Recently, Venie Lin, the co-founder of a fresh and frozen food supplier, Frozendozen, took to Facebook to share her experience with a “dubious influencer” and it has since, gone viral.
Venie claims that the influencer has been approaching local small businesses to get freebies with “fake likes and followers”.
According to Venie, the influencer, Xue Wei who runs the Instagram account @anaffairwithfood, aproached her for a three-month sponsorship – claiming to want to “support local businesses” during the Covid-19 pandemic.
At first, Venie thought that AAWF was a legit influencer, so she agreed to sponsor her with food as some of her previous posts had about 200-300 likes each. However, AAWF didn’t wanna sign a contract for the mutually agreed amount of $300 worth of food, so instead, they switched up the terms of the collab to about $100 worth of food.
Venie then decided to dig further into AAWF’s profile, only to discover that her likes averaged between 50-60 only. A bit odd for a profile with 22.3k followers!
Following the strange discovery, Venie did a quick check on AAWF’s profile using Social Blade, a website that tracks social media stats. The results confirmed her suspicions. Check it out:
Kantoi!
Venie proceeded to request for a refund from AAWF for the $93.05 in food that was sent to her, supporting her statement by saying that “According to management rules, all collaborations with influencers that have engaged fake followers or likes will be halt(ed) and a refund will be required on the items delivered.”
Apparently, AAWF also requested for a fee of $300 just to do a giveaway post! However, Frozendozen doesn’t offer any form of payment to host giveaways and AAWF eventually agreed to do it for free.
But wait, there’s more.
Interestingly, just after the liaison between the two, there was a sudden spike in one of AAWF’s photo likes!
Coincidence? I think not.
Venie concluded her post with this:
“This is a difficult time for everyone and all local businesses are working hard, especially the essential services company fighting on the front line to provide for the community. We do not appreciate a profile that uses the name of Covid-19 to mislead merchants for massive freebies”
Also Read: Malaysian Influencer Bashed Online After Asking Followers To Donate ‘Duit Raya’ To Her
