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Is Netpliance Slamming Customers?
But when visionik called Netpliance to inquire why the amount his credit card was charged was higher than he expected it to be, he learned that he was also being charged for service, including a prorated charge for service in March. He writes: "So I say I want to cancel the order. This guy laughs and says 'Fine, but you'll have to wait at least 30 days before we will [credit] your credit card.' That was enough. I told him I was contesting the charge and filing a complaint with my card company, to which this ballsy guy laughed again and said 'good luck'!"1. 3/11 I saw the article on Slashdot, and thought it would be a nifty project to run linux on, followed quickly by a thought that I didn't have time to mod it anyway, followed by another thought: hey, even better - i'll order one for my brother's birthday (which is monday the 27th)
2. 3/11 I called netpliance to verify that I could order the unit on my card, without service, and that my brother could subsequently sign up for services on his card. they said sure, no problem. i asked if it would arrive before the 27th, and they said -again- sure, no problem.
3. 3/11 I went ahead and ordered one a bit later in the day via the web form. The site said my total was $99 plus shipping ... nothing about service; and that the shipping would be 7-10 days.
I called Netpliance to ask them about this, and was surprised to reach a courteous human after only a few layers of voice-prompts. The sales representative I reached seemed taken aback by my questions, and surprised that the idea that anyone who'd been assured otherwise would be charged for the service. He quickly transferred me to one of his bosses, named Jerome. I asked Jerome whether people were being automatically charged for Netpliance's ISP service after being informed that they would not be via phone or the company's Web site.
He responded that signing up for the service was now required of all customers who purchase an i-opener from Netpliance. "According to the Web site, the service now automatically goes into effect two days after the order is recieved."
But what about those in visionik's situation? Asked whether all customers, like visionik, now being charged for the service had been aware of this change at the time of order, Jerome acknowledged that there may have been a gap between the change to automatic start of service and that policy being reflected on the Netpliance page. "I think it wasn't announced on the site [earlier in the month]. I hadn't looked at the Web site, so I'm not sure what it said. ... I'm not sure exactly when that change went into effect. There may have been a lag."
Might the i-opener again be sold without the service agreement-requirement? Jerome's diplomatic answer: "I'm not sure about that."
Jerome then transferred me to John, a customer-service supervisor, who confirmed that everyone who buys an i-opener direct from Netpliance is now being charged for the ISP service as well, and that there are "a couple" of people who are being charged although they did not sign up for the service or specifically asked not to be, but he did not indicate the actual number.
John described buying the i-opener device/service combination from Netpliance as a matter of convenience, and said "You can buy them at Circuit City and save shipping, or you can buy them from Netpliance and pay $40." For ones bought at Circuit City, currently the only i-opener's retail outlet, he said that to initiate service, "you do have to call. Our main focus is to sell it to our mainstream customers, a certain type of person we're aiming at."
Perhaps they should consider aiming at home-networkers looking for inexpensive flat-panel terminals as well.
- being a monopoly isnt illegal.
- MS business practices, taken alone, are not illegal
Being a monopoly and being a bastard is illegal. Or, more correctly, using you power as a monopoly is illegal.Netpliance is by no means a monopoly, and what there doing is no worse (which is to say, not at all bad) that cell phone carriers selling phones at a loss.
This isn't bundling. Netpliance manufactuers the hardware and provides the internet service all as part of the same product. They are not letting someone else sell their product while they provide the OS or something with it. The i-Opener and online service are all part of the deal, your cable company doesn't sell you cable boxes without them providing cable to your house.
I'm a loner Dottie, a Rebel.
"10% profit margin" might well have the boxes selling for $200 or $300, or more...
But yeah, I'd probably pay close to $400 for a box like this, with no real regrets.
I disapprove of their near bait-and-switch tactics, but not much more than I disapprove of all the people trying to find ways to shaft them. We know what their business model is, we know they're losing money on hardware sales, and we want them to like us, so the best thing we can do is screw them as hard as possible. Uh-huh.
My blog: http://www.seebs.net/log/ --- My iPhone/iPad app: http://www.seebs.net/seebsfrac/
Here is another I-Opener hack. You can now boot linux from the flash memory instead of disk. The problem is you still need a disk and cable to make the initial transfer. Check it out here.
As he stated in the article, "3/11 I called netpliance to verify that I could order the unit on my card, without service, and that my brother could subsequently sign up for services on his card. they said sure, no problem."
Whoa ... wait this isn't possible ... how in the world could netpliance do this? Ahhh yes the Internet service ... take a $5 a month internet service and charge $20 for it ... within a year the I-Openers would reap in millions of dollars ... until some geek decided he wanted to play inside his. If they were going to have such a cow why didn't they just lease the boxes? ...
As for canceling the Service or getting a free service like NetZero, FreeI, TheSimpsons, Lycos, Altavista, or BlueLight you are forced into this horrid agreement. Not to mention what if you own a cable modem and want to just network the box into the home lan. Can't do that.
I actually can see the article in maximum PC's "Watchdog" right now ... Netpliance will soon be the enemy that once stood in the place of WebTv ... BTW why has no one hacked one of those yet?
Ignore the "p2p is theft" trolls, they're just uninformed
All you need to do is dial the unit up using its native QNX (either to the Netpliance-provided ISP or, if you've wriggled your way into the internals, by using pppd itself with your own ISP), FTP a compressed boot/root filesystem image, and write that image to the raw SanDisk device.
