Slashdot Log In
There's a Sucker Converted Every Minute
Posted by
timothy
on Sat Jul 05, 2008 02:38 PM
from the and-probably-more-than-that dept.
from the and-probably-more-than-that dept.
Ponca City, We love you writes "Once the US converts from analog to digital broadcasting next February, those who receive their signals over the air will need a converter box for older, non-digital models. Government-approved converter boxes sell for $60 or less and a government-issued $40 rebate coupon is available for the asking but that hasn't stopped companies like the Ohio-based Universal TechTronics from offering supposedly free converter boxes. The gimmick: the box is free, as long as you pay $88 for a five-year warranty, plus $9.30 shipping. Universal TechTronics seems to specialize in 'high-tech' products of questionable value, marketing the Cool Surge portable air cooler, 'a work of engineering genius from the China coast so advanced that no windows, vents, or freon are needed' that uses the same energy as a 60-watt light bulb. It works by blowing a stream of air over two ice packs that you have previously frozen in your freezer. What's the best tech scam you've heard of lately?"
Related Stories
[+]
Scammers Exploit DTV Coupon Program 219 comments
An anonymous reader writes "Analog TV users must purchase a DTV converter box before broadcasts go digital in 2009, and the US Government is offering $40 coupons to support the transition. The coupon program requires retailers to become certified by the NTIA (the Government body running the program) before processing orders for the boxes. Apparently the certification program is a bit lax, as the frenzy to purchase DTV boxes using these coupons seems to have drawn unscrupulous fraud artists into the mix. Memsen, via its web site convertmy.tv and its hardware partner Maxmedia, partnered apparently to pull a bait-and-switch game on unsuspecting consumers and the US Government." Read on for details of the scam claimed by this anonymous reader.
This discussion has been archived.
No new comments can be posted.
The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way.
Full
Abbreviated
Hidden
Loading... please wait.
Tech scam? (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Tech scam? (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent
Tech Scam (Score:5, Funny)
DVD rewinders.
Re:Tech Scam (Score:4, Funny)
Parent
Careful with the word "scam" (Score:5, Insightful)
The "free" digital TV box gimmick is not necessarily a scam. Comparing a box with a 5 year warranty to one with a 1 year warranty is not a fair comparison. It's gimmicky pricing to make people think they're getting a great deal. A scam, on the other hand, requires deception to secure an unfair or unlawful gain. In this case, the user is getting a 5 year warranty rather than the typical 1 year warranty, so it is understandable the overall cost should be higher, meaning it's not an unfair or unlawful gain.
(It could be argued that warranties aren't worth the paper they're written on. If a warranty is not workable, that's the part you can call a scam, not the gimmicky pricing.)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
The "free" digital TV box gimmick is not necessarily a scam. Comparing a box with a 5 year warranty to one with a 1 year warranty is not a fair comparison. It's gimmicky pricing to make people think they're getting a great deal. A scam, on the other hand, requires deception to secure an unfair or unlawful gain. In this case, the user is getting a 5 year warranty rather than the typical 1 year warranty, so it is understandable the overall cost should be higher, meaning it's not an unfair or unlawful gain.
(It could be argued that warranties aren't worth the paper they're written on. If a warranty is not workable, that's the part you can call a scam, not the gimmicky pricing.)
I agree it's not a scam, but a 5 year warranty on an item with no moving parts?
One is born every minute, especially since you could buy 2 for less than this one and have a spare if teh first ever fails after a year.
Bathtub Curve (Score:5, Interesting)
Retailers love to offer 5 year extended warranty because of the Bathtub Curve [wikipedia.org].
Basically if a product does n't fail within one year then the probability it failing within five year years is very very low.
This curve applies very well to consumer electronics with the added advantage that they depreciate in value quickly too.
Parent
Re:Careful with the word "scam" (Score:4, Informative)
(It could be argued that warranties aren't worth the paper they're written on. If a warranty is not workable, that's the part you can call a scam, not the gimmicky pricing.)
I bought a pair of Zenith DTT901 converters with my government coupons after researching the experiences of other users on AVSForums. The Zenith DTT901 only comes with a 90 day warranty. Considering the out of pocket cost of $10 to $20 with the government coupon ($49 - $59 retail), and the reputation of the manufacturer, does the warranty really matter?
