Weekly Sponsorship Suggestion/Complaint Thread - March 2022

[amckern]

Would love to see some more ifixit stuff, steve @ gamers nexus has me wanting to get a new set of screw drivers after watching this video:

 

Edited March 29, 2022 by amckern
Added reference for what tools i mean

[JonoT]

15 hours ago, amckern said:

Would love to see some more ifixit stuff, steve @ gamers nexus has me wanting to get a new set of screw drivers after watching this video:

 

Oh we still work with iFixit fairly extensively. They either have official sponsor spots on the channel or have been used on camera for video projects and streams.

[HORNGG]

might wanna review the relationship with Ubiquiti @JonoT

 

• data breach
• suing journalist

 

https://twitter.com/QuinnyPig/status/1508965090019577856

 

 

[Spotty]

8 hours ago, JonoT said:

Oh we still work with iFixit fairly extensively. They either have official sponsor spots on the channel or have been used on camera for video projects and streams.

Is showing their products on camera part of a paid advertisement arrangement between you and ifixit? If so it isn't made clear that your videos contain paid product placement.

[JonoT]

4 hours ago, Spotty said:

Is showing their products on camera part of a paid advertisement arrangement between you and ifixit? If so it isn't made clear that your videos contain paid product placement.

Sorry to clarify they don't pay for placement. I wanted to highlight that we like using their tools paid or not. 

[Spotty]

1 hour ago, JonoT said:

Sorry to clarify they don't pay for placement. I wanted to highlight that we like using their tools paid or not. 

Gotcha, thanks for clarifying.

[Ekin]

Ubiquiti seems to be suing a security journalist, who reported about an Ubiquiti security breach, but did not update his article after it was clear that it was an inside job. Still, I think that this is not a good look for a company with security products.

As a Floatplane user I don't know if they are a sponsor, but LTT worked with them in the past.

 

https://www.theregister.com/2022/03/30/ubiquiti_brian_krebs/

 

 

[computerace]

i dont know if this is really a complaint or a suggestion, but i just saw the wealthfront sponsor spot on the wan show and am somewhat skeptical. up to $5k of managed/automatic investing (even though im still not entirely sure what the service is exactly) sounds like a great offering bordering on too good to be true territory, especially given how many finance related things these days are scams or generally shady.

i cant immediately find a catch with this wealthfront offer, but I have questions like:

• who is ultimately paying for this free wealth management?
• what are the first/biggest fees someone signing up through this link will likely have to pay? withdrawl fees?  some subscription once the value eclipses $5k? the language "WAN Show listeners get $5K managed for free when they open an Investment Account through the button below." feels oddly specific
• whats the whole chain of money changing hands here? obviously wealthfront sponsored LTT to promote this and were paid to do so. the small print at the bottom also says they paid cash to both Nerdwallet and Investopedia for referring customers. What's in it for them by getting so many customers?

I'd really love to see some of the discussion and/or due diligence around why it was decided to add them as a sponsor so i can decide if I believe this is legit or not and I couldnt see anything about it in this forum category so i figured this post was the next best place to ask.

P.S. i dont check this forum account like ever so you may need to aggressively @ me so i see your reply

[BGross]

Blackberry Cylance Antivirus. Been recommending them a lot as they are one of the best in the industry and are Canadian home boys.

[gmnio]

4 hours ago, computerace said:

i dont know if this is really a complaint or a suggestion, but i just saw the wealthfront sponsor spot on the wan show and am somewhat skeptical. up to $5k of managed/automatic investing (even though im still not entirely sure what the service is exactly) sounds like a great offering bordering on too good to be true territory, especially given how many finance related things these days are scams or generally shady.

I'm very far from an expert here so don't take this as an endorsement that their product is any good, but looking into it briefly, Wealthfront doesn't seem to be doing anything unusual compared to its competitors. As I understand it, robo-advisors like Wealthfront do the work that a human advisor would do by asking about your goals and investing your money in ways that are congruent with those goals. The idea is that the money you put in grows slowly over time, not that it skyrockets immediately or whatever. I don't understand what makes it too good to be true.

Quote

who is ultimately paying for this free wealth management?

The way I interpret things, Wealthfront is eating the cost and expecting customers to either put in more money if they like the service, or take it all out and move to something else.

Additionally, since the advising work is done algorithmically, I would assume that their costs per new user are pretty low. For comparison, Vanguard's equivalent product has no advisory fees for the first 90 days, Betterment has no advisory fees for "up to" a year, and Charles Schwab charges no advisory fees.

