LMG Sponsor Complaints

[anonLTTfan]

Hello LTT Team and Community!

 

I was fired from one of your sponsors for being trans. I had to hire a lawyer. I have all the receipts. Dozens of screen shots that will verify my story. The slack channels looked like 4chan. It was terrible. People using the n-word among other slurs, talking about commiting hate crimes against gay and trans people, all openly in slack channels that everyone in the org had access to, from the lowest engineer to the CEO. 

Do to the nature of my separation and what I was awarded upon leaving the company, this is all I can share here. I would love to chat in a more private space to share the receipts and org name.
 

--

The proud owner of a LTT screwdriver and your favorite trans chick,

 

   anonLTTfan

[Rikere]

21 hours ago, Birblover12 said:

While the payment issues and everything else sounds like a "them" problem, playing devils advocate shipping related issues are sometimes handled with the shipping courier and not the person who shipped them, though most of the time companies will deal with claims themselves and just ship out a replacement of sorts. The UPS guy not delivering the package sounds like it's something that needs to be handled by UPS themselves. By "put up the sticker", I presume it's a "could not be delivered sticker" of some sort? Is there something that'd be obstructing them from delivering the package, like animals, plants, etc.?

 

You could try calling your local UPS office and explaining the situation, I'm sure if you spoke to a manager of some sort and explained that the drivers potentially aren't even making an attempt to deliver your package (video evidence is a big plus) then they could make special accommodations for your package.

Shipping is 100% on them.

 

Normally, UPS would allowed me to hold the package at a UPS Store. So, they fail to deliver, I go pick it up later. Easy. This package was sent with everything restricted. I cannot schedule its delivery, I cannot have it held at the UPS office. I have called UPS, I talked to them at the UPS store, I've done their web chat. I contacted Origin, they refused to do anything, including contact UPS to have it held at the local UPS Store so I could pick it up.

 

Today UPS made a 2nd delivery attempt and the package wasn't on the truck.

 

Updated my ticket with Origin. I told them at this point to just get the refund process started. The only reason to buy prebuilt is for the warranty and support, and what I've gotten thus far is garbage. If I ever have to RMA this thing, they won't have any support for me. They couldn't get it to me the first time around, what odds do I have that they'd get it back to me? The total apathy to modify the shipment or do something on their end is inexcusable.

[Datrat]

31 minutes ago, Old School Gamer said:

My complaint is about Dollar Shave Club. If they are no longer a sponsor, never mind. 

 

They recently redesigned their site and it seems like half their products are missing. 

I don't remember the last time I saw an ad for them on ltt.

[FrozenIpaq]

5 hours ago, Rogue Arnold said:

Don't see that anyone has brought up infinite cable in here. I ordered 144 short patch cables and the products themself are fine good quality but the package does not seem great and with Linus wanting them to have all sustainable recyclable I thought I should bring this up. Each cable came in it's own plastic bag and then plastic bags for each pack of 10. Seems like a lot a waste that could be improved upon. Plus after unpacking them my hands just felt greasy and dirty.

A fairly regular occurrence with this type of product, although I'm sure it's on their roadmap if they are focused on their company's CSR. There are companies out there doing more sustainable packaging, especially for patch cables which are often used in bulk. I worked for one such company who provided patch cords in a box (so no paper) as well as a pack of 24 in a single package - both designed to address the issue you're talking about. 

[Ginger Penguin]

3 hours ago, NullFragment said:

I’ve been a long time viewer/lurker but never really felt the need to post on the forums but yeah. This felt like a weird sponsor given that there was even a WAN Show clip uploaded to LMG Clips a few days ago called “Let Me Buy Your Product” that is a 15 minute long rant about disliking companies that have this exact business model.

Yeah, it really is a very poor showing when they've been openly against this kind of business model in the past and very much rightly so! Given that, I don't know what they can do at this point beyond saying 'We won't work with these guys again. Sorry we didn't realise you would feel this way.' because it's a bit mind-boggling to think that nobody would have brought up how bad this would look. YouTube and Floatplane comments seem to be full of people feeling the exact same way. Are they going to do this again but with a different sponsor who does the same thing?

