Free Software Foundation Certifies A $99 Mini VPN Router

[thinkpenguin]

Oh, I understand. I always ask the question, "Does this warranty start today or does it start after the manufacturer's warranty?" I've universally been told, "It starts today at the time of purchase." I've never once been offered an in-store warranty that started whenever the manufacturer's warranty ended.

Granted, it's not highly skilled, intelligent people that are offering me these warranties so they could be wrong in their information, but the few pamphlets from Walmart and Sam's I've read implies that they start at the time of purchase.

That sentence I highlighted makes me assume you're not an American. I say that because a very large swath of the economy of America is based on pushing products on folks it doesn't make sense for. You wouldn't do it, but an American would. They don't see it as a way to lower prices to solve poor problems and make the store more accessible to more people. They keep the starting price the same and use the extended warranty as a way to line their pockets. They gamble that you'll buy a 1 year warranty for your 2 year warranty product. They gamble that you'll buy a 1 year warranty on a 1 year warranty product and to forget about the in-store warranty when the product breaks and you come across the manufacturer's warranty in the instruction manual. In-store warranties are not about helping poor people, they're a gamble to pad the pockets of the owner class.

In America when you're too poor to shop at places that have products that have in-store warranties you have to go shop at a Dollar Place and buy your products in macro for inflated prices. Instead of a six pack at Walmart for 2 dollars you get a 2 pack at Dollar Place for 1 dollar.

The situation is probably a bit more nuanced. I definitely know what you are getting at more generally where warranties are offered on products where it really makes no sense for anyone. Why would I pay $6.95 for a warranty on a $10 SIM card at Walmart? I'm not sure this is just disingenuous executives looking to take advantage of consumers, as the more probable explanation is that they're training employees or prompting employees to ask on every item in the electronics department, but I have seen pressure tactics utilized in the US and even more aggressively outside the US. The approach probably does help turn retail profitable and make these stores more competitive with online retailers. There are far more disgusting things the brick and mortar retail sector is doing regulation wise to hinder small online competitors.

There is probably no regulatory solution that is going to fix the general underlying problem and the more regulation we push the more harm that comes to all. It's always in small doses, but those doses add up. We lose smaller upstart competitors and choice in the marketplace as an example leading to higher prices or poorer quality options. I think it's education, teaching personal responsibility, teaching due diligence (don't write that $100k check to a guy claiming to be the right hand man to Elun Musk from school funds you have access to but are not authorized to spend), and potentially 'technological' solutions that can fix or mitigate some sorts of problems with less mentally bodied folks (financial accounts that limit expenditures to a percentage above a regular weekly or monthly allotment would stop scammers, but not remove elderly folks from remaining more or less in control of their own finances for instance).

The underlying problem is people are not learning to be skeptical or confront questionable marketing or claims. We're not letting people fail until it's too late and failure is how humans generally learn whether we like it or not. Failing on little things early in life is better than losing $100,000 to a scammer. Learning to distrust people isn't a bad thing. Learning to push back is another useful skill. Unfortunately young people are trained to do what they're told, not think for themselves. The system is designed to put out factory workers, not creative thinking persons. China's the worst in this regard, but the US isn't far behind, and Europe is probably somewhere in-between.

[Ironmask]

The situation is probably a bit more nuanced. I definitely know what you are getting at more generally where warranties are offered on products where it really makes no sense for anyone. Why would I pay $6.95 for a warranty on a $10 SIM card at Walmart? I'm not sure this is just disingenuous executives looking to take advantage of consumers, as the more probable explanation is that they're training employees or prompting employees to ask on every item in the electronics department, but I have seen pressure tactics utilized in the US and even more aggressively outside the US. The approach probably does help turn retail profitable and make these stores more competitive with online retailers. There are far more disgusting things the brick and mortar retail sector is doing regulation wise to hinder small online competitors.

I worked at Staples and that's 100% the case. We all got "score cards" with how many plans we could get. We got nothing for getting a plan, but our hours can be cut back if we don't at least try to meet the goals. If our ESP was especially low that day, we'd try for anything, even plans on charger wires.
The plans are legitimately good for expensive stuff and they do work, but yeah, we would try it on everything. One of the reasons I left.

[thinkpenguin]

But as you said, most crypto is tracking every change of hand a token fragment ever made. There is all of the interest in the world of those who track people just to covertly own VPN companies and track you with extra scrutiny for using one. VPN providers are some of the most nameless, faceless companies on the internet.

TOR is the closest thing to anonymity, but even then all of the end points are known, monitored and highly susceptible to correlation attacks. The better strategy is to boycott all big tech to the greatest extent possible to avoid having a profile built on you, practice strict browser privacy settings.