A 5 year warranty doesn't mean anything if the product is a piece of crap. Universal Techtronics brand isn't even on the CECB approved list:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CECB [wikipedia.org]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_CECB_units [wikipedia.org]
Parent
Re:Careful with the word "scam" (Score:4, Insightful)
Rubbish. Most electronic gadgets come with limited 30-day manufacturer warranties, with arduous repair/exchange requirements, and it's the retailer that offers an "extended warranty."
Here, we have the next datapoint in the series, giving product away for free! But only if you pick up the expensive "warranty."
The very fact that hardware manufacturers no longer stand behind their product means they now *anticipate* a high failure rate, which indicates they no longer design with reliability in mind. Gadgets have become disposable crap. Quality is no longer assured, it's avoided. Welcome the new revenue stream, "Quality Insurance," if you will.
*That*, my industrialist-named friend, is the "scam" nowadays. Manufacturers have shifted reliability and warranty concerns from their pocketbook to the consumers.
The day of the bathtub curve is over and done.
Parent
Re:Careful with the word "scam" (Score:5, Informative)
The fun thing is they ship the crap stuff to the US and good stuff to EU because we require higher warranties. Here in Denmark for instance they are by law required to show that anything failing within the first 6 months is misuse by the customer. On top of that we get another 1 and a half year where any defects are still considered under warranty, but its up to the user to show that its a faulty product - however, in practice electronic shops grant a full 2 year warranty, with pretty much no questions asked due to the competition.
So any company selling hardware in Denmark has to take care the stuff works or they will end up having to replace it 2 years down the road, that means the good runs end up here. (A good example is the Samsung F8 series, any model destined for Scandinavia is labeled BDX and comes with on site service per default and are pretty much guaranteed to work for 5+ years)
Parent
Kinoki Foot Pads (Score:5, Informative)
I've seem some scams recently, but the most amazing has to be Kinoki Foot Pads [youtube.com]. Let's ignore the fact that my understanding is the word "kinoki" is meaningless and the characters they use in the ad don't even read "kinoki".
I'm used to all sorts of pseudo science in TV ads, but this one is downright amazing. Did you know tree roots are used to dispose of chemicals, and that my feet are actually tree roots? I'm so glad someone told me. I especially love the list of conditions that these things can cure. Even if they weren't fake and actually would detoxify you, I seriously doubt it would even touch many of those conditions. I seem to remember reading someone wrapped carrots with the pads just to prove that anything will make them blacken from "toxins".
The ad id just amazing. I was dumbfounded the first time I saw it. Diet pill ads look like something out of the Mayo Clinic in comparison.
Re:Kinoki Foot Pads (Score:4, Insightful)
The issue there is that you can have a disclaimer which says that none of these claims have been evaluated, even if it's not actually legible due the the TV screen resolution.
The ad agency in general should never have been freed from the earlier regulations. Thanks to the Reagan administration, IIRC, advertising for medications is OK. You can also say whatever you want, as long as there's technically a disclaimer included, even if it's too long or small to be read.
Advertisers are liars, that's basically their job, and it always has been. The problem is that the watchers would rather watch TV and the cash flow into their bank accounts than actually regulate the industry.
The infinity razer springs to mind. It supposedly never requires a change of blades ever. Unfortunately, it doesn't break the laws of physics and as such the friction causes the blades to deteriorate. But the company is happy to sell you new blades. A cost which isn't disclosed in the ad, implying that it's free or of minimal cost.
Parent
Re:Kinoki Foot Pads (Score:5, Informative)
Parent
Re:Kinoki Foot Pads (Score:4, Informative)
I think they are going for "ki no ki" (the first "ki" being "tree" and the second "spirit"; US Slashdot doesn't do Kanji, sorry) as in "spirit of trees" or some such. The word on the screen reads "kijoueki" which is "tree sap" (a bit redundant).
Parent
Water-free water, pay only $9.99 shipping! (Score:4, Funny)
Well, then I'm also selling water-free water for places that have water shortages. Just add 1 cup of water to the device and you will have an entire cup of water that you can drink!
