Gamers Nexus calling out Linus for monetizing on his own controversy

[Stahlmann]

After the recent backpack warranty controversy Gamers Nexus re-evaluated where LTT stands as a company and decided to not treat them as a friend anymore, but as a company like MSI, EVGA, etc. As a result he called out Linus' behavior during the whole warrany controversy. I personally found it rather funny that he put in clips of Luke's expressions when Linus talks about it, showing that Luke had a much better understanding of the whole situation while Linus only cared about the T-shirts he sold because of it.

 

GN has again earned my respect for setting a friendship aside for a moment to report objectively.

I wonder if Linus can do the same thing and take this criticism to heart or if he'll dig himself a hole 

 

Here is the video: (The LTT segment goes on until 15:35)

 

So what's your take on this?

Do you respect GN for going this route or do you think they only did it to cause more controversy for clicks?

 

For me LTT has lost an incredible amount of credibility purely because of their CEO's public behavior during the last year.

 

It was a couple of WAN shows ago that Linus talked about how companies are not your friend, not even LTT. Now he's shown that it's not just LTT who doesn't care about their community, but also their CEO who prefers T-shirt sales over a good relationship with his own community.

[ToboRobot]

Thanks Steve.

[Stahlmann]

2 minutes ago, ToboRobot said:

Thanks Steve.

Back to you, Steve.

[Middcore]

LMG would probably be better off as a company if Luke was the one running the business side, instead of futilely toiling away on Floatplane. 

[Vishera]

5 minutes ago, Stahlmann said:

So what's your take on this?

LMG is becoming more and more corporate by the day.

They should stop growing or this will get a lot worse.

 

Why do you think that Google,Amazon and Apple are soulless heartless corporations? - Growth.

[manikyath]

i'd hardly call the GN thing "beef". if anything it's Steve doing news coverage on what's brewing in tech (and if you're a big youtube channel about tech.. you're happening in tech..) and reflecting on his own way of how he should cover youtube channel drama compared to corporate manufacturer drama.

 

Steve is the ultimate uncensored objective view on anything that happens around him. He makes a lot of good points in the two segments he made on the topic so far, but in my opinion the lesson to be learned here is simply this:

 

When shit hits the fan, more people should take a moment to think "Is my opinion on this matter correct?"

[shoutingsteve]

3 minutes ago, Vishera said:

 

 

Why do you think that Google,Amazon and Apple are soulless heartless corporations? - Growth.

Actually, Amazon is far from heartless.  Despite making so much money that they don't need any more of mine, they have the best and easiest return policy I have ever had to deal with.  Businesses that would otherwise have no way of reaching customers can sell an amazon.  It's not as terrible as people think.  The stories about the working conditions are a bit blown out of proportion: at least here in the Ohio warehouse.  They have plenty of bathrooms and people get fired for plenty of reasons, but almost never for not packing boxes fast enough.

[IPD]

It would appear that Linus is no longer still "Jenny from the Block".

 

To me, it feels like we've witnessed the birth-to-death of someone who debuted in this tech segment with scratch to speak of--and has over the course of time gotten increasingly further and further removed from the reality of consumers/clients.  It then evolved into a non-stop, hours-long, multi-part segment of MTV-Cribs and all the cool, elite-tier shit that was being done at the behest of the privileged.

 

I have nothing wrong with this latter evolution.  Better homes and gardens has made a fortune from similar segment marketing for decades; show off all the cool shit that you can do--albeit with a tech bent.  But the days of unbiased reporting are dead.  The days of "facts minus bombast" are dead.  It almost feels cringe (sometimes literally does feel cringe) watching Linus review things--when someone else at LTT would or could be doing a much better job.

 

GN is 100% on point here.  And profiteering from the scandal over your own ineptitude--after just putting your foot in your mouth with extreme hyperbole about how blocking youtube ads is like piracy--just underscores how detatched from reality, decency and humility Linus has become.

[Senzelian]

The criticism is fair, but I also have to mention that we're talking about Linus and Linus simply does Linus things. I expect controversial responses from him. That's just who he is.

Watching the discussion between Luke and him on WAN show was very uncomfortable, but that's also just part of being human.

 

1 minute ago, shoutingsteve said:

they have the best and easiest return policy I have ever had to deal with. 

