LMG Sponsor Complaints

[Birblover12]

Just watched yet another LTT Video with yet another War Thunder ad. I hate to be nitpicky, but have they been looked into at all @Sveeno? Was just looking through this thread and I've seen loads of other complaints against them. I think it'd be good to give them a second look over. Already posted my thoughts on them so I'll let you put two and two together.

 

 

[Other James]

Hey everyone,

Regarding War Thunder, we reached out to Gaijin Entertainment regarding some of the issues brought up in this thread.

The first of the complaints to address is about them running a campaign on the Donetsk People's Republic YouTube channel. This was something that was brought to Gaijin's attention almost immediately, and in the article that was written about it, this was addressed and they made sure to point out that those videos had been pulled from the DPR YouTube channel.

The other complaints, unfortunately, are true of most massively-multiplayer competitive games, especially free ones. Whenever we get offers for these free-to-play games, we have a few team members play the game, or reach out to individuals we know that play in order to secure feedback. And the feedback around War Thunder has been mostly positive; we know it won't be for everyone, but up until now we've felt comfortable promoting it. Diablo: Immortal, RAID Shadow Legends on the other hand, are examples of games that failed this test, and are examples of games we don't want to promote.

[Erioch]

On 1/31/2023 at 10:08 AM, manikyath said:

there's a lot of fossilzed bone that has legitimately zero scientific value, usually either because a LOT of skeletons were found, or the fragments that were found are, well.. too fragmented.

They aren't claiming they use fossilized bone.  They claim that they use bone.  Huge difference.

[manikyath]

10 hours ago, Erioch said:

They aren't claiming they use fossilized bone.  They claim that they use bone.  Huge difference.

i havent analysed their marketing materials, but iirc the quote in LTT segments is "dinosaur bone"

 

which, if you want to get technical on me, technically can be chicken bones.

[SomeDana]

During WAN show right now, I decided to finally follow though on buying Vessi shoes, after I discovered they were on discount.

All the way through their site the price was consistent, with in the end some normal shipping cost and a first time buyer discount. (LTT promo did not seem to work on dutch webshop)  
But then, when confirming the charge to my credit card for my bank the price was suddenly almost twice that.

I did not buy and send some contact request. Still think that no shop should ever charge anything else than what is stated on checkout, and you should be aware as a partner.

Also I did repeat the order proces to rule out user error with same result.

Edit:

Pretty sure those international sites are scam sites, aside that too high charge I got hit by additional fraudulent charges.

The sites are good enough copies that it wasn't immediately obvious, but on closer inspection there were red flags.

 

Could you as a partner encourage them to take action against those sites?

Also make it clearer on their own site that they do not operate those sites voor european customers?

Edited February 6, 2023 by SomeDana
Additional information

[Crash The Noise]

Re: Thorum - Another "always a sale going on site" like Secret Lab. That won't honor past sales. >> Be careful because a "sale" could expire at any time. Even if you're waiting for your sizing kit.

 

Timeline:

Jan 28th -- I became aware of Thorum's existence via the LTT Intel arc video and showed my S.O. their products. After a days we decided to pick up one of their his/hers ring sets: Then listed on their site for $540.00. *Which the LTT code could still be used on for a further discount. At this time we were unsure of our ring sizes so we ordered one of their sizing kits which understandably did not ship until Monday.

 

Feb 2nd -- The sizing kit arrived on the 2nd Thursday. We both sized our rings and I went to order. Come to find out that their initial sale had expired.

 

Feb 3rd -- I contacted their customer service, and to their credit I received a prompt response: Telling me that indeed I was not crazy & this set had been on sale. But this sale had expired, with no warning, while I was waiting for our sizing kit to arrive. Had I known the sale was expiring I obviously would have rushed around to local stores to get our sizes and ordered beforehand.

 

Thorum declined to honor the original price that they were offering but sent me a code as compensation, which does not drop the set even close to the original price they were offering while I was waiting for the sizing kit to arrive. Which I will definitely now not be using. Hopefully my loss is your gain. Even if it's only one person.

