed it, but that the PR has been shown to be disorganized and dishonest.

To start, The company is KOBO.

I was first contacted by them a couple months back to do a review for two of their e-readers. I was so excited when I got the pitch in my email! In fact, I called a close bloggy friend of mine and gushed like a 10 year old girl with free Justin Beiber tickets! I had long wanted to review for an e-reader and was so happy when they contacted me to do so. I was told I would be sent the two e-readers to try out and write a feature on. NO WHERE in the original email was there anything about having to return them. In fact, it is clearly stated in my review policy that all products sent to me become property of myself and will not be returned. I figured if they were pitching me, they surely must have seen that.

I made plans to give one to my 9 year old daughter for Christmas after I was done reviewing it and I started looking for e-books to purchase.

In the coming weeks, I saw several bloggers in networking groups saying they were told they had to return them. This made me very angry. The readers themselves are worth less than $100 each and I have reviewed and kept products worth more than that several times. The reason I ask to keep the products I review is simple. It is usually my only compensation for the review, which is a permanent form of advertizing to a company. (I only review products I believe in and think would be a good fit for my readers). Blog reviews take a lot of time. First there is the time spent reviewing the actual product (several hours), Time spent writing the post and editing it (a couple hours), Time spent promoting the product on Social media (several days, if a giveaway is included this is more promotion over several days), and time spent taking photos and editing them (an hour or so).

Plus, the company gets a permanent link on my blog for future searches. I have products I reviewed a year ago that still get hits on them as people are discovering that blog reviews are reliable, honest and personable. In this particular case, it would also have been promoted the entire holiday shopping season as well and on my Holiday gift guide.

In an effort to make my policy clear and find out their expectations, I contacted the KOBO rep who pitched me by phone and email. I was told more than 2 weeks later, I would not be able to keep both e-readers (not said in the original email as I said) and must return them after 2 weeks. In an effort to negotiate, I told them I would be willing to return one, but I needed to keep one of them for compensation. I was told that they still wanted both back, so I told them I was not interested. This company is trying to get bloggers to basically write a post for free as 2 weeks of being “privileged” enough to use a product is supposed to be compensation. This is a no-go for me and most bloggers. I do not like how this was not said in the original email and it comes across as shady. Not only that, but I had hinted at my daughter about an e-reader and that made me angry.

Now, I was not going to write this as “calling out” companies is not my forte, but I was just contacted by another blogger, who wishes to remain anonymous, that they are now backing out on sponsoring her event that they agreed to sponsor several months ago.

So, Blogger beware! If you agree to work with KOBO, they may give you quite the run-around and may not be worth your time. I have to wonder, if this is how they treat bloggers, how would they treat the average consumer?