Posted 9 October 2019
Pepper - what is it and how does it work?
What is Pepper?
Pepper is the world’s largest deal sharing community. We run shopping communities around the globe, including the market leading sites in Germany, France, Spain, the Netherlands, Poland, Austria, Mexico, Brazil, Russia, and India. In the UK, we’re proudly represented by hotukdeals.
What are our aims?
We want all communities run by Pepper to be the best place for consumers to go to share their knowledge, learn from other experts, and make the right buying decisions. Often that can be a decision to not buy something.
We know achieving this ambition is only possible if we continue to build and improve the community that already exists. That’s why it’s so important that all of our members and new visitors can completely trust the information they find, and easily use it to find deals and get inspired.
And we want to do it all in a way that is open, friendly and hopefully entertaining!
Where does hotukdeals fit in?
hotukdeals, along with Germany’s mydealz, were the founding members of Pepper, which came together back in 2014. Let’s travel back in time a bit to explain...
In August 2004, Paul Nikkel and Jen Nikkel set up hotukdeals as a place for real consumers to share their stories, deals, vouchers and tips. In April 2007, Fabian Spielberger had a similar idea in Berlin. He started blogging on mydealz.de to answer the question many friends asked him: just how did a student like him get a new mobile every few months?
Over the years, both communities grew rapidly and helped 1,000s of shoppers find great deals. Eventually, they reached the size where more resources were needed. Employees to check deals and moderate the communities, alongside servers and software to keep the websites live under the strain of hundreds of thousands of visitors per day.
This was the moment when Paul and Fabian decided to join forces to establish Pepper.com pooling years of experience to enhance the communities and send deals-finding global.
Since then, market leading communities, such as Dealabs in France, have joined the Pepper network bringing many more founders into the team. Plus we’ve set up new sites from scratch in Russia, Poland, and the Netherlands
Who works for hotukdeals?
Even before founding Pepper, we needed editors and moderators to make sure the site was easily usable and remained the best place to find the hottest deals. These are the teams of people that you still see today around the site, posting deals they find and commenting in discussions.
In fact, most of the team that worked on the site before Pepper still do — some of the team are 10-year veterans!
As the site continues to grow, and our ambitions to help even more people come together have grown with it, more jobs have been created. Such as...
These new teams work alongside the editors and moderators, and of course this means we need supporting teams too, like HR and finance to keep the staff happy and get the bills paid on time.
Do you work directly with retailers?
Yes we do. Building relationships to get great deals from merchants is the job of the partnerships team. These deals are then fed through to the editors to assess — using a set of guidelines which we review regularly — and decide whether they cut the mustard to get posted on site. If they believe they do, it’s then up to community members to vote hot or cold — like every other deal on the site.
Editors, of course, also post deals they find themselves, particularly in their areas of expertise, and on niche products that where we work less with retailers directly.
One huge advantage to this part of the business — something we didn’t have before Pepper started to grow - is that we can get exclusive deals and early info on offers that we otherwise wouldn’t know about. There are loads of examples of these deals, like a free Revolut £10 for instance, or extra discounts off Adidas sales trainers.
We are currently working on ways to be clearer about this for users of the site, which you’ll start to see over the next few months. One big thing we hope to start is publishing our own unique discount codes — such as HOTUK20PERCENT — to enable certain retailers to give discounts specifically to our members.
What does this all mean for members?
Members are the driving force behind every Pepper site, and without them sharing deals, advice and opinions we’d not exist. All communities in the Pepper group share the same aims of being the best place for consumers to share knowledge, learn and make good buying decisions. That means we all share the philosophy of putting our members and the communities they make up, at the heart of all our decisions.
Having multiple teams in different countries provides a goldmine of people to talk to and information to share. This helps with practical stuff, like spotting and putting a stop to global trends of self-promotion, and sharing information about non-UK sellers on platforms such as Amazon and eBay — allowing deals from the better ones and being wary of deals from those we are less sure about.