 

I thus asked to return the sizing kit & they informed me that they do not take returns on these kits. I have since asked for clarification of these events from their support for my records and they have not responded.

 

While not strictly illegal, it is definitely morally questionable as it falls under after-the-fact price gouging of an implied intent to purchase by the customer in the state of Florida (where the sizing kit shipped from) and New York (where it shipped to.)

 

However (see below)

 

Edit:

Adding their followup.

Feb 4th -- They refunded me the $10 for the sizing kit. Probably because I made it very heavily sound like the "please confirm the facts" email that I sent meant I was going to pursue legal action. I don't condone this type of upcharge scam at all. But their customer service was at least prompt and I did end up getting my $10 back. Even though they were murky at best with regards to pricing transparency.

 

[Glitchorade]

I am trying to buy some new shoes and wanted to use the code to buy, but at checkout it is greyed out saying " Discount codes cannot be combined with sale offers." but there are no sales in my cart. I have attached the image below. I emailed there support but who knows when or IF they will get back to me before the code expires.

[SansVarnic]

6 minutes ago, Glitchorade said:

I am trying to buy some new shoes and wanted to use the code to buy, but at checkout it is greyed out saying " Discount codes cannot be combined with sale offers." but there are no sales in my cart. I have attached the image below. I emailed there support but who knows when or IF they will get back to me before the code expires.

 

I merged your comment to this thread, it will get the vewing by LMG it needs. Troubleshooting section is meant for troublshooting your pc or or other electronics.

[TylerD321]

7 minutes ago, Glitchorade said:

I am trying to buy some new shoes and wanted to use the code to buy, but at checkout it is greyed out saying " Discount codes cannot be combined with sale offers." but there are no sales in my cart. I have attached the image below. I emailed there support but who knows when or IF they will get back to me before the code expires.

Look a tad bit higher on the screen. The dialog you are looking at appears to be a disclaimer. The correct box is “enter gift card or discount code here.”

[GodAtum]

Why doesn't LTT have more consumer friendly non-US sponsors for those of us watching in Europe? I mean Pulseway and Zoho are useless to me as I'm not a business.

[MajesticDoughnut]

I'm not sure if Pulseway has been brough up here before. As an owner of a small MSP, we used them in the past and they were great until their majority shares were bought by Kaseya. After that point we swiftly ditched them with the change to their extremely shady contracts. Kaseya is well known for ignoring cancellation requests, their sales people are beyond shady, and one of their products generally has some gaping security concern every other month. Generally Kaseya ruins everything they touch....Pulseway, Datto, ITGlue, Unitrends etc. I know very few in the industry in my area who actually likes anything Kaseya has. They just have very deep pockets as 1 of the 2 behemoths in the industry.

 

This has mostly been a rant about Kaseya, but Pulseway being (mostly) owned by them has the same effect as the Anker and Eufy debacle. 

[Datrat]

Anker hasn't removed everything LTT if you guys still care. Link

 

[DJUNGELSKOG]

Linode sucks and they need to STOP. EMAILING. ME. 
 

I tried to sign up for Linode and I couldn’t get past the initial signup page. They have a word filter on the name fields. This is highly inappropriate because it effectively discriminates against those who have a non-English name that happens to have an English swear word in it. 
 

So, I said screw it, Linode doesn’t want Mr <last name containing English swear word>’s business so I went with Oracle Cloud instead. But, Linode keeps emailing me daily to finish setting up my account. There’s no way to stop the emails, as their unsubscribe function does not cover this type of email. Linode sucks and discriminates against non-English names whether by malice or ineptitude, I don’t care, but the part where they will not stop emailing me is the worst. 