Their return policy is the same as everyone else in the EU. We're used to a 14 day return policy without being asked any questions and seamless and quick transactions. Their support is utterly worthless compared to many retailers tho and finding their support page or a way of contacting them is not fun at all.

 

And believe me, even if their service would be near perfect, then they're not doing this out of kindness. They're doing it for your money. Often they throw away returned items and take the loss, creating massive amounts of waste, just so you keep spending your precious money. Anyone that ever worked in retail knows this.

[Erioch]

I agree that the t-shirt was dumb.  Sure, it made him some money but at what cost (probably none, at the end of the day).  He took it personally and acted like a child.

[manikyath]

1 minute ago, Senzelian said:

Linus simply does Linus things.

perhaps the best way to describe things i've seen all week...

[Erioch]

2 minutes ago, Senzelian said:

Watching the discussion between Luke and him on WAN show was very uncomfortable, but that's also just part of being human.

You could hear Luke rolling his eyes a couple of times.

[IPD]

1 minute ago, shoutingsteve said:

Actually, Amazon is far from heartless.  Despite making so much money that they don't need any more of mine, they have the best and easiest return policy I have ever had to deal with.  Businesses that would otherwise have no way of reaching customers can sell an amazon.  It's not as terrible as people think.  The stories about the working conditions are a bit blown out of proportion: at least here in the Ohio warehouse.  They have plenty of bathrooms and people get fired for plenty of reasons, but almost never for not packing boxes fast enough.

100% disagree.  Their "customer face" may appear friendly, but they are far from what they seem to the uneducated consumer.  There are reams of evidence about their unethical, draconian treatment of its own employees.  There's the extreme kowtowing to CCP that is unethical at best and downright complicit at worst.  There's the profit-marginalizing via strong-handed control over its suppliers that leaves small businesses powerless to control their own destinies.  And that's not even to mention how shop-online in general has caused a massive growth in landfills and disposable goods--due to return policies that just bin items regardless of condition.

 

And then there's Bezos, who wanted to demolish a 500 year old bridge for his mega yacht.  I mean, hate on Musk all you want--but at least he branched out into new markets and created new jobs.  Bezos doesn't want to do anything but hoard piles of cash; and despite losing half his wealth in divorce, the lockdowns increased his net wealth by more than it was pre-divorce.  Not a penny of that goes into profit-sharing, increasing worker benefits, etc.

[Senzelian]

2 minutes ago, Erioch said:

You could hear Luke rolling his eyes a couple of times.

I saw my own eyes rolling, because at some point I'm sure they were looking at each other, but again, I have to defend Linus opinions here. As someone that likes to think in controversial ways I know exactly what he meant when he said what he said and can understand his viewpoint.

[kumicota]

3 minutes ago, Senzelian said:

Linus and Linus simply does Linus things

One of the problems is that people excuses childish and anti-consumer from him as Linus being Linus.

 

My grip with it is that it encourages him to act like that because it's him, like a "get out of jail card", whatever he do is just Linus being Linus, this is a thing that shouldn't be encouraged, he isn't a kid anymore, he has to learn that he isn't the center of the universe and his acts has consequences.

[Slizzo]

8 minutes ago, Senzelian said:

Their support is utterly worthless compared to many retailers tho and finding their support page or a way of contacting them is not fun at all.

You mean at the bottom of the main LTTStore.com page where it says "SUPPORT" in big bold letters in the middle, then right under that "support@lttstore.com" is unable to be seen by all.

[Middcore]

2 minutes ago, Slizzo said:

You mean at the bottom of the main LTTStore.com page where it says "SUPPORT" in big bold letters in the middle, then right under that "support@lttstore.com" is unable to be seen by all.

 

Good luck getting a response, though.

[Senzelian]

1 minute ago, kumicota said:

One of the problems is that people excuses childish and anti-consumer from him as Linus being Linus.

 

My grip with it is that it encourages him to act like that because it's him, like a "get out of jail card", whatever he do is just Linus being Linus, this is a thing that shouldn't be encouraged, he isn't a kid anymore, he has to learn that he isn't the center of the universe and his acts has consequences.

Eh... I can't agee with that. Don't get me wrong, I'm with you that his actions were pretty stupid, but everyone should be able judge for themselves on what exactly he meant.

It's not an excuse for any of his actions, but I've done similar things (of course not in that magnitude) and so I can relate. That's really all I'm saying.

