PayPal’s Coupon Extension Sparks Outrage, Influencers Suspect Millions Stolen in Shocking Alleged Scam

If you’ve spent more than a millisecond on the internet you’ll have heard of Honey. It’s been advertised far and wide, and the company even has paid big name YouTubers such as Mr Beast and LinusTechTips to push it to their audience. But now, this supposedly money-saving browser plugin has been accused of stealing from the very people who promote it.

These revelations come courtesy of YouTube investigator MegaLag, whose video ‘Exposing the Honey Influencer Scam’, has been viewed over 5 million times in just one day, and they are absolutely, utterly wild.

MegaLag’s video accuses Honey of engaging in an assortment of shady shenanigans, but by far the biggest is that Honey steals affiliate cash from the affiliates who promote the plug-in’s use. The way you’d expect Honey’s affiliate program to work is that, paid or not, when someone uses a YouTube or other promoter’s Honey link to buy something, the sale is marked as ‘theirs’, and they get a nice slice of the cash.

However, MegaLag found that, at the last minute, Honey switches the promoter’s affiliate link for one of PayPal’s (PayPal owns Honey), effectively robbing them of commission. MegaLag demonstrated this by setting up his own affiliate account with NordVPN, a brand you’ll have heard of almost as much as Honey.

Without Honey, he made a purchase through his own programme, earning a $35 commission. He then activated the Honey Gold extension, and Honey swapped the affiliate cookie for a PayPal one, He discovered that, yes, Honey did switch out the link and instead of getting the $35 he was owed, he ended up with nothing in the way of affiliate earnings, and just 89 cents in PayPal cashback.

“I can’t even begin to fathom how much money has been lost at the hands of this browser extension. Imagine being the influencers who promoted Honey, telling your audience who, by the way, are the most likely to use your affiliate links, to download an app that poaches your affiliate sales,” MegaLag explains.

It’s just mind-boggling, and I can only imagine how infuriated and betrayed some YouTubers must be feeling right now. Maybe some of the bigger names were paid to promote Honey, but for some smaller channels, their motivation may have been the commission they’d make on all those juicy Honey purchases. But if MegaLag is right, and it’s looking like he is, most of the commission went into Honey/PayPal’s pockets.

The video also discusses other questionable activities Honey has allegedly engaged in, including letting retailers control the discount code percentage. There’s a second part in the works, which seems set to address about how Honey discount codes actually cost some retailers money. But the revelation that Honey has seemingly been poaching affiliate commission, is set to cause some serious waves.

Several other influencers have picked up on the story and are weighing with their own videos. There’s no telling how much money Honey affiliates have missed out on, but it could even be in the millions, money that’s ended up in Honey/Paypal’s pockets.

Honey more or less admitted this in the video, telling MegaLag that, “If Honey is activated and is the last program used while shopping on a site it’s likely Honey will receive credit for the purchase.” This happens even if Honey does not find any discounts for the purchaser to use.

One big name has been suspicious of the company for some time. In the wake of MegaLag’s video, a clip has surfaced of YouTuber Markiplier discussing his Honey doubts.

“I have a natural distrust of Honey… I don’t know what it is, but my gut tells me nothing in life is free. So where are all these savings coming from? I’ve got a feeling in a couple of years there’s going to be the great Honey conspiracy of 2022.”

He may have been a couple of years off the mark, but Honey has some serious questions to answer. You can watch MegaLag’s initial video here, support them on Patreon, and stay tuned to their channel for a Part 2.