More than this, we can talk about a wide variety of topics. In particular, how members and communities have benefitted, or not, from different deals and/or rules in other countries.
As mentioned, there are a number of behind-the-scenes projects underway to help us be transparent in areas that have previously been contentious, such as how we make money, and the prominence of staff in the community. You’ll start to see us making headway in those areas in the coming months - we plan to launch them before the end of the year.
We really value your views and feedback whether you agree with us or not! Everything gets taken into account and helps us do better — so please comment below.
If you want to find out more about Pepper, read this….
Pepper is the world’s largest deal sharing community. We run shopping communities around the globe, including the market leading sites in Germany, France, Spain, the Netherlands, Poland, Austria, Mexico, Brazil, Russia, and India. In the UK, we’re proudly represented by hotukdeals.
What are our aims?
We want all communities run by Pepper to be the best place for consumers to go to share their knowledge, learn from other experts, and make the right buying decisions. Often that can be a decision to not buy something.
We know achieving this ambition is only possible if we continue to build and improve the community that already exists. That’s why it’s so important that all of our members and new visitors can completely trust the information they find, and easily use it to find deals and get inspired.
And we want to do it all in a way that is open, friendly and hopefully entertaining!
Where does hotukdeals fit in?
hotukdeals, along with Germany’s mydealz, were the founding members of Pepper, which came together back in 2014. Let’s travel back in time a bit to explain...
In August 2004, Paul Nikkel and Jen Nikkel set up hotukdeals as a place for real consumers to share their stories, deals, vouchers and tips. In April 2007, Fabian Spielberger had a similar idea in Berlin. He started blogging on mydealz.de to answer the question many friends asked him: just how did a student like him get a new mobile every few months?
Over the years, both communities grew rapidly and helped 1,000s of shoppers find great deals. Eventually, they reached the size where more resources were needed. Employees to check deals and moderate the communities, alongside servers and software to keep the websites live under the strain of hundreds of thousands of visitors per day.
This was the moment when Paul and Fabian decided to join forces to establish Pepper.com pooling years of experience to enhance the communities and send deals-finding global.
Since then, market leading communities, such as Dealabs in France, have joined the Pepper network bringing many more founders into the team. Plus we’ve set up new sites from scratch in Russia, Poland, and the Netherlands
Who works for hotukdeals?
Even before founding Pepper, we needed editors and moderators to make sure the site was easily usable and remained the best place to find the hottest deals. These are the teams of people that you still see today around the site, posting deals they find and commenting in discussions.
In fact, most of the team that worked on the site before Pepper still do — some of the team are 10-year veterans!
As the site continues to grow, and our ambitions to help even more people come together have grown with it, more jobs have been created. Such as...
- People to pick out deals to publish on our social media channels and by email
- People to improve the website’s performance, its ease of use, and to create new features (as well as bringing you all the Flamedeer fun!)
- People working directly with retailers to create even more deals we believe will go hot
These new teams work alongside the editors and moderators, and of course this means we need supporting teams too, like HR and finance to keep the staff happy and get the bills paid on time.
Do you work directly with retailers?
Yes we do. Building relationships to get great deals from merchants is the job of the partnerships team. These deals are then fed through to the editors to assess — using a set of guidelines which we review regularly — and decide whether they cut the mustard to get posted on site. If they believe they do, it’s then up to community members to vote hot or cold — like every other deal on the site.
Editors, of course, also post deals they find themselves, particularly in their areas of expertise, and on niche products that where we work less with retailers directly.
One huge advantage to this part of the business — something we didn’t have before Pepper started to grow - is that we can get exclusive deals and early info on offers that we otherwise wouldn’t know about. There are loads of examples of these deals, like a free Revolut £10 for instance, or extra discounts off Adidas sales trainers.
We are currently working on ways to be clearer about this for users of the site, which you’ll start to see over the next few months. One big thing we hope to start is publishing our own unique discount codes — such as HOTUK20PERCENT — to enable certain retailers to give discounts specifically to our members.
