Cafleurebon

Has/does anyone read this site? I think it's a generally nice one to learn about new perfumes. They have SO many giveaways. Has anyone won anything from them yet? I have entered a bunch but no luck.

I won a bottle and a few samples from them, but I became disenchanted with the shilling-quality of the site, so I recently stopped going there. I'm interested in discussions, not marketing.

I'm glad I'm not the only one who noticed this. It seems like there is an advert or giveaway in every post; I even installed AdBlock for my browser because the ads actually overlapped the text of some posts. Do you remember what bottle or samples you won? I'm just curious.

Hayven,

I won a bottle of Providence Perfume "Osmanthus Oolong"--my first full bottle of all-natural perfume. Also samples of A Lab on Fire "What We Do in Paris is Secret", 40 Notes limited edition Hyacinth (not listed here), and Laboratorio Olfattivo "Rosamunda".

So yes, if you diligently visit the site and post comments, you will eventually win something--but you must be very vigilant, because they only give you one day to claim your prize. That's why at the end of every month they have a huge give-away of all of the prizes that were not claimed in time during the previous month.

There is a lot of free perfume being given away there, but in the end, I've decided that it's not worth it. Too much shilling for my tastes.

The articles are usually accompanied with nice - sometimes historical - photos. The reading material is quite interesting.

As far as raffles, I find it too inconvenient to watch for the Winners, because if you don't show ... "your perfume just evaporates".

One of the many sites I visit, but not daily.

Well written by knowledgeable people.

I won't go there for reviews or go to sites similar to it to get opinions on a scent since they are paid not to write disparaging articles. They have to keep what seems like a neutral vibe on fragrances.

Information like that doesn't help me "decide" whether or not to try something. It does give loads of other information which is good and the writers there have skills.

All in all, it's an informative site, but I prefer more direct and opinionated blogs regardless of whether or not I agree with their assessments.

They are?! I had no idea. How do you know?

I could have told you this from day one!

One member of the Cafleurebon team used to be a regular Basenotes reviewer. However, at least 90% of their reviews were thumbs-up, so I quickly ended up losing respect for them.

Any website or blog that constantly deals in giveaways has an ulterior motive - to increase traffic to their site (thus generating better Google results and possibly ad revenue).

Don't think for one moment that it's out of pure benevolence. Where I'm standing, it's strategic and amounts to pure manipulation.

They are more of a marketing partner to perfumers than a review site, in my opinion. The reviews are really very close to house public relations, which is paid for by the provision of free perfume. Of course, there's nothing wrong with reading quasi-marketing text, so long as one has no delusions about objectivity.

I believe that not all perfume is worthy just in virtue of being perfume. As in all other things susceptible of evaluation, there is the good, but also the bad and the ugly! Imagine a food site where every single food item ever produced (Spam, pork rinds, Twinkies, Cool Whip, ...) was exalted as superlative. Skepticism would swiftly ensue.

---

Yes, they're in it for the money and have too many invested interests to write even a solitary negative review. Instead, they write it in a neutral and ultra-diplomatic manner.

I agree but they don't go out of their way to make this clear, do they?

It doesn't bear thinking about. LOL!

The shilling-quality oozes out of the website to such a degree that I am unable to remain there for longer than ten minutes.

The last straw for me was when I raised critical questions and received ZERO response. Not a place for debate, apparently.

Who reads the articles? I'm only half kidding. They do come up with some stunning photography and art to accompany their shilling, though.

I understand what you're saying, Cryptic. When I used to "play the game", in the hopes of winning their give-away lotteries, sometimes I'd be too busy to slog through the whole text, and I'd find myself attempting to answer the questions as quickly as possible.

Some of their "quizzes" were hilarious, because it was so obvious that the first one or two people did all of the work, and everyone else basically cut and pasted the answers with maybe a couple of tweaks.