I'm also skeptical of the marketing of many VPN providers. ISPs log traffic and so do many VPN providers despite claiming otherwise. Not all do however- and you can see that based on numerous legal cases- particularly civil suits. I think that a lot of privacy-focused VPN providers are merely in it to make a buck and some go in a direction that is just disgusting. They're out to sell your data an log your traffic. Fortunately because there is free market competition you can find more reputable VPN providers and certainly providers that are more reputable than ISPs. ISPs are in probably nearly all countries if not all mandated by government to at a minimum provide access to law enforcement for monitoring and survalance. It has been the case that ISPs are required to have functionality to enable law enforcement to connect since the late 1990s. This is not the case for VPN providers however.

It's also the case that not all VPN providers are terrible and such services within certain limitations can benefit their customers. For example in getting around censorship. A number of years ago I was in Belgium and ran into problems accessing certain news sites because of excessive regulation in Europe (the GDPR). I'm in favor of privacy- but regulations can also have unintentional consequences. In this case I was merely trying open articles from news outlets that didn't have significant customer bases in Europe. We're talking local regional news outlets. Instead of complying with the GDPR they just blocked European IP addresses. Europe has other more blatant censorship, but in this example it was a probably unintentional negative side effect of privacy legislation. There are other negative impacts of the GDPR. It hurt consumers in Europe- like it pushed out smaller competitors and some products aren't available in Europe now. You have to get them from the US which increases shipping time and costs more. Maybe some folks are OK with this cost-benefit ratio, but a one-size fits all approach just generally seems like the wrong way to do it to me. I'd rather see people adopting voluntary technological solutions and taking advantage of free market competition to positively impact the world. We don't have free markets, but we have systems that lean in that direction to one degree or another. I'd rather get rid of intellectual property to enable free market competition and reduce regulation where said regulation involves state actors using violence to achieve a social or political objective (dumping toxic chemicals in a river for instance would be an example of the use of the word violent in this context and something that should be regulated/banned, but whether or not you need to have a warranty on a product isn't violent, and so no law should regulate that).

[thinkpenguin]

I worked at Staples and that's 100% the case. We all got "score cards" with how many plans we could get. We got nothing for getting a plan, but our hours can be cut back if we don't at least try to meet the goals. If our ESP was especially low that day, we'd try for anything, even plans on charger wires.
The plans are legitimately good for expensive stuff and they do work, but yeah, we would try it on everything. One of the reasons I left.

Yea, Staples actually isn't really all that bad compared to industry practices of yesteryear. I'm aware of the program that was before this one and the one you reference which came later. It's possible the incentive program you reference is worse than I'm aware of or was at certain points or during certain periods. However that said I'm not aware of anyone ever being fired at a Staples store I'm familiar with in NJ for not meeting quotas. Cashiers were a decade ago anyway trained or prompted to sell plans on goods. The business machines guys were mostly the ones selling plans though and it was mostly on computers and devices where it made more sense. Yea- I know the industry more or less. It appears to be basically the same thing Walmart does today although without the sales people so there is no pressure. The folks in business machines (aka electronics/computers) at Staples a decade ago were expected to sell warranties and were at one point paid out a dollar amount for each plan sold. Later it was like eliminated and they went to a system where the person who sold the most plans got a small reward. The "best" person at one store at one point I knew was crooked as hell. However he was actually yelled at by management at that store. He was just outright lying to customers about the warranties in order to increase his sales. I would say that at least at that time it would be unfair to claim the practices were immoral or that anyone was trained to lie to achieve sales targets. I'm pretty confident Circuit City and Best Buy were and Best Buy probably still is wayyyy worse on every measure here.

Now- if you want to talk about marketing that was really messed up let me introduce you to the Marketing Microsoft sent to Staples to hand out to employees about Microsoft Windows netbook as it basically was aimed at training employees to lie about GNU/Linux netbooks. These warranty concerns are nothing by comparison to various other practices and deeds in the industry. At least I never saw or heard any top down training materials of Staples employees that was just beyond dishonest. Incompetent employees? Sure. Practices that I'm not a fan of, sure. You try selling Microsoft Windows systems for a while. It's quite distasteful. I know a guy at Staples who for years would tell customers that Microsoft Windows was awful, but did it tactfully as to not be a problem. He would sell them systems with Microsoft Windows, but he didn't hide the fact they were less than optimal. He would even say anti-virus was a scam to customers! But without a solution it was true that it was the only thing available to "protect" customers systems and people still bought the anti-virus software. At that time the reality was there was no real alternative solution for people to turn to. GNU/Linux was not yet an option for the masses. The software worked great- but there was no end-user support, places to buy systems or accessories, etc. That same person worked to solve these problems, and didn't demand regulation to ban Microsoft. Sometimes the best solutions are those that don't involve state-sponsored violence.

[skeevy420]

The situation is probably a bit more nuanced. I definitely know what you are getting at more generally where warranties are offered on products where it really makes no sense for anyone. Why would I pay $6.95 for a warranty on a $10 SIM card at Walmart? I'm not sure this is just disingenuous executives looking to take advantage of consumers, as the more probable explanation is that they're training employees or prompting employees to ask on every item in the electronics department, but I have seen pressure tactics utilized in the US and even more aggressively outside the US. The approach probably does help turn retail profitable and make these stores more competitive with online retailers. There are far more disgusting things the brick and mortar retail sector is doing regulation wise to hinder small online competitors.