[Ginger Penguin]

Just saw this comment on the Reddit thread in regards to EightSleep that reminded me of the company Luke was having a go at on the WAN Show a while back. I don't think he named them but yeah it does make it a bit worse given they'd had first-hand experience and grievances with the product and company:

[bit_by_bit]

Spoiler

7 hours ago, Pitboy64 said:

Re the Eightsleep subscription discussion.

Out of pure curiosity ... and a definite desire to avoid fixing my dual zone mattress cooling issues by way of building a home made system a-la Linus and Alex video on May 20, 2023 ... ... I take a deep dive at the sponsor eightsleeps website to see their plug and play product, and am hit with a serious misgiving:

- Sure ... it costs $2,700CDN up front, before tax, but lets assume I'm fine with that outlay ... then you realize you actually cant buy it without signing up to a monthly/annual membership which provides access to the 'Pod'.  To be clear, the website doesnt in plain language define what is the 'Pod'.

You MUST purchase this membership for the initial one year period at the $240CDN billed annual rate. From one side you could say that its just a scammy way of charging $2,940 for the upfront purchase (before tax).  Welcome to 2023 ... Moving on.

Lets just start by immediately discounting the more expensive 'lifetime warranty' option. One: 'lifetime' means nothing. Who's to say that upstart eightsleep will even be around in 25 years. Should they survive for even 10 years, I will have put an additional $2,400 (plus tax) specifically towards the warrantee ... you see the problem, as that's basically the value of the system. At the end of the day, we dont know if the warrantee will be valid in 10 years, and we will be able to repurchase the product by then anyways ... wait ... what?  Thats not a warrantee, its an insurance policy.

 

Not even a car manufacturer will charge the value of the product after running their scammy sub system for just 10 years.  For a $50,000 car that would be almost $500 a month for a warrantee.  For eightsleep ... this is a flag all on its own.

And 2 ... it speaks to a manufacturer that ONLY warrantees their product beyond 30 days, if you pay a lot more for it. Auto red flag.

 

Beyond all that, we dont actually know what the warrantee covers.  Lets say at the end of the first year, I decide to not continue with the 'membership' ... then what?

 

- Does it simply mean a loss of any future upgrades or updates eightsleep come up after this date? Sure ok, if 100% of the system still works, then Im fine with that.  That would be like running Win98 on an offline closed system that works perfectly well for the low end industrial task it has to do ... fine. It could continue to work for years and years.  I would be a happy mattress cooling product owner.

 

- or does it mean I lose connection to adjust the dual temperature system or lose access to the software at all? Or do I lose connection to my parallel health devices that eightsleeps software links to?

 

- The website details the service as 'Automatic temperature, vibration & thermal alarm, sleep & health reports' ... but what does that mean? 'Automatic temperature' ... sounds like a basic function ... no?  Thats all it says ... its undefined.

 

- The problem here isnt the limitation really, its the company being open and forthright as to exactly what will not work the same, or at all, if the membership is cancelled. The way it is detailed on the site ... we just dont know what will happen and how my near $3000 purchase will operate post 12 months.

 

For this reason, I backed away from the site.  I wont be buying in.

In addition I felt it to be reasonable to discuss this with LMG here about eightsleep as a sponsor, and the reality of just what their followers are actually signing up for.  I'm not saying cancel the sponsorship, but perhaps someone on the LMG team could head over to the eightsleep website as a potential purchaser and try to parse through just what are the actual risks involved for their followers. 

If you cancel the warrantee, what actually happens?  Should this staff person purchase the product and summarily cancel the warrantee, to see what happens? Should Linus and Yvonne cancel theirs and report on what happens?

If that someone walks away feeling unsure on behalf of their viewers ... perhaps some follow up with eightsleep to have more clarity on their website regarding this warranty issue ... is warranted.

Thank you.