Re:Water-free water, pay only $9.99 shipping! (Score:5, Interesting)
I am not making this up: according to a recent Washington Post story [washingtonpost.com], "Desalinated seawater from Hawaii, meanwhile, is being sold as `concentrated water' -- at $33.50 for a two-ounce bottle. Like any concentrated beverage, it is supposed to be diluted before drinking, except that in this case, that means adding water to . . . water."
Parent
Another scam (Score:3, Informative)
The 'coupon' you can get that covers 40 bucks of the price expires. Sometimes before people can actally find a converter box.
What's the best tech scam you've heard of lately? (Score:5, Interesting)
Do you mean other than those $60 converter boxs and $40 Government coupons that expire in less than 80 days after people receive them? The coupons are a great deal for the importers and sellers, but in reality the customer ends up paying about whet they would if there were no coupon program, perhaps more when you realize they pay sales tax on the entire ticket price. In a world where I can buy a DVD player in a local store for $29 or less, these much simpler converter boxes should not be costing $60.
Best Tech Scam (Score:5, Informative)
Well, the cell phone antenna booster "stickers" were probably the single best tech scam. It combined laughably ineffective "technology" with the always successful price-so-low-it-doesn't-matter-if-they-don't-work.
More recently, I'm still astounded by the number of "BOOST YOUR MPG!" schemes that involve additives or random crap shoved in your air intake. I especially love the accusations from promoters that the auto manufacturers are in it with the oil companies. GM and Ford are both facing a very real possibility of chapter 11 bankruptcy, and the word is that Cerberus is quietly readying a giant hammer of doom over at Chrysler. If all it took was a $2 piece of metal to get 9 more mpg out of a Malibu, don't you think they'd have done it by now? See the cell phone boosters for the basic premise: if you only charge $40 for one of these things, people won't be too pissed when they find out that it doesn't work.
There are many MLM schemes that differentiate themselves from the regular Amway crowd by pitching websites that MAKE YOU MONEY. I was actually approached by two different classmates about five years ago regarding the scheme, and it was so comically bad to anyone with any kind of tech knowledge that you couldn't help but laugh. Picture MLM combined with an Amazon-style referral bonus for online purchases. Now charge someone $400 to participate, and charge extra for adding basic things to their company website. Now make sure the websites resemble GeoCities circa 1997. Now we're talking!
My other favorite is the speaker scam, which someone tried to pull on me about two weeks ago (I hadn't heard of these for years). It's not really a tech scam, just your basic grift that happens to involve technology: an "installer" got an extra set of speakers/surround sound system/plasma TV accidentally loaded in his van for a big install job. Last time this happened, his boss reamed him a new one for not noticing in the first place, then sold them and kept the cash himself. Installer figures he'd "cut out the middleman" and you look like the kind of guy who knows good equipment. Usually they're selling actual speakers or receiver (the plasma scams generally involved an oven door in a box with a window), and they often have some custom-made audio magazine with their brand of speaker on the cover and a great review inside. You end up buying $20 worth of garbage for $200. Dogg Digital and Kirsch were the big names in the white van speaker scam years ago. Google them for an entertaining and depressing look at human nature.
Re:Best Tech Scam (Score:5, Interesting)
They've moved to eBay. A year or two ago, I was trying to find some new speakers. I spent several hours clicking around the various brands and types on eBay, and for kicks (maybe because I'm slightly evil) I'd place a few opening bids on obviously high-end items, knowing I'd lose the auction. The next morning I had "congrats! You've won!" email in my inbox, and an invoice for $78 for a pair of DR-SL-900 [ebay.com] speakers. It took me all of 10 minutes to figure out that these were a scam [google.com]. I offered to pay the relisting fees as a good netizen, expecting something like $5:
And promptly got this note back:
After replying that that was a ripoff, I got back a note detailing the various fees they paid, which totaled $30. Where'd the extra $15 come from? After that, I told them I'd researched the product, and that they could initiate the dead-beat bidder process, so I could take the negative feedback and be on my merry way.
