Secret Shopper ethics

[Needfuldoer]

5 hours ago, kirashi said:

That said, I kind of agree that such "tests" should ideally be cleared with a select handful of people from upper management who have ZERO ties or responsibility with the company's customer service, fulfillment, support, warranty, etc. departments. That way they'd have approval, but those who gave the approval would have no way to accidentally tamper with the results. As for how feasible this would be ... that's a whole other story entirely.

There's no way to guarantee that informing their media contact or the company's upper management ahead of time wouldn't taint their customer experience.

[AbsoluteWoo]

This is the same type of complaint as the ones where people complain you don't see chefs wash their hands in cooking videos.

 

Do you really think they keep the product afterwards? Does Linus need to start reading out a disclaimer at the end of every video now?

[Blue4130]

43 minutes ago, Needfuldoer said:

There's no way to guarantee that informing their media contact or the company's upper management ahead of time wouldn't taint their customer experience.

Sure there is, just don't tell them when you are buying or calling.  They (ltt) already uses an outside person who is not an employee to avoid vocal recognition, and they ship to an address that is not part of LTT. With the way videos are made and then sat on, it would be pretty trivial to get an agreement from the companies and then say "Hey, sometime in the next year we are going to secret shop you." What are the companies going to do? Suspect EVERY call for the next year?

[ToboRobot]

11 hours ago, user_50983 said:

I'm a fan of the channel, especially the WAN show, but I'm having moral qualms about supporting the channel given the potential ethical issues with the Secret Shopper series.

 

Namely, on the video "What Are My Sponsors Hiding?", the team members lie about missing parts or intentionally damage the products to see if the customer support representatives will send replacement parts or products (often successfully). While I think it is valuable to evaluate the customer service of a company, unless they are clearing this with the companies beforehand, this seems like it would constitute theft or fraud. Does LTT do anything to make sure this is conducted legally and ethically? Does the team okay these experiments with the companies beforehand?

"Hi, this is Linus, we are doing the secret shopper thing again..."

It is WILD how people are so easy to accuse others of fraud or theft without considering libel.  Internet forum legal scholars need to step it up.

OP, did you have a lawyer review your ideas before you posted here? 

 

Did a legal professional ok your statements imply fraud or theft?


 

[ToboRobot]

10 hours ago, Blue4130 said:

And isn't legitimate secret shopping an opt-in business? Companies contact secret shoppers and say "hey test us out" and then the secret shoppers go to a random location at a random time.

No, because then companies doing shady stuff or operating illegally would never opt in, and they would be shielded from having evidence of real crimes or malfeasance recorded.

Some industries have lobbied government to prevent people from recording things like deplorable farming conditions, but there are zero laws against shopping and review customer experience.  That is what this is.

[Blue4130]

8 minutes ago, ToboRobot said:

No, because then companies doing shady stuff or operating illegally would never opt in, and they would be shielded from having evidence of real crimes or malfeasance recorded.

Some industries have lobbied government to prevent people from recording things like deplorable farming conditions, but there are zero laws against shopping and review customer experience.  That is what this is.

https://www.secretshopper.com/

Read about it. They are generally hired by THE company being shopped.

 

[ToboRobot]

1 minute ago, Blue4130 said:

https://www.secretshopper.com/

Read about it. They are generally hired by THE company being shopped.

 

That is a company advertising a service they offer.

That does not mean it is a standard practice or illegal or unethical to do it without hiring a third party.

I worked for a retailer that hired a company to do this, but the company also did it internally, and also sought feedback from real customers, to get a better picture than offered with the service alone.

[Dedayog]

10 hours ago, tkitch said:

this seems like a lot of clutching at straw to try and find a reason to be mad at LTT.

 

This is a thing that happens every day in retail and business.  Trust me, it's not unusual.   Customers are fucking assholes and will do all sorts of shady shit to businesses on the reg.  

So it's okay then?

 

Either you think it's okay or you think it's not okay.  You're talking out of both side of your mouth with that comment.   Trying to make it seem okay since it happens all the time.

 

There are a lot of things that happen all the time that aren't okay.