There is probably no regulatory solution that is going to fix the general underlying problem and the more regulation we push the more harm that comes to all. It's always in small doses, but those doses add up. We lose smaller upstart competitors and choice in the marketplace as an example leading to higher prices or poorer quality options. I think it's education, teaching personal responsibility, teaching due diligence (don't write that $100k check to a guy claiming to be the right hand man to Elun Musk from school funds you have access to but are not authorized to spend), and potentially 'technological' solutions that can fix or mitigate some sorts of problems with less mentally bodied folks (financial accounts that limit expenditures to a percentage above a regular weekly or monthly allotment would stop scammers, but not remove elderly folks from remaining more or less in control of their own finances for instance).

The underlying problem is people are not learning to be skeptical or confront questionable marketing or claims. We're not letting people fail until it's too late and failure is how humans generally learn whether we like it or not. Failing on little things early in life is better than losing $100,000 to a scammer. Learning to distrust people isn't a bad thing. Learning to push back is another useful skill. Unfortunately young people are trained to do what they're told, not think for themselves. The system is designed to put out factory workers, not creative thinking persons. China's the worst in this regard, but the US isn't far behind, and Europe is probably somewhere in-between.

That theory is all good and well except that half of the time I was prompted at the self-checkout and with all the rest it was the POS system prompting the cashier, not a cashier trying to make quota. All the items I'm talking about the process goes as follows, self or regular checkout: Item is scanned, POS prompts for warranty offer, choice is made, scan next item. That's it. It isn't a case of them trying to upsell me a credit card or a Plus membership or make a quota of some sort, and I have a story for those, too, but a case of the system prompting warranties for random items.

I agree with a lot of the rest of that.

[Luke]

I will NEVER add an option extra payment that is mostly store profit to any purchase. I have for decades flatly refused to buy extended warranties and also refused to "register" any product. I buy with cash and will not release my name, email, or a valid phone number to any retailer and will reject the product if they won't sell under those conditions. Some of them now program cash registers to refuse to complete a transaction without a phone number. NEVER give them a real one unless you like telemarketing calls!

I have saved a lot more money on all those extended warranties I've refused to purchase than I've eaten on failed goods discarded and replaced at full price. Under no-name/no ID rules you often cannot return anything to the store anyway, in which case if it dies I toss it out or part it out. Some will take an item that dies immediately after purchase back with the receipt and no name/no ID, others will not.

[ozzyozzy]

Warranties in an international context are always complicated (B2B/B2C differences, customs and taxes also play a role) and depend on a wide number of factors.

While any large/serious company will offer products according to or exceeding the laws of the country the customer sits in because otherwise it would scare customers aware, it is often not economically viable for smaller companies or for very specialized items with low turnover. So it's understandable that Think Penguin who probably sells 25* of those routers in a year and makes a $10* profit per device doesn't want to offer the two year legal warranty to an E.U. customer for which, according to E.U. law, they would also have to pay shipping both ways for the repaired device in the first 6 months (not few companies in the E.U. provide even better terms than that because they want to provide good customer service - no wonder why many people like Amazon.com).

If ThinkPenguin want to serve a market that's 1/3 larger than the U.S., they only would have to a) find a competent reseller in the E.U. and let them handle warranty/repair etc. and b) consolidate a larger shipment of those devices to them.

* totally making that number up

[Paradigm Shifter]

While any large/serious company will offer products according to or exceeding the laws of the country the customer sits in because otherwise it would scare customers aware

The fact that the legal minimum in the EU is two years, but almost all electronics companies still make out that one year is the default (and minimum) says otherwise to this.

[ozzyozzy]

The fact that the legal minimum in the EU is two years, but almost all electronics companies still make out that one year is the default (and minimum) says otherwise to this.

Not sure where you have that information from but that's incorrect. Consumers get 2y warranty in the EU if they buy from someone in the EU/EFTA. There is no such thing as 1y warranty default in the EU. The burden of proof usually shifts to the purchaser after 6 months in most EU countries, though.

[BrokenAnsible]

There is no law binding any US-Only based company by law to uphold warranties according in another region. That would be no need to do so since that could be negotiated through contracts between companies such as re-selling. Offering shipping to other parts of the world isn't an implicit contract to that matter because it is not something that is considered in force. The audacity of someone in the EU to even think such a thing could be legitimate is mind boggling. If a company is multinational, that is another thing. The company took all the risk of setting up articles of incorporation and are held to the standards of that country as an entity of that country. If a US company operates a re-selling license to an EU company that EU company is liable for the EU contract and making sure they can comply to EU standards. They would have to seek the cost of warranty compliance in their negotiations with the US partner so they didn't lose their shirts adhering to local government regulations. They can't just seek damages against the partner when they get warranty issues and point to some law, they need to have an in force contract to seek liability from their partners.

I am not sure what is so hard about this.