I got this response:
I told them "no deal," and they opened an "unpaid item dispute" against me. I put in the dispute that they were a scam, and about an hour later the dispute was closed for the reason: "payment has been received." Hah. I was actually waiting for them to leave me positive feedback...
So I learned my lesson: Always research before you bid on eBay, even if the bid's not serious. ;-)
Parent
Re:Best Tech Scam (Score:5, Interesting)
I don't get it. Why did you offer any money to someone trying to scam you?
How did you figure out it was a scam, other than the cheap price?
It all sounds good but the details don't make sense to me.
Parent
Re:Best Tech Scam (Score:5, Insightful)
The OP is trying to make himself seem like the good guy in the story. Here is what happened :
Guy goes to eBay. Guy finds lots of speakers that he thinks are worth lots of moolah. Guy thinks to himself, hey, maybe I can bid low and rip somebody off (legally, $1 auctions have been known to net you high-priced goods whenever christmas and easter fall on the same day). Guy proceeds to bid on stuff with impunity without researching what he's bidding on.
Guy waits a day.
Guy actually wins an auction for an item. He didn't bother to read the description and model number the first time. He did not bother to research the item before he placed a bid. Guy thinks he's being scammed because, hey, he actually got an item for the price he bid. Guy is panicking. Guy wants out of this deal. Guy comes up with "They are SCAMMING ! This is not the item I bid on ! This is sub-standard quality gear ! I know, let's be a douchebag and offer to relist the item, I don't want to be held accountable to the bid I entered !"
Seller, meanwhile, gets annoyed. Since he does not want negative feedback (which is bad, bad stuff on eBay), he tries to work out a deal that is to everybody's satisfaction. Buyer offered to pay relisting, so seller takes the deal. Buyer does not believe the fee. Buyer is getting annoying and costing a lot of money in time spent. Seller offers buyer to pay whatever he deems fair as relisting fee. Buyer declines, frothing at the mouth. Seller initiates dead-beat buyer proceedings, as ANY reputable seller would, seeing as how they are the ones being scammed out of their listing fee.
Seller ultimately decides to cut their losses and not deal with buyer anymore, not deal with eBay in this matter, not risk negative feedback, and just moves on, writing this off as the cost of doing business.
Meanwhile, douchebag buyer thinks he's won and really shown them. He hasn't been scammed. The speakers were listed on the eBay listing. He could have researched. Since he feels he is in the righteous right, he posts unanonymized eMails and tries to pass these guys off as scumbags ... I have yet to see any evidence of that. If he had been delivered a box full of bricks, we might have a story. He hasn't.
Parent
Re:Best Tech Scam (Score:4, Interesting)
There's tons of money to be made in the audiophile market. Just apply a little creativity along with some technobabble, then price it higher than anybody else. It won't be long before forum posts start praising your products as producing "warmer" sound.
Some of my favorites:
I've tried for years to tell these people that these companies are a big scam, but audiophiles are a daft group. I'm about ready to give up the argument and run a scam myself. Someone is making a fortune off them, and it might as well be me.
Parent
The cooler is not a scam (Score:3, Informative)
That type of cooler is called an evaporative or swamp cooloer [wikipedia.org]. It's no air conditioner, but it can be effective in some cases and is definitely not a tech scam.
Car runs on water (Score:5, Informative)
Audiophile Hardware (Score:5, Insightful)
These audiophile things offend me. I realize some people like to mess with their hardware to make it look pretty in their eyes (ricers, for example) but to claim such "behind-the-scenes" hardware mods do anything except drain the bank accounts of the ignorant is beyond the pale and simply a scam perpetrated by those who know better.
Re:Audiophile Hardware (Score:5, Funny)
Thats nothing.
http://www.amazon.com/Denon-AKDL1-Dedicated-Link-Cable/dp/B000I1X6PM/ [amazon.com]
You save $49.75!!!
Check out the user reviews.
Parent
Hey, who can forget... (Score:4, Interesting)
...laser rot? You could buy a green Magic Marker for about $20, paint the edges of your CDs with it, and not worry about the laser rotting the bits off.
Or the $400 Denon Cat5 cable only last week?
