Originally published at: Another example of a garbage Instagram product and the seller's fraudulent reply | Boing Boing
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“Instragram is the place where dropship derps sell crap to people who don’t know better.”
It’s also the place to buy dropship products when big brand retailers can’t get their ishh together to maintain their inventories. Last summer at the height of covid here in NYC, I bought a set of adjustable dumbbells from one of these direct from the factory dropship accounts, when they were out of stock every where in the USA, and people were selling them for outrageous markups on ebay. So yeah, as with all things, there’s a wide spectrum of experiences to be had. Mine was excellent.
Was there a coin stuck in its mouth?
OOHHHH, NVM - it’s the air tank from the movie.
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i once excitedly ordered some funky print shirts because they looked like they would be cool in the summer heat and i’m always miserable in basically anything above 68 degrees. what arrived, months later, were shirts made out of plastic made to fit dainty children.
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oh right, well if we’re not talking specifically about instagram swindles, the “lifetime” vpn which was one of several advertised as the “last you’ll ever need” on boingboing has apparently shut down operations and refuses to communicate with any of its customers. it was a good 3 years.
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I’ve seen things you people wouldn’t believe. I’ve seen dropship derps selling crap off the shoulder of Orion. […] Time to buy.
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Thanks. I thought it was a chicken egg, but couldn’t be bothered to look. Now that would be an interesting back story…
Mandatory Father Ted:
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Initially I was kinda pissed off on his behalf, but, honestly, a stupidly undersized plastic shark head is actually cooler than a “large” plastic shark head in its own way.
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Yeah, I think that many of the service “lifetime” offers on BBS have analogous relationship to crap drop shipping. Some of them are services marketed by shady affiliate resellers of a backup product, who resell white label services, making it seem like they are an established company with resources, rather than some sketchy dude with a laptop and nothing else. They promise lifetime service, but take the one time fee from buyers, pay for a bit of the white label service to keep the rubes from figuring out the swindle too early, and then bail with the money, failing to continue to pay the backup service provider the yearly dues (because the service provider doesn’t have a “lifetime” option).
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clap clap
Well, they just didn’t say whose lifetime, it just turns out the VPN had the lifespan of a mayfly.
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But is it as cool as a large plastic shark head with hydraulic-powered metal jaws?
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Shark still looks fake…
Call that large? Amateurs…
Maybe he was expecting the missing end of the Headington shark.
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I’m not going to tell a large plastic shark head with hydraulic-powered metal jaws it’s less cool than anything. My bones are kinda brittle like that.
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Another story of a con… I got contacted this week by a client who said, remember that co-op ad you designed for us in 2017? Here’s another one with our same customer, different trade mag, please give us a quote.
I could see from the email thread that the magazine charged $3500 for the ad placement. They said their circulation was > 100,000.
After getting zero search results on the magazine, I visited its web site. The home page linked to seven short articles (as web pages). The magazine page had buttons linking to the latest (February) issue and back issues – but both links went nowhere. The About Us page showed leadership named Brown, Smith and Lewis. Their LinkedIn page had no employees and no followers. Finally I noticed a Company Number in the footer, which led to a UK registration from two months ago.
Of course, now there is no project for me to work on. My client thanked me.
What I wanna know is, why is the outside GRAPHIC DESIGNER, ffs, the one detecting the scam? Next project they want with me, I’m gonna include at least $200 extra in the quote for doing this research (and saving them $3500).
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I’m also gonna worry a little. Because my client is also my spouse’s employer. Well, they’ve survived for a decade already with a CEO who is too naive to live (and we’re talking about a client who is a SOFTWARE company).
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