Once I choose XYZ Services for all my lawn, garden and landscaping needs, that eliminates a whole class of future decisions I might have had to make. XYZ needs only do an acceptable job to retain my business. They can even raise their prices (within reason). Point out to me that XYZ is paying outsourcers to post fake 5 star reviews on Yelp and odds are I’ll still stick with them….because everybody posts fake 5 star reviews on Yelp.

Regarding Tim and my personal opinion, I believe the guy is good and smart. Pleasing your customers should be the central part of any business, as well as making profits, so I can’t see anything wrong with encouraging bulk orders using prizes. And asking your customers for reviews, even if Tim did that explicitly, is also perfectly ethical in my book.

“what concerns me most are the number of people that purchased multiple copies of books and aren’t receiving anything that was promised to them.”

It’s true that some people had parts of their orders held up, due to a number of factors (B&N selling more signed copies than they had in inventory, international orders getting delayed, etc.) But to say they haven’t received anything that was promised is simply not true. We are making sure everyone’s order is carried out. The reality is that the vast majority of people who took part in the promo have received all of their gifts. Anyone who hasn’t is being taken care of.

If you haven’t received something that you ordered, feel free to contact me (charlie AT fourhourbody). I’m more than happy to help you out.

- Charlie

I worked with Tim throughout the entire promotion. We took down that page because we’re still getting emails and comments from people wanting bonus gifts, even though they purchased books weeks after the promo’s deadline. We tried putting “This promotion has ended” in big bold letters throughout the written portion — didn’t work. I had to put together all the slideshares in that post, so it pains no one more than me to see it taken down :) But we did have a reason behind it.

- Charlie

My favorite example of this is Digg. Writing a good/interesting article does not matter if you want it to show up on Digg. What matters is finding the all powerful “superusers”. I’ve had more than one SEO firm tell me that for the low, low cost of $10k per month, they will make sure that among other things, our articles are on the front page of Digg on a regular basis. When I asked how, the response was “I have an arrangement with some superusers”.

The web community has created this environment, so it should never come as a surprise when companies provide “incentives” to people to write positive reviews, give links, etc.

Meh.

Asking is fair depending on the incentive. Putting a in a book “if you like this book, don’t forget to rate it” is just a perfectly fine and juicy way of letting people know how to tell others what they have appreciated.

I was a bit skeptical of the million dollar give-aways, but what concerns me most are the number of people that purchased multiple copies of books and aren’t receiving anything that was promised to them.

Have there been reports of that happening?

Tim is certainly a superior marketer and knows how to sway people toward a specific action. You can’t fault him for that. Sometimes I get wary, though, of where all this is going.