 

And it's not like he has never taken responsibillity. He has been generally honest with his viewers. I don't see this as such a big deal.

 

 

[Senzelian]

3 minutes ago, Slizzo said:

You mean at the bottom of the main LTTStore.com page where it says "SUPPORT" in big bold letters in the middle, then right under that "support@lttstore.com" is unable to be seen by all.

I meant Amazon.  

It was an answer to someone saying Amazon has the best return policy.

[kumicota]

Just now, Slizzo said:

You mean at the bottom of the main LTTStore.com page where it says "SUPPORT" in big bold letters in the middle, then right under that "support@lttstore.com" is unable to be seen by all.

You mean the support which has a lot of thread here complaining that they're expecting a reply for more than a month? The support where Linus said many times in the WAN show that if you need "fast" reply, to create a post here and tag nick, or to tag him and nick on twitter complaining? The support where it has months of tickets on the backlog and it only keeps increasing?

[Bombastinator]

I am not familiar with this warranty controversy.  From what I gather from the video the issue is the backpack has no written warranty but instead a verbal one.
 

  There are potential problems with this system.  It strikes me as a fiscally foolish move.  The things are sold in the E.U for one thing, where a one year warranty is a legal requirement.  In the U.S. for example,  It would make sense to do a standard 90 day warranty in the US, but also have a discretionary “we’ll take care of you” policy beyond that time. This is actually quite common.  Throwing a legal minimum in there simplifies things.  The thing is well built but also commensurately expensive.  It is possible to get a backpack (of vastly lower quality to be sure) for 1/10th the price.  Snap-on and sears offered lifetime warranties but had serious problems with abuses, so had to abandon that policy. The issue with long warranties is they’re basically unregulated insurance.

 

The primary issue seems to be the behavior of the company regarding complaints about this by consumers. 
A company that has a policy of saying “nice” whenever the number 69 is mentioned is not going to worry all that much about taste. You can like their behavior or not. I speak only as to whether or not it is a good idea to do that.  I think it isn’t. It’s a legal mess waiting to happen.    Warranties protect the manufacturer too.

 

Regarding extended warranties and why I think they are a rip-off:

I basically never buy an extended warranty on anything.  They are normally managed by Assurion and as such The probability that they are not a rip-off is extremely low.  There is a reason insurance had to be regulated, and companies that do nothing but duck it (which is basically what assurion has for a business model) worry me.  Before I developed my policy of never signing a paper with the name assurion on it, I had several such things and their deductible was always far higher than the retail cost of an identical undamaged replacement device.  Sometimes double or more.  I had been paying them a fee for nothing. 

[Slizzo]

Hey, I never claimed the support was GOOD, I was just responding to the "it's impossible to find a way to contact them!" When the way to contact is on their main page at the bottom, in the center of the page.

[Senzelian]

4 minutes ago, Middcore said:

 

Good luck getting a response, though.

 

3 minutes ago, kumicota said:

You mean the support which has a lot of thread here complaining that they're expecting a reply for more than a month? The support where Linus said many times in the WAN show that if you need "fast" reply, to create a post here and tag nick, or to tag him and nick on twitter complaining? The support where it has months of tickets on the backlog and it only keeps increasing?

 

His point wasn't that LTT has a good support. He was just pointing out that their support page is easy to find, which was a miscommunication as he was thinking I said it was hard to find, even tho I was talking about Amazon.

 

 

[Ultraforce]

26 minutes ago, Vishera said:

LMG is becoming more and more corporate by the day.

They should stop growing or this will get a lot worse.

 

Why do you think that Google,Amazon and Apple are soulless heartless corporations? - Growth.

If it was becoming more and more corporate I'd expect there not to be the issue which I think is the real issue of Linus taking things that aren't personal personally like his response to people wanting a real warranty being partially a why don't you trust me. Let us not forget why he is personally not in favour of unions at LMG or Creator Warehouse, being that management must have done something wrong if workers want a union and people don't just tell a C level executive or a manager if they run into any HR problems.

[kumicota]

3 minutes ago, Senzelian said:

And it's not like he has never taken responsibillity

While I agree on everything else, I disagree with it just because he likes to profits from his own drama, like the "Trust me bro" and "piracy" t-shirts, this makes me think that he's not truly sorry for it