[GorujoCY]

for this video sponsor:

I wanted to say that advertising the Link cable with the Quest 2 is overpriced for what Meta is selling, I've heard at least that they don't produce the full bandwidth third party cables do and the third parties are cheaper than Meta's: 
here's an example of products on amazon for link cables:
https://www.amazon.com/Oculus-Virtual-Reality-Headset-Cable-Gaming/dp/B081SHD773/

(75,99 at the time of writing)
for the same price you can get a fiber optical cable but I think it wont make a difference here:
https://www.amazon.com/KIWI-design-Fiber-Optical-Accessories-Compatible/dp/B09NM7BYXZ
and here are much cheaper quality alternatives to the link cable:
https://www.amazon.com/KIWI-design-Accessories-Compatible-Headset/dp/B09N77BGDF/
with protective mesh:
https://www.amazon.com/KIWI-design-Oculus-Transfer-Compatible/dp/B08BR9DSGC/ref=sr_1_6?crid=30GCWMIR6PZ3P&keywords=kiwi+cable&qid=1675772587&sprefix=kiwi+cabl%2Caps%2C212&sr=8-6
USB-C:
https://www.amazon.com/KIWI-design-Transfer-Charging-Compatible/dp/B08NVFZ3HG/ref=sr_1_9?crid=30GCWMIR6PZ3P&keywords=kiwi+cable&qid=1675772820&sprefix=kiwi+cabl%2Caps%2C212&sr=8-9

I will say that advertising a VR headset is fine, the hardware is probably the best value even at 399 so genuinely a great product in itself but especially after John Carmack left Oculus/Meta I wouldn't sponsor anything involving meta especially in this case, after Boz took over as CTO of meta (and also a Facebook employee for mobile advertising, so that's already a red flag), the company is going through a horrible direction, Like just recently it was announced and declared that the devs Ready at dawn who created Echo VR and is owned by meta will officially shut down despite all of the backslash. and the game unfortunately doesn't even have 0 or 10, or 50 or something to justify shutting it down, it's 10k players, and that's where Oculus/Meta's core consumers/audience comes from and there has been genuinely great things that I will go as far as to say this is a lot scummy, they have an eSports tournament too on it yet they are shutting down, this is great. and their excuse is to "make things for 10 millions of people" which will literally fail for them (that's why it's a bad decision). But hey capitalism right?
ill leave the latest video form thrillseeker in this situation:

I get that Meta doesn't care at all but that's the whole point that's why I think you should drop sponsors promoting their products (unbiased unboxing/hands-on/reviewing (product or games), Promotion with as much context as possible and stuff like that is more than fine especially for everyone) and I get that the LMG team doesn't have a lot of knowledge for this but this is why I'm sharing my piece of complain about it. and I get that the quest 2 is objectively good, it really is especially on the software side but Meta enforces that advantage by buying successful game dev companies and when they take into horrible decisions either due to meta or developers, it leads to worse situations.

hopefully this is understandable

 

Edit: if charlie Makes a video related to the decision, You know this is already a terrible thing they have done and condones more of the reason not to promote them (again unbiased reviewing/hands-on/Unboxing and stuff like that is actually fine, just not promotion especially doesn't involve context and stuff like that)

here's the new video (fun fact: At the time of writing, it's #6 In trending on YouTube so it's getting as much more aware as possible):

 

Edited February 8, 2023 by GorujoCY
Charlie made a video enforcing the bad decision more and hopefully enforces more of the reason to avoid promoting them unless there are specific conditions set!

[Shooterdude34]

On 2/4/2023 at 3:11 PM, MajesticDoughnut said:

I'm not sure if Pulseway has been brough up here before. As an owner of a small MSP, we used them in the past and they were great until their majority shares were bought by Kaseya. After that point we swiftly ditched them with the change to their extremely shady contracts. Kaseya is well known for ignoring cancellation requests, their sales people are beyond shady, and one of their products generally has some gaping security concern every other month. Generally Kaseya ruins everything they touch....Pulseway, Datto, ITGlue, Unitrends etc. I know very few in the industry in my area who actually likes anything Kaseya has. They just have very deep pockets as 1 of the 2 behemoths in the industry.

