Easy Earphone is now banned and blacklisted from Head-Fi. Links to, and discussion of them, as well as "DQSM" and **** products are no longer allowed. That includes Amazon links.
What the hell happened? Unusually, I'm going to tell you all.
Soon after he registered, PaulPark222, who is from Korea, was given a very strong warning for flipping review samples in the classifieds, and warned to state the original of all products he reviewed, ie: Whether or not he purchased them or was sent them as a review sample.
Recently, a review of his was reported with a claim that he had posted a negative review due to the manufacturer refusing to send him a review sample. At our request, we were sent chat logs that showed, among other things, that he had offered manufacturers positive reviews in exchange for free products. Those manufacturers, sensibly, wanted genuine reviews. What is more, he asked the manufacturers to lie if they were asked about their relationship.
A user account was created on Head-Fi, "EEasy", which posted positive reviews about products it sold. We deleted the reviews and warned the person. The account was created by PaulPark222 in Korea, but logged in subsequently from China. The account was being used by "Brian Hu" (his user name previously had a typo which I fixed).
Paul claimed that during chat with EEasy they had asked him to make an account for them.
Another member, whom I completely believe had nothing to do with this (and so I shall not name him) was asked in chat by "DQSM" to create an account for them on Head-Fi due to his "limited knowledge in English". The member did so. The user of that account then created an account, Joe17, which then
posted in good English a criticism of bhazard's QT5 review.
After further investigation, we found that Brian Hu had logged in to Joe17's account. I PMed both members to find out what was going on. Brian Hu first claimed that Joe17 was a friend, then said he only met him once in chat where Joe17 (under his Chinese named) asked him to log into his Head-Fi account for him. Note here that at the time of writing, there is a huge DQSM banner on the EEasy Aliexpress store page.
Brian Hu offered to become a sponsor. I don't think it is acceptable for a reseller who sales fake IE800s to be a sponsor here, let alone one connected with all of the above.
Joe17 claimed to have nothing commercial to do with DQSM and simply created that account because he had bought their products and liked the brand. However,
the member who had created the account had done so at the request of the operator of the official DQSM store chat!
So now, along with Paulpark222, Joe17, DQSM, and Brian Hu are now all permanently banned.
I'm not going explain in detail how we detected all of this, so please don't ask or speculate. The main thing here is, I want this to be a very public warning about reviewers and manufactures about honesty and integrity.
Some warnings:
- Manufacturers and resellers must follow the rules for Members of the Trade in the Terms of Service.
- Do NOT EVER create accounts for other people, especially manufacturers or distributors. You'll be forever linked to them in our system and everything you do will henceforth be suspect, even if you say you have no relation.
- Do NOT offer discount codes "for Head-Fi members" from manufacturers or resellers. You are essentially advertising by proxy for them, which is not allowed. If a manufacturer or reseller wants to advertise, they either must use Google Adsense (targeted at Head-Fi) or become a sponsor. No other way.
- If you see content (posts, reviews or comments) that are suspect in some way, flag them and we'll take a look. Even if it doesn't generate a lot of red flags immediately, if more odd things start to appear, then we can step in and have a good look what is going on. It because of this that we found out about all of the above.
- Do not link to products that are obvious fakes of well-known products. If an AliExpress or TaoBao store has fakes, please do NOT link to it or suggest people visit it.
- If you use a store that has affiliate codes or links, you cannot post those codes here (they are usually added to the URL, such as the &tag=whatever_20 part of Amazon links).
I'm still not completely clear about the relationship between some brands and distributors, so some threads are still locked and some products have still not been restored. If someone wants to PM me who knows more in detail it'd be most appreciated so I can sort it out.
At the risk of generating more conspiracy theories, I'm going to suggest if anyone wants to buy Chinese IEMs that you go and talk to
@George-gearbest as he has been "doing the right thing" the whole time as far as the rules go.
I hope I never, ever have to deal with this kind of crap again. For this thread to stay open, everyone please take a bit more care about what you consider telling people about in here.
