Collage wants all the positive reviews, false or not, so that people will buy the DVD. They may not have started it, but they are not doing anything to help the situation. I wonder if they used lulubell's name on the review as well?

Yikes! :eek: I checked it out, and actually it is Denise R's review that was copied, not mine. From the opening sentence, it also looks like the comments were found in the General Discussion section, not the Reviews section. At Amazon it is set apart from the regular consumer reviews with the star ratings. (In fact, Beth/Toaster's review is the consumer section, and I'm sure Beth submitted it that way.) In this case, I'd really like to know if Amazon and/or Mimi Solaire's group sought permission from Denise R and/or WWWendy to quote the review and ascribe it to "Video Fitness Reviews." I'd also appreciate a clarification re whether anything we write for VF's regular review section (or heck, just in the General Discussion section) can be quoted that way.

ETA: Here's the link to the Amazon review: http://www.amazon.com/Deep-Stretch-Y...3312042&sr=1-1

If my review was copied, I would contact Lalo and ask him about it. It really does seem like it's someone from his company.

No, I did not and would not give permission for copying of VF reviews or forum posts elsewhere. It's up to the individual who WROTE the review to decide whether or not they wish to share it elsewhere, and if I ever get such a request I always forward it to the reviewer so that the reviewer can decide.

On the Amazon review, that looks a little different--we are listed as an Editorial review. I'm not sure about their policy on Editorial reviews or how that was added (can the publisher post or request that Amazon post an editorial review?). I noticed they did not use the reviewer's name, either. Has anyone else noticed VF reviews appearing as an Editorial Review on Amazon? I don't think a VF review should be listed this way, even if they had gotten permission. First, VF reviews are consumer reviews just like any others on Amazon, and more importantly, since VF does not post one single review of a workout that represents the consensus of the site--a lone positive VF review could be selected and posted in this way for a workout that had mostly NEGATIVE reviews on VF, yet on Amazon it would appear that the VF editorial consensus was entirely positive. That bothers me a lot, and is something I need to contact Amazon about.

We used to have something in the footer of review pages stating that reviews could not be copied or used elsewhere w/o the permission of the reviewer. I will make sure that gets added to our new review section too, and I am also going to add something to our vendor/commercial posting page making it clear that permission of the poster/reviewer must be obtained before any reviews are copied or used elsewhere. I would have thought that was obvious, but evidently not.

I'm also guessing that it's Lalo's people since both reviews are for for Lalofit.

These situations are just so bizarre. I'm in shock that this is happening! :eek: Did Lalo's people (if they are the one's that did this) think VFers wouldn't find out??? If so, how naive could they be!?!?!

Wow, I'm not cool at all with reviews copied from VF, either represented as consumer reviews at Collage or as editorial reviews at Amazon. Wendy, thank you for getting to the bottom of this, and I'm sorry you have to deal with this on top of all else that you do.

Personally I have not nor ever would give someone permission to copy my reviews and/or posts. If I want to post a review elsewhere, I'll do it myself, thank you very much!
I agree that it's weird to have one VF review posted as the VF "editorial board." But then it actually bugs me that so many DVDs I've reviewed just have my review listed. I'd hate for people to consider my review the last and final word on something!

I guess the only upside is that people are recognizing VF as a prime source of reviews and information on videos. Still, why not just point people in our direction? Oh wait, because we bring up both the good and the bad!

What production company is responsible for Mimi Solaire's? And for Lalo's? If it's the same, it looks like our culprit may be an employee for the company.

WWWendy, thanks for the clarification!

I did just add something to the reviews system stating that reviews cannot be copied without the writer's permission. That doesn't really help reviews taken from the forum, though, unless they read the rules.

It seems obvious that you shouldn't copy from one place to another without permission, though, so obviously whoever did it, doesn't care. It seems likely that it was someone associated with Lalo, because why else would someone do it?

Thank you, Lisa, for adding the blurb to the reviews.

Threads on the VF forum shouldn't come up via search engines (in other words, if you type in "Lalo Fuentes" on Google or Yahoo or whatever, none of the VF threads on Lalo should pop up, although VF reviews might), so someone has to be reading VF deliberately. You know who you are, and you should be ashamed of yourself!