[Blue4130]

1 hour ago, ToboRobot said:

That is a company advertising a service they offer.

That does not mean it is a standard practice or illegal or unethical to do it without hiring a third party.

I worked for a retailer that hired a company to do this, but the company also did it internally, and also sought feedback from real customers, to get a better picture than offered with the service alone.

The unethical part is NOT the shopping itself. The unethical part is lying about the machine being defective and getting free parts to replace "broken" parts (that were not actually broken)

[tkitch]

1 hour ago, Dedayog said:

So it's okay then?

 

Either you think it's okay or you think it's not okay.  You're talking out of both side of your mouth with that comment.   Trying to make it seem okay since it happens all the time.

 

There are a lot of things that happen all the time that aren't okay.

I'm not doing that in the slightest.

If it's done for a legit purpose:  Yes, it's fine.  In this case feedback was delivered to the companies, etc etc.  It served a purpose.

When it's a customer doing it for the sole purpose of benefitting themselves at someone else's expense, that's a VERY different story.  

[ToboRobot]

32 minutes ago, Blue4130 said:

The unethical part is NOT the shopping itself. The unethical part is lying about the machine being defective and getting free parts to replace "broken" parts (that were not actually broken)

As someone that has taken part in corporate secret shopper programs, they will absolutely do things to "test" the service, including not being 100% honest or testing loss prevention by stealing.

This isn't unethical, because the breaches in proper behaviour are disclosed in the video as part of a test in order to simulate a customer experience.

LMG isn't doing this work to "steal" broken parts.  They are doing it as a test of customer service. 

[Blue4130]

4 minutes ago, ToboRobot said:

As someone that has taken part in corporate secret shopper programs, they will absolutely do things to "test" the service, including not being 100% honest or testing loss prevention by stealing.

This isn't unethical, because the breaches in proper behaviour are disclosed in the video as part of a test in order to simulate a customer experience.

LMG isn't doing this work to "steal" broken parts.  They are doing it as a test of customer service. 

It doesn't matter why they do it, if the company was not informed before, then it's not ethical. It's also not legal. (it would be on the company to press charges, but they would never do that due to the bad press that they would receive)

 

Lmg's heart is in the right place. They want the companies to do better. (even if LMG has a monetary incentive to do these videos, I still think they want to be altruistic and beneficial to the audience)

 

I personally don't care about this being unethical, I just really can't comprehend how people can't grasp that deceiving a company about (non) broken parts and getting replacement parts is theft, regardless of the reason or excuses of 'doing it for the good of the shoppers'

[ToboRobot]

2 minutes ago, Blue4130 said:

It doesn't matter why they do it, if the company was not informed before, then it's not ethical. It's also not legal. (it would be on the company to press charges, but they would never do that due to the bad press that they would receive)

 

Lmg's heart is in the right place. They want the companies to do better. (even if LMG has a monetary incentive to do these videos, I still think they want to be altruistic and beneficial to the audience)

 

I personally don't care about this being unethical, I just really can't comprehend how people can't grasp that deceiving a company about (non) broken parts and getting replacement parts is theft, regardless of the reason or excuses of 'doing it for the good of the shoppers'

LOL.  I worked for a fortune 500 company doing this, and can assure you legal approves. 

 

Do you have link to a legal case where a company has been successfully prosecuted in civil or criminal court for this?

[Blue4130]

14 minutes ago, ToboRobot said:

This isn't unethical, because the breaches in proper behaviour are disclosed in the video as part of a test in order to simulate a customer experience.

So if I see a car in someone's yard with the keys in it, I can steal it as long as I post a video about the dangers of leaving keys in the car?

[ToboRobot]

7 minutes ago, Blue4130 said:

So if I see a car in someone's yard with the keys in it, I can steal it as long as I post a video about the dangers of leaving keys in the car?

I don't think there is a sufficient grasp of legal concepts and procedures on this forum to make these sorts of comparisons.

No you can't steal a car. 

 

But to think LMG is stealing computer parts, makes it impossible to have a conversation with people that perhaps aren't living in reality, are trolls or are simply people without enough life experience to understand.