 

Glad people are already complaining about the eightsleep sponsorship (Pitboy64 covered a lot of good points). I guess I will add my voice as well. I was super interested in this product, but the whole subscription BS was an immediate WTF. At a glance, their model seems just as, if not more predatory than some of the companies Linus has complained about in the past. Not only is this sponsorship out of line with LMG's principles in general, but it also seems like especially poor taste given Linus's recent rant about cloud/subscription-based automatic floor cleaners on the WAN show. Linus gets so mad when people "question his integrity", but weird stuff like this happens semi-regularly. If he wants his integrity and his company's integrity to be treated as one and the same, he needs to uphold them to the same degree. It isn't like Eightsleep hid this aspect of the product. It is immediately visible when you follow the link in the video description. Either someone on the team did an incomplete job of vetting the sponsor, and Linus NEVER EVEN LOOKED AT THE PAGE THEIR SPONSORED LINK GOES TO, or he knew about it and produced the entire video anyway. This sort of haphazard commitment to upholding the principles he constantly exhorts is why "trust me bro" isn't good enough. I genuinely admire what he has accomplished and I am so excited for the next phase of LMG with the Lab included, but I hope the new CEO will take a more professional and consistent approach to upholding LMG's ideals.

[Iridium IO]

4 hours ago, bit_by_bit said:

  Reveal hidden contents

 

Glad people are already complaining about the eightsleep sponsorship (Pitboy64 covered a lot of good points). I guess I will add my voice as well. I was super interested in this product, but the whole subscription BS was an immediate WTF. At a glance, their model seems just as, if not more predatory than some of the companies Linus has complained about in the past. Not only is this sponsorship out of line with LMG's principles in general, but it also seems like especially poor taste given Linus's recent rant about cloud/subscription-based automatic floor cleaners on the WAN show. Linus gets so mad when people "question his integrity", but weird stuff like this happens semi-regularly. If he wants his integrity and his company's integrity to be treated as one and the same, he needs to uphold them to the same degree. It isn't like Eightsleep hid this aspect of the product. It is immediately visible when you follow the link in the video description. Either someone on the team did an incomplete job of vetting the sponsor, and Linus NEVER EVEN LOOKED AT THE PAGE THEIR SPONSORED LINK GOES TO, or he knew about it and produced the entire video anyway. This sort of haphazard commitment to upholding the principles he constantly exhorts is why "trust me bro" isn't good enough. I genuinely admire what he has accomplished and I am so excited for the next phase of LMG with the Lab included, but I hope the new CEO will take a more professional and consistent approach to upholding LMG's ideals.

 

It's a pretty disappointing sponsor, and not only do you have to pay a $24USD a month subscription for a lifetime warranty (the base warranty is 1 year on a $2500 product are you joking), the mattress collects your movement, heart rate, respiratory rate, sleep quality and temperature controls and sells them to third party advertisers. Very nice.

If I have a 3.5kW AC unit running 8 hours a night at 24 degress C, that works out to a cost of $26 a month to cool my whole room, or $320 for the whole year. The subscription costs $288 a year.

That means the ongoing cost of the mattress is ($3000 + $288x) where x is the number of years since purchase.
Compare that to the ongoing cost of running the air conditioner which is $320x. Now, solving for the intersection of x, we find that you break even after 93.75 YEARS after having spent a grand total of $30,000 on a mattress

[Afternoon Tea]

On 5/19/2023 at 4:21 PM, eroc1990 said:

But having an app that spies every interaction they have with anyone is way too invasive. You're not going to convince me otherwise.

It’s not every interaction, it’s every interaction online. With strangers who you don’t know (they might ‘know’ them, but you as the parent do not). 
In the real world, you don’t let your child have private conversations with just anyone. It’s only with people you trust (people you 100% trust, not just folk you know). The world is a dangerous place & the internet distills that down further.

[FrowningHippo]

2 hours ago, Iridium IO said:

 

It's a pretty disappointing sponsor, and not only do you have to pay a $24USD a month subscription for a lifetime warranty (the base warranty is 1 year on a $2500 product are you joking), the mattress collects your movement, heart rate, respiratory rate, sleep quality and temperature controls and sells them to third party advertisers. Very nice.

If I have a 3.5kW AC unit running 8 hours a night at 24 degress C, that works out to a cost of $26 a month to cool my whole room, or $320 for the whole year. The subscription costs $288 a year.

That means the ongoing cost of the mattress is ($3000 + $288x) where x is the number of years since purchase.
Compare that to the ongoing cost of running the air conditioner which is $320x. Now, solving for the intersection of x, we find that you break even after 93.75 YEARS after having spent a grand total of $30,000 on a mattress

Did you factor in the cost of purchase and the write down as well? Not to hate. I think it's a ridiculous product and a privacy nightmare. As such I was interested but aren't now. I am however still interested in getting AC, so even if it's off-topic. I am kind of curious to see the cost of purchase included.