 

This has mostly been a rant about Kaseya, but Pulseway being (mostly) owned by them has the same effect as the Anker and Eufy debacle. 

Yeah Kaseya while can be sometimes useful, ive heard can be quite shady. I was volunteering for my dealerships IT team (im a lube tech but im going to school for IT and had an opportunity to gain some experience) and they were explaining some of the programs they use. One was kaseya as thats what theyd been using for years. They said that they had basically been forced to only use it for remote desktop stuff, since the package that the company was paying for had contents removed repeatedly until it was a shell of the original package. Pretty shady if you ask me since the cost appears to be the same with less features.

 

If kaseya has majority shares im not too excited about pulseways future. I already get spammed with emails from pulseway after I attempted to use them. I had some problems as they had nothing within my budget for just my home use (which is fine, and i canceled my account creation). but they wont stop sending me emails to try and continue to get my business

[kirashi]

On 2/4/2023 at 1:11 PM, MajesticDoughnut said:

I'm not sure if Pulseway has been brough up here before. As an owner of a small MSP, we used them in the past and they were great until their majority shares were bought by Kaseya. After that point we swiftly ditched them with the change to their extremely shady contracts. Kaseya is well known for ignoring cancellation requests, their sales people are beyond shady, and one of their products generally has some gaping security concern every other month. Generally Kaseya ruins everything they touch....Pulseway, Datto, ITGlue, Unitrends etc. I know very few in the industry in my area who actually likes anything Kaseya has. They just have very deep pockets as 1 of the 2 behemoths in the industry.

 

This has mostly been a rant about Kaseya, but Pulseway being (mostly) owned by them has the same effect as the Anker and Eufy debacle. 

I had no idea they bought Pulseway. I'm not going to share links to any specific controversial content, but I've seen low regard for Kaseya in the world of Managed Service Providers during my time browsing various MSP and IT related subreddits.

Sorted by Relevance - https://www.reddit.com/r/msp/search?q=kaseya&restrict_sr=on&sort=relevance&t=all

Sorted by Top - https://www.reddit.com/r/msp/search/?q=kaseya&sort=top&restrict_sr=on&t=all

[Quackers101]

do wish that sponsors didn't have enough power to let influencers promote fake information, promoting half truths to "encourage their practices" or how they word things. be it "we play this game" or "military encryption", "dinosaur bones", etc. if linus wants to go more into LTT vs sponsors again on WAN or if its just nothing more to add. *starts youtubers sponsoring youtubers*

 

but I guess some of these practices has reduced.

[Ultraforce]

12 hours ago, Quackers101 said:

do wish that sponsors didn't have enough power to let influencers promote fake information, promoting half truths to "encourage their practices" or how they word things. be it "we play this game" or "military encryption", "dinosaur bones", etc. if linus wants to go more into LTT vs sponsors again on WAN or if its just nothing more to add. *starts youtubers sponsoring youtubers*

 

but I guess some of these practices has reduced.

For the we play this game I believe it's been explained that for LTT they do have people employed at LMG play the game to see if it's worth doing and I think for some of the f2p ones there are employees who do play the game.
 

[Taradiddle]

Dont know if this is in correct thread but, after watching this video i generally felt sorry for the guy trying to make a living at content creation, and sounds he got really screwed..

 

Went to the "influencer stuff" site and see he LTT pride of place on his homepage,  https://influencerstuff.com/

[MagicianMountain1835]

On 2/4/2023 at 9:11 PM, MajesticDoughnut said:

I'm not sure if Pulseway has been brough up here before. As an owner of a small MSP, we used them in the past and they were great until their majority shares were bought by Kaseya. After that point we swiftly ditched them with the change to their extremely shady contracts. Kaseya is well known for ignoring cancellation requests, their sales people are beyond shady, and one of their products generally has some gaping security concern every other month. Generally Kaseya ruins everything they touch....Pulseway, Datto, ITGlue, Unitrends etc. I know very few in the industry in my area who actually likes anything Kaseya has. They just have very deep pockets as 1 of the 2 behemoths in the industry.