And there was a $10 gadget heavily advertised in general-interest magazines in the Seventies, especially Sunday supplements, that was designed to LOOK as if you could pirate cable TV with it. You just hooked it up to the antenna terminals on your TV and presto, you would get "the same type of programs you'd get on cable" -- i.e., sports, movies, news -- but you wouldn't have to pay monthly bills "because you're not getting cable!" What it was, was a rabbit-ears antenna with a plastic disk in the middle shaped like a dish antenna.
The prose in the ad was a masterpiece of subtlety. There was not a single misstatement of fact in it, but innumerable people read as a pitch for something like the pirate HBO setups that were in the news then.
rj
kquade (Score:4, Funny)
Free project boxes! (Score:5, Interesting)
Concentrated Water (Score:4, Funny)
(and probably other places)
[ Yes, people really are that stupid. ]
Re:Maybe the (Score:5, Insightful)
The real tech scam: you have to upgrade your PC every two years to run the latest and greatest versions of Windows and Office.
Parent
Re:Maybe the (Score:5, Interesting)
Absurd.
Parent
Re:Carbon credits (Score:5, Informative)
Parent
Re:Carbon credits (Score:5, Funny)
Once the tree dies, its carbon goes right back into the air.
Is spontaneous combustion a big problem for trees in you area?
Parent
Other scams (Score:5, Insightful)
You don't need techobabble to put one over on people ...
Just look at the erpackaging of crap loans and blessing them with AAA ratings, and the proposal to bail out those who participated in the scam.
Time was, the three biggest lies were "The check is in the mail", "I'll still love you in the morning", and "I won't come in your mouth."
Now its "Mission Accomplished!", "Housing prices never go down," and "Jebus loves you- gimme money!"
Parent
Re:I like Vista (Score:5, Funny)
Vista comes with a First Person Shooter?
Let me guess - you score points by killing penguins with thrown chairs, you buy armour by making campaign contributions, and you power up by eating up all the ram chips lying around.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
I think I hear coders working on that right now in flash just because.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
My laptop with vista is noticeably faster than my desktop with XP (with the exception of network transfer speed), even though they have the same specs (2.1ghz core 2 duo, 2gb ram. The desktop has a better videocard).
For me at least XP seems to get much slower with age while vista does not do so. Yah, a fresh install of XP is blinding fast, even more so than Ubuntu IMO, but after several weeks just slows to a crawl (yah I scandisk, reg clean, defrag, spyware/virus check, etc) while Vista takes a couple days
Re:I like Vista (Score:4, Funny)
I don't believe you.
Yes it's a well-known bug in XP that the code get tired after several weeks of use because there's a qi-leak.
Now, why not take that weak shit to the park? Maybe the squirrels will believe it.
Parent
Re:I like Vista (Score:5, Informative)
I used it for about 4 hours
Stop.
Back in the fricking' BETA, Vista would run fairly sluggishly for the first day or so, as it indexed every file you've got. Then, it ran more or less at a constant speed.
If you want to give Vista a test, give it at LEAST a week.
Now, it runs great, and uses about 2/3 the ram that was being consumed by Vista
Wait... you know enough to check the RAM, but not enough to do a google search for Vista using too much ram? [google.com].
(Hint: Vista is your memory manager. Why should it waste cycles loading and un-loading files so you can have "free" ram when it can just, you know, keep some in memory until a program actually asks for the space?)
Parent
Re:Another irrational MS Hater (Score:4, Informative)
You seem to be misreading my point, coward -- I use Windows every day, at work and home (where it runs under Parallels on my Macbook.) Lots of great software runs under it, the benefits are tangible and positive.
Vista, however, was marketed as a speedy, pretty *new* O/S. I'd expected a redesigned kernel to do better than it actually does.
I've been programming and using computers since teletype days (jr. high anyways.) That O/Sen require so much horsepower bothers me so. The Vista upgrade at work ran too slow on my core2duo Dell laptop, so I downgraded to XP, sadly. Yes, even OS X runs slower than I'd like. There's always Linux for compute-intensive jobs, however.
Parent
Re:Why I wish I knew more science (Score:5, Informative)
The freezer removes heat from the icepack and dumps it into the room (plus extra, because of the work done). Then you take the icepack out of the freezer, put it in the "room cooling" device, where it takes heat from the room and puts it back into the icepack. Net result, your room is hotter than it was before. In order to get a net cooling effect, you have to dump the heat into a separate system that you don't care about (like outside). That's why air conditioners have vents to the outside.