What does this all mean for members?
Members are the driving force behind every Pepper site, and without them sharing deals, advice and opinions we’d not exist. All communities in the Pepper group share the same aims of being the best place for consumers to share knowledge, learn and make good buying decisions. That means we all share the philosophy of putting our members and the communities they make up, at the heart of all our decisions.
Having multiple teams in different countries provides a goldmine of people to talk to and information to share. This helps with practical stuff, like spotting and putting a stop to global trends of self-promotion, and sharing information about non-UK sellers on platforms such as Amazon and eBay — allowing deals from the better ones and being wary of deals from those we are less sure about.
More than this, we can talk about a wide variety of topics. In particular, how members and communities have benefitted, or not, from different deals and/or rules in other countries.
As mentioned, there are a number of behind-the-scenes projects underway to help us be transparent in areas that have previously been contentious, such as how we make money, and the prominence of staff in the community. You’ll start to see us making headway in those areas in the coming months - we plan to launch them before the end of the year.
We really value your views and feedback whether you agree with us or not! Everything gets taken into account and helps us do better — so please comment below.
If you want to find out more about Pepper, read this….
Community Updates
563 Comments
sorted byI don't care that packed direct is running a the same deal on a different colour suitcase every other day.
Mods say no, but I don't believe that for a second. (edited)
We are not going to agree because anyone with the slightest bit of intelligence can see that you can’t be honest. You hide stuff which you deem irrelevant, yet many members would like that information. You claim you do things with a different agenda, yet your actions speak louder than words. You delete any negative comment that relates to HUKD or its “experts”. You are removing far more “discussions” unnecessarily to keep your image intact. (edited)
I imagine the official position would be “because trolls” but when it’s the only way to express your frustration with certain decisions and actions without getting banned, I can’t say I’m surprised people have chosen to use it that way.
My discussion was removed about Pepper experts being paid by HUKD. As above they're saying they can't disclose too much information.
This is the description on the Pepper program: " I’m not paid by merchants, I’m not paid by brands, I do not profit from you buying or not buying a product, ever." Which is simply not true since they are paid for posting deals. Highly misleading and just a blatant lie.
Activity on the thread, that’s why the peppers spam reply to other posts on their deals to keep it active.
Gone are the days when it was useful for genuine info.
Most "deals" are by interested parties now.
The helpful posters have either moved on or have been "filtered out"
Any comments detrimental to the HUKD MONEY MAKING MACHINE are also "filtered out".
This is not a Forum with freeish speech
It is an Advertising platform designed to make maximum profit.
Slightly off topic however FS/FT was removed to make way for new changes such as the Pepper program. Another reason for its removal was because it was too time consuming for Mods to govern. Because of this there has been a loss of some amazing members who are not active anymore. Now all we get is spamming of deals by Experts who know how to get easy heat on not so great deals.
When they are fed up responding in their own discussion thread they will do the same. They will either remove the thread completely, “tidy it up” (even though it is actually on topic for once), or they will close the comments off (most likely outcome).
There's no consistency anymore, it almost appears to be made up as they go along which is a shame as the result is other users miss out on deals and info. Sadly when you ask why or challenge you either get shutdown with an irrelevant auto reply, directed to an irrelevant thread, your comment deleted or your account blocked. I don't expect them to approve this comment even though it is relevant to the subject matter but we'll see...
I'd be intrigued to see the answer on your example above. Keep going mate, hopefully this sort of thing gets ironed out moving forwards
Can you clarify why this is a deal? When it is clearly just an advertisement, discussion and heads up.
hotukdeals.com/dea…430
It's similar to the games that are remastered for next gen, when the original purchase owners get a free upgrade. They are moved to discussions and are not classed as deals. This is basically the same thing. As owners of each game will receive an upgrade with the other game.
Take the argument which I know will be presented, "you are getting 2 games for one which makes it a deal". Take my example with the remastered games, If you buy the original you also get another game with the next gen version, making this also a deal. These are always defined and filed as a discussion however.