[Iridium IO]

5 hours ago, FrowningHippo said:

Did you factor in the cost of purchase and the write down as well? Not to hate. I think it's a ridiculous product and a privacy nightmare. As such I was interested but aren't now. I am however still interested in getting AC, so even if it's off-topic. I am kind of curious to see the cost of purchase included.

That doesn’t include purchase cost of a new AC, because it was based off him already having one in his house. 
 

If you spend $1500 on an air conditioner (which is what you can expect to spend for a good system and installation, though I’m sure there’s cheaper options) then you’ll break even after 47 years and $16,500. 

[InoriStudio]

A message from the War Thunder Player Union

The War thunder community has been treated harshly by the game developers Gaijin Entertainment for a very long period now, from their manipulative, malicious, and predatory monetization practices. 

There is censorship and manipulation of the player base by Gaijin Entertainment, as well as Gaijin Entertainments refusal to fix a multitude of critical issues in the game all just to work on the next shiny vehicle people can pay $70 for which is what you would pay for a full game.
Gaijin also continues to shift responsibility of their actions to the community quote "We're not the greedy bastards here."
Source: https://www.gamesindustry.biz/gaijin-entertainment-were-not-the-greedy-bastards-here
They also continue to destroy the war thunder economy making it unrealistic for a F2P player to unlock everything playing casually in possibly a single lifetime. While still making it hard for a P2P player to unlock a full tech tree in a matter of half a decade. 

They also push the idea they make the grind like this so that players can progress to the more difficult vehicles and not jump straight to the top, when even though there is nothing preventing a brand-new player from spending $70 on a top tier premium jet and skipping the tech tree.
This all here is also just a small portion of the hundreds if not thousands of glaring issues with the company as a whole.

So, we need LMG to remove any past sponsor segments with Gaijin Entertainment and cut any ties as Gaijin is not a good company at all. They even threated to shut down the game if steam reviews kept dropping which are now at overwhelmingly negative. They have refused to listen to us on their forums actively removing any criticism and banning players to warning new players to not play the game and not buy stuff off the gaijin store.

 

They continue to manipulate the community even at once making us have the illusion of voting for the economy by giving is two bad choices that was not what we wanted in the first place and blaming it on us saying we voted for it why are we complaining when they refused to listen and gave us no choice having to go with the lesser of two evils, which a few months later they completely reverted and now destroyed the economy.

So help the community out by calling gaijin out on the WAN show and removing any partnership with them.

 

Sincerely: The War Thunder Community.
 

[Player_One]

My topic was hijacked, but i have a little update. The developer didn't listen to the players and probably a certain period ends. What? We'll just find out about that.

 

War Thunder is going down.

 

No one talks about it, but money spent in this game go down the drain. Every premium machine gets nerfed, it's a normal scam. You buy a certain vehicle and a week later it's something else entirely.

Additionally, the economy becomes negative for f2p players and a paywall appears very quickly. Even for players with premium accounts, it is negative at 8th rank in most cases.

 

Regards

Player_One.

 

[Vmoldo]

During one of the more recent Wan shows, Linus went on and on about how Logitech has excellent customer support and I felt like I was boiling inside. 

 

When every tech youtuber on the planet was shilling it, I was convinced to get an MX Master 3 mouse like many others.

After a few years of use, I can say the mouse itself is generally a good product if you overlook the shitty software EXCEPT it's slowly disintegrating when hold in a sweaty hand. At first, I hoped I finally discovered my X-Man-like power but when searching on Reddit apparently there are lots of us with the same problem.  And the general approach from Logitech is: if it's within the warranty period (1-2 years) we will replace it. If not you are out of luck enjoy your decomposing mouse. Now if this would be a 20$ mouse this would be perfectly fine, and I would gladly kill another penguin for a decent mouse but considering this was supposed to be a somewhat premium product and a workhorse of a mouse I find it infuriating that they managed to make the top rubber out of such material that it is slowly decomposing when used. And the worst part is that they don't even make topshells available for purchase so we can change them or anything like that. 