Parent
Re:Why I wish I knew more science (Score:4, Informative)
There's an old unit of measurement for heat transfer called 'tons'. You don't see it around much anymore, due to the switch to units like btu.hr or kWh. But it would be really useful to bring it back for things such as this.
"1 ton" is the amount of heat needed to melt 1 ton of ice in a 24 hour period,or about 3.5kWh.
Your typical car air-conditioner, or big-ish room A/C, has a cooling capacity of about 2.5 tons.
The reason a ton is useful is that people know how fast ice melts. They know (roughly) that a ton is a heckuva lot of ice. When you tell them your A/C is a "2 ton unit" they can then get an idea of how much energy is used - a lot more than just mentioning a figure in kW.
Sooooooo....How much ice is in those cooling blocks? A kilo or two?The only possible real effect is that it might temporarily de-humidify the air in your room a little due to condensation on the ice blocks, giving the impression that it is "somewhat" cooler.
Parent
Not so fast (Score:4, Informative)
I have NO IDEA on how fast ice melt, and I am a physicist (*). I bet whatever you want the average joe on the street won't have an idea either. As for knowing a ton is huge... Well no shit sherlock. Does that help your average A/C unit buyer ? Not at all. On the other hand, 3.5 kwh means I know how much I will pay on my next electricity bill (which are not counted in tons). And that tell 95% of the world how much energy will the A/C unit consume. And I bet your average US consumer would be more happier knowing one A/C consume 3.5 kwh than 2 tons for the same aforementioned reason. Combine that with a clearly defined efficiency and you are all set.
(*) but I can talk to your hours long about boring forbidden transition n-sigma*
Parent
Re:Heat pumps work both ways. (Score:5, Interesting)
Boy, you got that right.
I worked on the HVAC design of a big modern house in the Dallas/Ft Worth suburbs (summer design temperature 105F/40C). It had a Great Room with a 12 ft high, 60 ft long glass window (the entire wall, floor to ceiling) facing West, overlooking a reflecting pool. (not much reflief from the hot afternoon sun in that layout) The building had lots of windows, skylights, glass elevator, glass stairs, even some glass floors. Interesting design, but about 3 times the A/C you would otherwise expect for a house that size.
To be fair, it didn't inefficiently pump the heat to the hot outside air, but had a system of water-source heat pumps using ground-tempered water pumped in a closed loop through about sixteen 150 ft deep wells. (the architect refused to have visible condensing units for cooling or gas vents/chimneys for heating)
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Yes.
Yes it does take more energy.
The ice-pa
Re:Why I wish I knew more science (Score:5, Informative)
Be carefull about moving the radiator portion of the fidge outside. A heat pump has to work harder the more against the gradient the tempature differential you are tring to create is. The compressor system in your fridge is designed to run lots of short cycles, where as the AC unit on your house is designed for few longer cycles.
If you fridge can't pump much heat because its trying to exhaust the heat into an 90F+ world and its going to be running constantly. It might not last long in that configuration.
Parent
Re:Why I wish I knew more science (Score:4, Informative)
Specifically, swamp coolers work because of the energy (heat) absorbed in the phase change from liquid water to vapour. Changing a litre of liquid water to vapour, with no temperature change, requires that siginificant energy must be added to the system.
Another way to look at it, is that a given quantity of liquid water has the same specific heat as a much cooler quantity of vapour.
Parent
Re:Extended warranties suck except where they dont (Score:4, Informative)
I've learned my lesson, and now buy extended warranties on laptops. The extended warranty on my Macbook has more than paid for itself already, and in the end got me an upgrade to a model released a year and a half after I bought mine. Hopefully I don't need to use the warranty again, but it's very nice knowing I don't have to worry about it. Plus, while it might be cheaper to repair some things on your own, you really need to value your time on getting something fixed. How long does it take to find the parts, a place to fix it etc. How long will your item be out of commission. It's quite convenient to call one number and get a box to return the item in the next day.
Phil
Parent