Instead of just deleting comments, maybe look at the argument and address the inconsistency.
Thanks.
Having read the post you refer, I agree that your comment is of huge importance on the subject matter - Why it would be removed is beyond me but sadly you're not the first this has happened too. This thread just seems to be the automatic place they dump any issues they strangely don't deem appropriate without any real explanation.
Don't question too much though, you're account gets suspended, happened to a few of us (edited)
Another lengthy response. Trying to excuse the money making machine.
It is obvious to see that profit has eclipsed help, for the members of this so called "Forum".
It would seem that the favoured "Pepper" people are rewarded for listing obviously profitable "Deals" time and time again. What motivates them to do so?
Why not be transparent regarding the company profits in general?
How much do you make from us?
To make it easier to moderate for our community, and to help identify what is classed as a deal or a discussion, we agreed some criteria. Any digital content shared (including free and subscription content) must have an 'official' confirmed release date and details of the included content (nothing vague, or TBC) - as some deals were promoted in advance of the content actually going live. And from the moderation side we now get very few queries regarding forum placement, while 2/3 years ago it was a headache for the team and caused confusion for members.
We also only allow the 'release' thread to be shared in deals, later relists would be moved to discussions even after 28 days. This balance works, and the Gaming category is currently a good mix of content, both digital and physical media.
hotukdeals.com/tag…ing
With the specific deal you have queried: hotukdeals.com/dea…430
This is a timed promotion and confirmed from an official source. Members who have one of the games will be able to get the other game for free from 7th June, and the thread was shared one day before the promotion went live. Since then the temperature has reached 1303° and has received 443 Hot Votes (93%) and 34 Cold Votes (7%). So the majority of members have shown with their votes that they feel this is suitable for deals too.
With any forum rule, you can sometimes find grey areas, but this gaming thread does meet our current digital gaming deal criteria. And I do appreciate that not all members may agree, but here votes show a significant portion of the Community support the thread.
Looking at the hottest Gaming deals of the current month, digital content is featured quite heavily, including free content:
And sorry for the long reply, but I hope this helps explain our decision to allow this type of offer to be shared in deals.
And if you ever have a query on content that has been shared on the hotukdeals community forums you can query via the shared inbox (report links will open the message window to that) and if you feel like your query wasn't answered you are always welcome to drop me a direct PM message. I mentioned content on the forum, as queries relating to an individual account should be directed to the offline contact form if it's a more personal enquiry (login issues, authentication, infraction queries etc) (edited)
Can the HUKD team just explain why they are now allowed back?
It'd just be nice to have some transparency on how the site works.
Thanks
- 300+ reviews, 9 out of 10 feedback (= 90% minimum or equivalent)
- UK seller with UK address listed (Not PO Box etc)
- must have feedback elsewhere like eBayand meet that sellers criteria.
We may also remove a shared deal if we feel that items listed don't meet UK safety guidelines, but this applies to any marketplace seller listing.
Checking a deal you had recently deleted for onbuy, the seller has 17 feedback in total, and the first feedback was left in June. So very new seller with very low feedback and not suitable to be shared until they become more established. The majority of marketplace platforms require 300+ feedback sellers as a minimum, some platforms are higher. (edited)
It is all related to site traffic, new member registrations etc. etc. Hence why they allow Amazon deals (and other popular sites) to be posted that doesn’t provide HUKD commission. These continue the site growth and bring money in via other methods.
It’s clear and obvious that money is what drives the sites decisions, “focus on the deals”... translated “focus on making money”. You make yourselves look silly when you try and act like it’s not about money. There’s nothing wrong with making money, so stop trying to act like that isn’t the driver here.
My arguments are that you are now paying members to spam the site for monetary gain, and you can’t even admit to it. That’s not to say all experts are posting in that manner, some actually put effort in to what they do.