Poof. Instant Linux installation. It's been done with BSD and there are already Linux "distros" (images) available to do the same. Check out their web site and the FAQ.
Isn't it the Linux crowd that generally all screams "Make money on the service!"?
Here we have a small company trying to do just that and now they get abused on here because of it. That hardware is dirt cheap and they can't be making anything on it (most likely they are losing money). This is exactly what most of you wanted to see--get free hardware, pay for the services. This is how RedHat makes...er..tries to make money, right? Give the OS away and charge for the service and tech support.
Netpliance doesn't seem any different to me.
All that being said, however, I agree that promising one thing at the time of sale and then charging extra later is WAY out of line. It was their fault and they should pay for that obvious mistake. But starting now no one here should have a complaint against Netpliance's business model of selling the service and "giving" away the actual product.
Hexy - a strategy game for iPhone/iPod Touch
Whoa! wait a second...a company...trying to make money...by shafting customers...what the hell?
So you work there, or have some of their stock. Big Deal.
No, I don't.
I'm actually one of the more spoken people on the i-openers mailing list, and the guy that put together the FAQ for hacking the thing up. I have two of these devices in my home, used as X terminals and one will eventually be an MP3 player in my living room.
http://fastolfe.net/misc/i-opener-faq.html
I am the 'Fastolfe' in 'Fastolfe.Net'.
I think I'm probably one of the most qualified people in this article to comment on what's going on here, since I've been dealing with Netpliance and the i-opener "hacking" community since the beginning.
I have little problem with people wanting to take advantage of the low price to use these things in other ways, PROVIDED they do not attempt to give Netpliance THE SHAFT in the process. If you actually read the mailing list, you'll find that most of us are quite sensitive to Netpliance's predicament, and we ARE quite aware that we are really taking advantage of them here, and I'm quite sick of Linux Slashdot kiddies who think they can force Netpliance (or any other "evil" corporation of the week) to take it up the ass for them. Things like this make me sick.
Netpliance has all of the power in designing the contract, product, and terms of service. The consumer only has a choice of buying the product or not (they also have varying degrees of consumer protection rights depending on their state). The consumer should not have to question whether or not the company they are buying the product from is making a profit. They should only have to question whether the product and associated terms of service and future fees are worth it. Netpliance has the lawyers, accountants, and marketeers, let them set a good price for their service. Otherwise, where does it stop. Should a consumer not buy products from a money losing e-business? Should an ISP customer not use expensive POPs (such as UUNet) because the cost to the ISP exceeds $19.95 a month for normal users. Of course not. Thats the beauty of market capitalism, a great deal of information and business calculation that the consumer does not have to care anything about is embodied in the price.
I have no problem with Netpliance realizing that they made a mistake and changing their offer, but I also have no problem with customers taking advantage of a good deal. Given the imbalance of power, I also think that Netpliance should at least honor the deal that was advertised at the time of purchase.
--
"L'IT c'est moi!"
I was wondering how they would be able to nail someone who walked into Circuit City, paid cash for an I-Opener, and commenced to hack.
They can't.
Yessssssss!
From what I've heard, they haven't made any real changes to the box, either. In essence, all the noise they made about modifying the system to prevent hacks was window dressing to mollify the stockholders.
-- Dirt Road
Improvise - Adapt - Overcome (unofficial USMC motto)
What's the big deal? Some guy got the shaft. This is news? Yes, netpliance dropped the ball, but we have the court system to deal with this. This just shows that this poor sap doesn't know how the financial system works. did you know that all I need to withdraw from your checking account is the first two sets of numbers on the bottom left of your check? No signature. Not even an amount. Just the number, and I can electronically suck you dry.
Credit cards have similar non-safeguards. If you think you've been ripped off, you need to contact your credit card person RIGHT NOW (within 24 hours, usually) and your liability is limited. You, and them, can then jointly go after the illegal debit. This kind of crap is dealt with predictably and swiftly: if you're right, the legal system will drop kick them down the stairs and then turn around and cut you a check (*cough*).
Here's some other agencies that'll be interested in hearing from you:
In short, slashdot is not the forum to discuss Shafting 101 - yeah, it happens. But it's caveat emptor out there, I'm sorry to say. Call this an inexpensive lesson - it could have been worse. You could have signed a mortgage....
Certainly Netpliance should be taken to task if it pulled a bait and switch as indicated in the article.
/. for trying to force customers to use its ISP when buying its computer. The fact is, Netpliance sells the computers at a loss and has to use the ISP service to turn a profit. I would love to see them sell these nifty machines at a higher price (I figure a 10% profit margin is reasonable) and without any internet service tacked on, but until their production ramps up, I don't expect to see it, if ever.
However, a lot of anger seems to have been building toward them around
Lets get a couple of things straight before we go off wailing on netpliance on all fronts.
First of all, I will say that charging someone for something they didn't order or authorize is patently wrong and in most countries/states considered a form of fraud. I agree that this is how it should be.
Let us also remember that Netpliance likely doesn't make a dime on their hardware. Do we really think that if LCDs were this cheap that someone else wouldn't have thought of this sooner? I imagine netpliance is making its money on the service (similar to the `buy a 3 year subcription to MSN and save $400 dollars on your new puter' deals). This is a valid business model and they shouldn't be criticized for it on its face.
Lets be careful which aspects of business we criticize. And I should like to point out, even $199.00 or $249.00 wouldn't be such a bad deal for this baby w/o service so just because there isn't a company dedicated to losing money so you can have neat stuff isnt a Bad Thing(tm).