 

This has mostly been a rant about Kaseya, but Pulseway being (mostly) owned by them has the same effect as the Anker and Eufy debacle. 

 

It has, yes! They do (or did) shady things with fake employees.

 

 

 

And something about their office space:

Sadly we haven't heard anything from LTT.

 

@CPotter could you please take a look into this? They seem really off.

[cBrownFTW]

Newbie to the forum. Probably should have spun up an account years ago... anyways...

 

TLDR - Vessi support sent me a phishing email that I find unacceptable. See https://i.imgur.com/cwrXujw.png screenshot of email thread, and below for the longer-winded version.

 

Ran into a strange issue, mostly due to my preferences, when attempting to purchase from Vessi. That original oddity is described in a Reddit post I made (https://old.reddit.com/r/LinusTechTips/comments/111ew3a/vessi_shopping_experience/), but to summarize - I couldn't get tracking info for my order, without installing the 'SHOP' app, which I don't want to do for data privacy reasons (among others).

 

Mere minutes after making the Reddit post, Vessi sent me what is best described as a phishing email, for some very backwards internal process they have (or a rogue employee that wanted the other half of my details? not sure).

 

Anyway - in my eyes the phishing email Vessi sent me is super duper unacceptable. Their preference to use SHOP and only allow tracking information via the app is something I can live with - i just wont shop there, but the phishing behavior exhibited by Vessi support shouldn't be happening, and should be a concern for an LTT sponsor. This permalink that includes an imgur link to the email thread, where they ask me for personal information that I already submitted during the order (and could forge within 2 minutes or less):
https://old.reddit.com/r/LinusTechTips/comments/111ew3a/vessi_shopping_experience/j8g4p1o/

 

Does LTTstore do any similar verifications for orders? Maybe I'm out of touch, but seems fishy AF.
(my order is being refunded, but felt obligated to report the phishing behavior)

EDIT - would be happy to verify any of the emails/orders/receipts beyond the imgur posts I made previously

[TroublesomeOwl]

I'm not sure if this is the correct place to post:

 

A lot of controversy with InfluencerStuff scamming smaller creators, and i saw on their site that according to them, they are in some way affiliated LTT.

 

If this affiliation is still active, it is something that should be looked at.

 

warning: strong brittish language

[Other James]

On 2/11/2023 at 12:02 PM, Taradiddle said:

Dont know if this is in correct thread but, after watching this video i generally felt sorry for the guy trying to make a living at content creation, and sounds he got really screwed..

 

Went to the "influencer stuff" site and see he LTT pride of place on his homepage,  https://influencerstuff.com/

 

15 hours ago, TroublesomeOwl said:

I'm not sure if this is the correct place to post:

 

A lot of controversy with InfluencerStuff scamming smaller creators, and i saw on their site that according to them, they are in some way affiliated LTT.

 

If this affiliation is still active, it is something that should be looked at.

 

warning: strong brittish language

Thank you for bringing this to our attention. We have had somebody reach out to us internally about this as well based on a Reddit post. We have reached out to Influencer Stuff and requested to be removed from their site.

(Thank you for the strong British language warning)

[QwertyChouskie]

Today's video was sponsored by Samsung...

 

 

https://www.injuredgadgets.com/itc

 

Linus clearly believes in the importance of repair (e.g. his investment into Framework), so continuing to take money from Samsung and promote them feels really wrong.

[MagicianMountain1835]

On 2/12/2023 at 5:21 PM, MagicianMountain1835 said:

 

It has, yes! They do (or did) shady things with fake employees.

 

 

 

And something about their office space:

Sadly we haven't heard anything from LTT.

 

@CPotter could you please take a look into this? They seem really off.

 

Or any LMG staff member, I don't mind ;)