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, you should be giving back to the members that have made this site what it is. Not alienating members by paying some and not others. You should consider things like FS/FT as that would be giving back to members. Instead you throwaway any suggestions without any consideration.
You then throw out some Flamedeer competitions to try and steady the ship. The site is just becoming a joke for existing members, and a feeding ground for eBay sellers and scalpers. Yet all of this benefits HUKD so it obviously doesn’t bother you.
Hmmm (edited)
Sad times
Ryan Giggs would have been proud of that body swerve.
So you were a poster of deals then, prolific or otherwise. So why the name change? Why the need for anonymity now you're admin? (edited)
There does seem to a huge increase in unhappy members at the moment with comments left across the site on deals and in discussions.
Is anything been done to address these concerns or are they merely been deleted and swept under the carpet.
Surely you should take on board feedback been given rather than deleting anything that doesn’t agree with your ideology. (edited)
If I post a thousand Screwfix deals a day, can I become a Pepper expert?
The worst that can/may happen is most members stop posting deals, this then only leaves the paid posters
With out the 99.9% of unpaid posters there is no site (edited)
Heres the update
"I’ve looked into this case further. For informal cases, there’s only limited information as no investigation has taken place. However, I can confirm that the complaint was regarding the HotUkDeals website. A complaint was made that it was insufficiently clear that offers posted by staff were paid-for. We informed them that they needed to make these posts clearer and they informed us that this was something that they were working on, with the plan to have this implemented by the end of Q3.
Many thanks,
Judith
Judith Hawkes
Training and Events Executive
Direct line 020 7492 2126
Advertising Standards Authority
Castle House, 37-45 Paul Street
London EC2A 4LS
Telephone 020 7492 2222
asa.org.uk
(edited)
How does hotukdeals work ?
hotukdeals.com is a community-based deals platform that allows everyone to share online or in-store offers, to share their insights and expertise and to find the deal content they love.
Who can post deals?Anyone can post a good deal and share their knowledge on hotukdeals. To do this, simply register (creating an account takes less than a minute). We don’t allow self promotion - if you represent a store or a brand you can not highlight its products or services or direct someone to do it for you. If you personally benefit from a deal being posted on hotukdeals, it’s best to check with our friendly admin team before posting. You can do this via our contact form.
I’ve highlighted in bold that you state you do not allow self promotion.
But if your staff are given info from a company about a deal surely that is self promotion from that company.
I’m just confused and see it as misleading. (edited)
Even the most gullible would quickly work out the reason they are dragging their feet with making clear a deal is actually a sponsored post. The longer a post looks like a genuine find rather than an advert the greater the heat and therefore click throughs. This implementation wont come in until their hands are forced.
I’m only guessing mind, I’m not the brightest so could very well be totally wrong
deleting a deal only to let someone else post it minutes later...
Why do most of your giveaways involve Facebook and having to like the post, and then spamming your friends?
I'm sure it's against Facebook rules anyway. (edited)
Oh man, it's like talking to brick wall! However you have admitted you guys are a bit slow, so I'll leave it there.
As a example Argos and Argos eBay is a different platform so the same deal can be posted. Talk about spam. But anyway I tested it and the deal got removed. I don’t care I mean I was simply testing the “rules”. A expert did this and it was fine. I don’t personally feel
It’s about humans making mistakes I feel it’s actually about what makes money for hukd. Yes I’m not stupid every company is there to make money. But it’s more how shady hukd makes their money now. Like i say I’ll buy a deal without the get deal link now and if I click it without thinking I’ll clear my cookies. Just cos I don’t want you guys to make the money until the place is consistent and open and honest.
unfortunately I'm beginning to think that may be the case. I've asked why they can't move discussion threads to a topic if they deem it more appropriate rather than deleting them considering they can do that with deals. I don't expect I'll get a reply. I'm beginning to think this site can't take criticism. I'm happy to give credit where credit is due but if I don't like something I'll say so. Guess that's my VIP badge up the swanee river