[Blue4130]

4 minutes ago, ToboRobot said:

LOL.  I worked for a fortune 500 company doing this, and can assure you legal approves. 

 

Do you have link to a legal case where a company has been successfully prosecuted in civil or criminal court for this?

Section 380(1) of the Criminal Code uses a two-part definition to describe fraud: 1) a prohibited act of “deceit, falsehood or other fraudulent means;” and 2) that this act deprives the public or specific person of “any property, money or valuable security, or any service

 

[ToboRobot]

4 minutes ago, Blue4130 said:

Section 380(1) of the Criminal Code uses a two-part definition to describe fraud: 1) a prohibited act of “deceit, falsehood or other fraudulent means;” and 2) that this act deprives the public or specific person of “any property, money or valuable security, or any service

 

A legal case refers to a specific matter brought before the court, not a law. 

It's really hard having conversations about law when people don't understand the basic terminology of the law.

Show a case not a law.

[Blue4130]

Just now, ToboRobot said:

I don't think there is a sufficient grasp of legal concepts and procedures on this forum to make these sorts of comparisons.

No you can't steal a car. 

 

But to think LMG is stealing computer parts, makes it impossible to have a conversation with people that perhaps aren't living in reality, are trolls or are simply people without enough life experience to understand.

Was the part that they called support about really broken? (no). Did they get a replacement part shipped to them? (yes). Did they use deception to get the support agent to ship them the part? (yes)

 

Up to this point, disregard that we are talking about LMG or secret shopping, is this fraud? Yes. Now let's bring LMG and secret shopping back into it. Does that change the fact that it is fraud? No, in my mind it doesnt. It's pretty low end on the ethical scale so no judge is going to waste time on it.

[ToboRobot]

Just now, Blue4130 said:

Was the part that they called support about really broken? (no). Did they get a replacement part shipped to them? (yes). Did they use deception to get the support agent to ship them the part? (yes)

Did they keep the part? 

[Blue4130]

3 minutes ago, ToboRobot said:

A legal case refers to a specific matter brought before the court, not a law. 

It's really hard having conversations about law when people don't understand the basic terminology of the law.

Show a case not a law.

https://www.ecomcrew.com/customer-dupes-amazon-for-300000-in-returns-scam/#:~:text=Back in March%2C a Rhode Island man was,her) and over %24100%2C000 reimbursed to her name.

 

 

[Blue4130]

2 minutes ago, ToboRobot said:

Did they keep the part? 

Don't know. The only ethical thing would be to return it to the company. But they don't clarify what they do with the system after.

[ToboRobot]

12 minutes ago, Blue4130 said:

Don't know. The only ethical thing would be to return it to the company. But they don't clarify what they do with the system after.

Then your allegation of theft are unfounded and potentially libellous.

[ToboRobot]

14 minutes ago, Blue4130 said:

https://www.ecomcrew.com/customer-dupes-amazon-for-300000-in-returns-scam/#:~:text=Back in March%2C a Rhode Island man was,her) and over %24100%2C000 reimbursed to her name.

 

 

The fact that you think this is comparable is ridiculous. 

There is a big difference between doing something for test of consumer service for a video and people stealing from a company and selling the products.

Where did you go to law school? 

[Blue4130]

1 minute ago, ToboRobot said:

The fact that you think this is comparable is ridiculous. 

There is a big difference between doing something for test of consumer service for a video and people stealing from a company and selling the products.

Where did you go to law school? 

You don't need to go to law school to know what laws are. You only need to go to law school to practice litigation. Did you go to law school?

[ToboRobot]

1 minute ago, Blue4130 said:

You don't need to go to law school to know what laws are. You only need to go to law school to practice litigation. Did you go to law school?

May vary, but in some places you don't need to go to law school, just pass the bar exam.

I am not a lawyer, nor do I try to pretend to be one on internet forums.  I have however shared my experience working on similar topics for a large company that had a legal team. 

Unfortunately there is a big gap in understanding of basic legal concepts and terms and I think some people may be speaking about topics beyond their understanding which may confuse others by contributing misinformation to the discourse.

I think I will retire from this conversation which seems rather pointless at this point and engage the ignore function.

Best of luck.