 

Im not saying Logitech is bad in general but this Mx Master mouse has a problem and maybe it should at least be addressed in vids like the recent Mac Adress one where the product was shown as a great alternative to the Apple magic thing

 

Here is a quickly compiled list of people having this problem and I'm sure that if you want to look into it there are a lot more examples on the web if you search for "mx master 3 peeling" "mx master 3 topshell" .etc

 

 

 

Reddit threads: 

 

 

LTT forum example:

 

And finally the most infuriating thing: they are now offering skates and batteries with iFixit but not replacement shells.

Twitter comments: 

 

[Leifnier]

Had to make an account just to say something about this Eightsleep sponsorship. First product I've actually been interested in only to find out 

1. It's over $2,000. (WHAT?!)

2. It's still not yours after you pay way too much for it. 

 

And given how vocal Linus has been over cloud based services for stuff that shouldn't be (I'm mostly remembering the lightswitches or something in the house project?), I lost a lot of respect for LMG as a whole for the hypocrisy in promoting something like this. You all knew what was up with this product and promoted it anyway. 

https://www.youtube.com/live/A6_UOejJ8Zk?feature=share&t=9222

 

[Pixel_Rubbish]

Has there been any testing or review of Volta chargers by anyone at LTT? I have seen mixed reviews on the few other public forums I have found on the web and I’m not thrilled about the idea of attaching an unconfirmed product to a $4000+ laptop, however, bringing MagSafe back to a 2016 MacBook Pro is a very appealing concept, and considering how LTT tends to only promote decent products, I’m certainly interested. 

I just found where you guys paused all partnerships with Volta after indiegogo customer service issues a year ago. Since then it seems like I’ve seen them return to sponsor spots, but correct me if I’m just watching old videos. Regardless, their website as of now prominently features an endorsement from Linus stating that that Volta is “ The Most Reliable Universal Fast Charging Cable For All Your Devices”.

For something that could potentially cause real damage to electronics, I would like to see you test and verify the efficacy, reliability, durability, and safety of Volta chargers, particularly the higher wattage versions. I didn’t find any content covering this so far, and would love to see it. Please and thank you.
 

Cheers

 

J

[Pixel_Rubbish]

5 hours ago, Leifnier said:

Had to make an account just to say something about this Eightsleep sponsorship. First product I've actually been interested in only to find out 

1. It's over $2,000. (WHAT?!)

2. It's still not yours after you pay way too much for it. 

 

And given how vocal Linus has been over cloud based services for stuff that shouldn't be (I'm mostly remembering the lightswitches or something in the house project?), I lost a lot of respect for LMG as a whole for the hypocrisy in promoting something like this. You all knew what was up with this product and promoted it anyway. 

https://www.youtube.com/live/A6_UOejJ8Zk?feature=share&t=9222

 

I’ve known how much they charge for a while and yeah, always considered it a premium, out of reach product… but they are piling a subscription lock on top of that?! Hahaha, wow, yeah, that is some BS. I was just sort of waiting for this tech to become more common so I could just buy something affordable. Kind of like how tempurpedic ran the show for a few years as the premium foam option when they were first to market. They were crazy expensive, then everyone else caught up, made cooler versions, and they got wrecked in market share. Only a matter of time till there are more options for this and these dumdums can go the way of the peloton stock. 

[XWAUForceflow]

Yeah, the Eightsleep sponsorship with the forced subscription for a mattress seems really sketchy and not something I feel like LMG should agree with. Especially since it's not stated anywhere in the video at all. Normally Linux would talk about that, so what gives? @LinusTech did they not want you talking about it? (Which feels like it should be even more of a red flag) or why was it not mentioned in the video? (Or did I miss it after all?)

[sausages]

Logged in just to chime in with my disappointment for the Eight Sleep sponsorship. I don’t even have a principled problem with subscription services if there is some kind of constant new value being delivered but a subscription app based mattress topper is ludicrous and to me is Juicero levels of out of touch tech startup culture. I don’t understand how this sponsorship was approved in good faith.

[TOGSolid]

16 hours ago, Player_One said:

My topic was hijacked, but i have a little update. The developer didn't listen to the players and probably a certain period ends. What? We'll just find out about that.

 

War Thunder is going down.

 

No one talks about it, but money spent in this game go down the drain. Every premium machine gets nerfed, it's a normal scam. You buy a certain vehicle and a week later it's something else entirely.

