Boy, do I have egg on my face.
Remember how just last month I told you all to beware of the insta-brand? Yea. Should have taken my own advice. For the sake of transparency, and because I LOVE being a little messy, I’m going to tell you how it happened.
I got an email from a supposed PR Team for The Gentic, saying that if I bought their face brush for about $40 (converted from Euros) they would pay me about $600. They actually had me sign a contract, so I figured that it was legit and since what they were paying me obviously covered more than the product, it was probably just an SEO thing. For those of you who don’t know, SEO stands for Search engine optimization. I thought maybe they were having me BUY the product so it would look like their site had more sales, or something.
I even ran it by some of my bloggers friends, who were weary, but with the “contract” it seemed like it was ok. So I purchased the little bugger and it came about four weeks later. I started feeling a little suspect when it came in a weird little package from Hong Kong, even with the website currency being in euros.
Of course, I also Googled “The Gentic scam,” when they first contacted me and nothing came up. That’s because although they have been scamming content creators for a while, they changed their name recently from The SkinGlo to The Gentic. At least that’s so far as I can tell? They might have just added The Gentic to their on-going SkinGlo scam. Really, all I can find on it is this article.
So yea, I spent like three hours creating content and I’m going to show it off. I’ve also disputed the charge with PNC. I’m lucky that <$50 won’t make or break me, but I am TICKED that I was so excited to have this partnership and now I look SILLY that I can’t even follow my own advice.
I’m embarrassed, but I’m nothing if not authentic, so thank you for coming on this journey with me.
And remember – don’t enter a brand “partnership” if you have to buy ANYTHING first. Even if you think you’re getting more out of it.
For what it’s worth, the product isn’t bad. I especially like the messaging feature that I used for my under eye gel masks. I just wouldn’t have purchased it myself.
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