Quote

what are the first/biggest fees someone signing up through this link will likely have to pay? withdrawl fees?  some subscription once the value eclipses $5k? the language "WAN Show listeners get $5K managed for free when they open an Investment Account through the button below." feels oddly specific

I don't know about all the fees, but once the value goes above 5k, you would start paying an advisory fee of 0.25%. For comparison, Vanguard charges up to 0.2%, Betterment charges 0.25% and as mentioned before, Schwab doesn't charge a fee. About the wording, I've heard language that's pretty similar in other sponsor spots, and since it's a financial thing I could also see them needing to be specific in their wording.

Quote

What's in it for them by getting so many customers?

The more customers, the more fee payments.

@computerace

[Tydfil]

question about wealthfront, is it us only? seems to want a US mobile number in order to register. would suck if thats the case, would like to give it a go.

 

cheers

[LilTraumaLlama]

Have MVMT and Drop been, well dropped? I haven't seen MVMT on videos as a sponsor recently. As a watch enthusiast these watches feel dirty. While it is true that they keep time, simply removing the back of the watch shows the cheap outsourced movement that they use. They then appear to dress up these cheap movements with cheap materials that have been manipulated to look like more expensive materials. Ultimately, leaving a very cheap product with a significant markup. As for Drop, I have tried to buy four different items there as a direct result of LTT advertising. I have never once received a product from them. A 100% failure rate. Granted it was only 4 attempts, but that is still enough that I personally don't trust the place. Also, just to clarify I did always end up getting my money back. Once I had the fourth failure with them I started looking into the company. They seem to have more problems then what I mentioned. A visit (at that time) to the BBB website showed that they had two profiles, both with failing grades. An actual F grade on the BBB is easy to avoid. But two?!? It's like they aren't even trying. Anyways, I appreciate you guys and that you are always trying to improve. Keep kicking arse

[s4nari]

Since you are looking for feedback in regard to sponsorship choices I figured I'd offer my two cents on my experience dealing with Zoho CRM who has been a sponsor of at least two of your videos in the past couple months. 

 

I've been in charge of managing the technical setup and maintenance of a corporate system that uses Zoho CRM and other parts of the Zoho suite to manage orders, quoting of services, invoicing, etc. for the past four years. While Zoho's ecosystem is one of the cheaper options out there for a CRM system, I feel that anyone actually considering using it should be aware of a couple of details with the CRM software, as well as other aspects of the user experience using Zoho's software. 

 

1. Zoho doesn't have a separate developer ecosystem to test features and bug test/beta run changes to their software. It is fairly frequent that things get changed/broken due to random changes made by their dev team before updates happen to the software. This is further complicated by the fact that these changes are often unannounced, with no notice being given to the users of the software when something gets changed/removed. This can cause confusion at best among employees who have been using the software for years, and at worst results in established practices becoming non-functional.

 

2. Zoho Customer support and help documentation is haphazard on a good day. When contacting support they require a screen sharing session EVERY TIME to document the problem you are experiencing, even after this the problem usually is never resolved and is marked as completed by their support even though nothing got fixed. Many times I've had their support staff claim that a problem in their software is due to an issue with my ISP, which is frankly ridiculous. I've also encountered support staff who insist that they need a trace route done and sent to them for their review which is equally ridiculous. Some of their support staff can be helpful, but it is a shot in the dark, and I've had much more problems with their support than good experiences. 

 

3.  If using their mail servers to send email, MANY of your messages will be automatically marked as spam by a good amount of recipients due to Zoho being used by spammers and fraudulent scams to a large degree. I've encountered multiple large organizations who have Zoho's mail servers blacklisted for this reason. 

 

While I don't expect my own personal experiences to affect LMG's choice of sponsors, I wanted to share these details in the hopes that maybe some people could have forewarning before dealing with them or to find better alternatives (as there are many options out there which are far superior). Thanks for having open communication with your viewers, and for generally being an amazing organization with transparency that others should aspire to. 

[nutzaalex]

Hi Jono, I have a complaint about Volta.

 

I posted in general discussion originally:

 

 

[JonoT]

22 hours ago, nutzaalex said:

Hi Jono, I have a complaint about Volta.

 

I posted in general discussion originally:

 

 

Hey!

Looks like Colton messaged you on your original post so we're going to get it handled there.

[JonoT]

Ok guys! It's a new month and new thread will get started! This one will be getting locked. 

[SeanLMG]

On 4/3/2022 at 12:26 PM, nutzaalex said:

Hi Jono, I have a complaint about Volta.

 

I posted in general discussion originally:

 

 

Just following up here that this was resolved in that thread, and we are putting our partnership with Volta on hold until their distribution issues are rectified. Thanks all!