Additionally, the economy becomes negative for f2p players and a paywall appears very quickly. Even for players with premium accounts, it is negative at 8th rank in most cases.

 

Regards

Player_One.

 

I'm surprised to see it's taken this long to boil over but it's good to finally see some real pushback against Gaijin's scummy behavior.  I quit a while ago after they started that low tier premium captured P-47 Thunderbolt mess.  It was very obviously being done to make a pay to win plane available and sure as shit they were suddenly everywhere cause they were so good.  Not to mention how hostile their community people could be on the forums to everyone which sounds like it has only gotten worse.

 

Gaijin puts no real effort into addressing long standing, actual, gameplay issues but sure are quick to do anything to make a buck.

[Rikere]

On 5/20/2023 at 6:37 PM, Rikere said:

Shipping is 100% on them.

 

Normally, UPS would allowed me to hold the package at a UPS Store. So, they fail to deliver, I go pick it up later. Easy. This package was sent with everything restricted. I cannot schedule its delivery, I cannot have it held at the UPS office. I have called UPS, I talked to them at the UPS store, I've done their web chat. I contacted Origin, they refused to do anything, including contact UPS to have it held at the local UPS Store so I could pick it up.

 

Today UPS made a 2nd delivery attempt and the package wasn't on the truck.

 

Updated my ticket with Origin. I told them at this point to just get the refund process started. The only reason to buy prebuilt is for the warranty and support, and what I've gotten thus far is garbage. If I ever have to RMA this thing, they won't have any support for me. They couldn't get it to me the first time around, what odds do I have that they'd get it back to me? The total apathy to modify the shipment or do something on their end is inexcusable.

 

I'll update the complaint about Origin: the machine's here and Origin had nothing to do with it. I badgered UPS to the point that the regional supervisor put an override on my shipment. It got scheduled for an Early AM delivery, signature removed (I managed to catch the driver).

 

Origin confirms this with:

 

I'm very disappointed that LTT took a sponsorship from these guys. Yea, I got the machine, but I think I had to put in 20 hours of work just to get it, between sitting outside for two days twiddling my thumbs and numerous calls and messages with UPS to get this thing here. I've got documented proof of the lock-outs on my package via UPS's site. I couldn't have it held at a UPS Store, Held for pickup, schedule a deliver time, authorize release without signature, or anything else.

 

I don't imagine Origin's going to take any moves to make it right with me. I need to unbox the thing yet and see if it's actually the build I ordered. The way this circus has gone, I don't even expect my machine to be in the crate. I'm going to video the whole process just in case it's the wrong build.

[QwertyChouskie]

1 hour ago, Rikere said:

 

I'll update the complaint about Origin: the machine's here and Origin had nothing to do with it. I badgered UPS to the point that the regional supervisor put an override on my shipment. It got scheduled for an Early AM delivery, signature removed (I managed to catch the driver).

 

Origin confirms this with:

 

I'm very disappointed that LTT took a sponsorship from these guys. Yea, I got the machine, but I think I had to put in 20 hours of work just to get it, between sitting outside for two days twiddling my thumbs and numerous calls and messages with UPS to get this thing here. I've got documented proof of the lock-outs on my package via UPS's site. I couldn't have it held at a UPS Store, Held for pickup, schedule a deliver time, authorize release without signature, or anything else.

 

I don't imagine Origin's going to take any moves to make it right with me. I need to unbox the thing yet and see if it's actually the build I ordered. The way this circus has gone, I don't even expect my machine to be in the crate. I'm going to video the whole process just in case it's the wrong build.

Sounds like your issue is a UPS issue.  From the looks of things, Origin even offered a refund option.  Not sure what else they could reasonably do at that point.

 

If LMG dropped every sponsor that used a bad shipping service, they would have 0 sponsors, because all the shipping services are bad.

[Rikere]

10 hours ago, QwertyChouskie said:

Sounds like your issue is a UPS issue.  From the looks of things, Origin even offered a refund option.  Not sure what else they could reasonably do at that point.

 

If LMG dropped every sponsor that used a bad shipping service, they would have 0 sponsors, because all the shipping services are bad.

