Hype House influencers are giving away "Hype" necklaces, supposedly worth $100, for free on theirmerch website.- However, the chains are not actually free as the shipping costs nearly $20.
- Some say this is a scam that resembles the controversies of Jake Paul's Team 10 chain and the Kenza cosmetics brushes advertised by Gabbie Hanna and Tana Mongeau.
- It is also not clear how the chain is valued at $100 in the first place.
Thomas Petrou, the manager of the
The chains are available on the Hype House merch site hypehousechains.com, which shows a picture of six house members wearing the bejeweled necklace. It also says the chains are worth $100, so "you save 100%."
"Only 1 free chain per order," the website reads. "If you want multiple free chains, make multiple orders." At nearly $20 each, costs can quickly rack up if multiple young fans want their own chains.
While influencers are well within their rights to charge whatever they want for their merch, it isn't clear how the $100 figure for the chains was determined.
Hype House members Calvin Goldby and Tayler Holder, as well as former "Too Hot To Handle" star Harry Jowsey, have all advertised the chains on their Instagram stories.
Some critics have called the chains a scam on social media because young fans will be tempted by the "free" merch only to have to pay $20 for each purchase.
'Oldest ecom game in the book'
"This is the Free + shipping scheme where the product costs wholesale @ $1.50 and they charge for it in the shipping SO IT NOT FREE!!" YouTuber Vice Versa said in a tweet. "Oldest ecom game in the book."
Several Twitter users, including one commentator called emibeaar, said the real value for the necklace is probably much lower than the $20 shipping fee.
"Ah yes the old 'crossed out $100' value necklace that's only like $5 quality for 'free' but $20 shipping," she said. "That's like the oldest trick in the book, they should feel ashamed, especially cause their fans are really young naive kids who don't know better then to fall for this crap."
Others pointed out that this is already a well-versed tactic in the influencer world. For example, Jake Paul received criticism when he said he was giving away diamanté Team 10 necklaces for free back in 2019, only for people to point out the shipping cost $14.
Paul also said each person who purchased a chain would be entered into a competition to be flown to LA to meet him. Then he deleted the vlog with no explanation, and the competition was never mentioned again.
Gabbie Hanna and Tana Mongeau found themselves in the middle of a similar controversy when they advertised brushes being given away for free by a company called Kenza Cosmetics. The company claimed to have a surplus of brushes worth around $80 and was giving them away for free — all people had to do was pay the shipping fee of $7.
However, some customers claimed to never receive their brushes, and those that did realized they were not high quality at all. YouTuber MARKIE found the exact same brushes being sold on AliExpress for just over $2 for the set.
—Def Noodles (@defnoodles) August 12, 2020
There's nothing to suggest people buying the Hype House chains are actually being scammed or their chains won't arrive, however, these influencers do have incredibly young fanbases, and it's worth noting that their millions of followers are made up of impressionable children who won't be savvy enough to realize when a deal is too good to be true.
Insider has reached out to Petrou and the Hype House for comment.
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