Origin restricted UPS from allowing me to:

 

• Schedule the delivery
• Have the delivery held for pickup
• Sign in advance for the delivery
• Have the delivery diverted to a local UPS store
• Requesting a second delivery attempt in the same day

When I contacted UPS, per standard procedure, UPS is not supposed to alter anything restricted by the shipper. It was on Origin to reach out to UPS and either allow me to pick up the shipment at the UPS Depot, pick up the shipment at a UPS Store, or allow me to schedule the delivery within a 2 hour window (UPS charges the recipient for this, but I'd be fine with that).

 

So, what ends up happening is, I contact UPS, UPS says "sorry, the shipper has restricted your options, contact the shipper." I contact the shipper, Origin, and origin says "sorry, UPS has your machine. We can't do anything." Which isn't really true. For more established companies, they usually have a contact with UPS who can escalate and resolve issues. And for smaller companies, you can issue an update on a shipment to change the options you've sent it with. You can even update the address of a package after UPS has it, as the shipper. They charge the shipper I think $20 for it, but it was an option. There were things Origin could have done, but opted not to do.

 

My initial request was to reroute the shipment to a UPS Office in town. It'd be held for pick up. This is 100% an option for Origin, except for unspecified "problems."  And the thing is, they've got that nice, big "24/7 lifetime support" on their side. Is "Sorry bro, UPS is your problem" really an acceptable answer? Their terms of service say they are not responsible for hte machine once they ship it, but then they give you almost no option to get the machine except to take off from your job multiple days in a row to wait on it.

 

It's not a bad shipping service, it's that Origin blocked every single option I had to get the machine. The only reason it's here now is because UPS explicitly over-rode Origin's shipping and just dropped the box here after 4 days of me opening tickets, complaining, calling, and finally getting someone inside UPS to go rogue and take action. I think technically speaking, UPS was not supposed to do what they did. At any time, Origin could have amended the shipping restrictions, but they didn't. If my being a thorn in the local shipping management could get the job done, then Origin could've made as much progress in 5 minutes instead of my hours of complaints.

 

The mention of a refund started with me in a prior part of the ticket. I entirely expected the delivery attempts to continue to fail, after which the machine would return to Origin. I was aiming to get out ahead of things, as Origin charges 15% on returns, likely even if they failed to make the delivery. I was expecting to have a lengthy argument about getting my last 15% back.

 

Now that it is here.. There was a loose screw free floating in the case, one of the PSU wires has rubbed against the case and worn down (but luckily not through), and Origin tech support left me on hold for 30 minutes before hanging up on me. I called for help on how to get the hard drive cages out, so I could plugin sata power at the PSU. I'd asked them to pre-wire sata power and data, but that didn't happen and I cannot figure out how to get the PSU or HDD cage out without disconnecting every power cable... and then having a hell of a time getting them back in. It is wedged in tight. The cage has multiple install positions, the position to the left would've given me much more room.

 

The biggest blame on UPS is their drivers don't knock. At least mine never have. Their hands were tied at the start and ultimately they broke the rules to make the delivery.

 

I don't expect any positive results from future warranty service. It'll be a repeat of the same song and dance to get my machine back. More unanswered calls. Dead silent and uncaring support.

[MicGold]

I have tried to use the coupon code "LINUS50" for flexispot from the latest video but it does not work in the italian store (https://www.flexispot.it/)
I did some checks and it doesn't work on the german one too (https://www.flexispot.de/)

I does work on the UK one (https://www.flexispot.co.uk/)

 

 

[Ginger Penguin]

15 hours ago, XWAUForceflow said:

Yeah, the Eightsleep sponsorship with the forced subscription for a mattress seems really sketchy and not something I feel like LMG should agree with. Especially since it's not stated anywhere in the video at all. Normally Linux would talk about that, so what gives? @LinusTech did they not want you talking about it? (Which feels like it should be even more of a red flag) or why was it not mentioned in the video? (Or did I miss it after all?)

I seem to recall it was in there but very quickly and swept under the bed so to speak. They had a few sponsored videos I'd already seen that week and had checked them out which is how I first came across the subscription issue. So when I saw the sponsor disclaimer for the LTT video I was listening out for any mention of it. It really did feel like it was worded in such a way so that it would be very easy to miss as you must have done and I assume a lot of other people would have too.