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Zer01 Parent Strips Web Site Following Report
alphadogg writes "Two days after a report cast doubt on Zer01 Mobile's business, its parent company has stripped its Web site down to only basic information. New details have also come to light suggesting a past connection between two of the involved companies, despite claims to the contrary. Earlier this week IDG News Service reported that it's unlikely that Zer01 could be technically able to offer the unlimited mobile voice and data service that it is advertising. The service, originally targeted for a July 1 launch, does not appear to be available yet. In addition, it's being marketed through a multilevel marketing program run by a company called Global Verge whose founder, Mark Petschel, in 2005 pleaded guilty to securities fraud. Petschel is currently on probation."
Wasn't this just another pyramid scheme?
A phone company that seriously wants to *not* utterly rape you that actually has the means to provide a service that works!?
BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!
I own a retail cell phone accessory site. ( CellUp.com ) and I've been receiving at least an email a day regarding becoming an authorized distributor. They claim to have lots of cool new HTC phones. When I looked into it a little further and with my knowledge of the industry I knew that there was no way this could be anything other than a scam. I avoid anything that looks like an MLM. I'm not going to talk people I know or legitimate customers of mine into something that over promises and under delivers.
more than I trust the current set of telecommunications companies.
"In the absence of the ability to establish the attribute of truth they tried to establish the noble attributes."
Earlier this week IDG News Service reported that it's unlikely that Zer01 could be technically able to offer the unlimited mobile voice and data service that it is advertising.
If you mean unlimited in the sense that they wouldn't cap your usage, sure they could do this. If you mean unlimited, usable voice and data, that's another thing entirely. They could call it "unlimited" but not have the bandwidth to deliver a decent, or even functional, user experience.
Sure we need consumer protections, but a healthy dose of caveat emptor is never a bad thing. If the service contract says "unlimited," and it ends up being unlimited 2400 baud data, that's still unlimited. Chickens**t, but still unlimited.
Make love, not reality television.
I am pretty sure I would strongly disagree with whatever goes through the minds of the implementers of MLMs. I have dealt with more than a couple in my time and they always leave a bad taste in my mouth so to speak. I can see what goes through the minds of the drones who participate in them -- greed. Some people are constantly searching for opportunities to get in on the first tier of MLMs as it is a pretty good way to get a lot of money without doing anything and also not being responsible for any wrong doing on the part of the implementers. (Makes me wonder how often tier one people are actually implementers from behind the scenes... probably a lot... it makes sense that they would try to protect themselves in that way.)
I don't know why the average person doesn't see it though -- MLMs are quite obviously scams most of the time.
Speaking of scams... anyone experience the latest in getting around the Do Not Call list? They now call and hang up after you answer only to have you confirm your willingness to care by calling back using the caller ID information. This is being used by telemarketers and collections people alike. I am not sure which is "after me" but so far, I have had three of these calls. I did not, of course, call the numbers back. Instead, I googled the phone numbers and found that there are already numerous complaints about the who, the what and the how. What are the odds that the same people behind the auto warranty scams are also behind or connected with this new one?
If you mean unlimited in the sense that they wouldn't cap your usage, sure they could do this. If you mean unlimited, usable voice and data, that's another thing entirely.
Ah, server colocation facilities do the same thing. There is a big difference between unlimited and unmetered and consumers should know that.
:(
Providing unlimited calls and texts between cellphones is more than just a bandwidth issue, though. Carriers charge each other exorbitant fees when a text or call comes through from another network.* Zer01 would have to find that money somewhere.
*Naturally, every carrier charges every other carrier the same level of ridiculous fees, so it's a kind of de facto price fixing. Carrier A won't lower its call termination charges, and thus its rates, because it has to pay for Carrier B's call termination charges, while Carrier B won't lower its call termination charges, and thus its rates, because it has to pay for Carrier A's call termination charges. There are a few ways to force down prices: regulation is one option, or a daring loss-taking price-cutting end-run by one carrier may lead to the sort of insane price slashing that's happened in the UK. Three seems keen to issue a death blow to its rivals its free Skype: they want other carriers' customers to pick up Skype SIM cards, and call each other with those wherever possible, which cuts off their competitors' revenue from call termination charges. Three just has to pick up the tab with the bandwidth, which they have in spades.
No kidding!!! What do you say at this point?
I run an asterisk server and implement my own do not call list.
same here. if you're not on my whitelist, you get screaming monkeys
Ok.......am I the only one who half-read the title as I scrolled down really fast and just imagined something quite different. I thought some hacker called Zer01 got stripped by his/her parent. Then I read the title properly. Oh yeah, to still be on topic......bad Zer01, very bad Zer01.
Just because it looks like a huge Pump and Dump red flag doesn't mean we have to assume that Zer01 is just out to bilk out customers of their money with promises of service that just can't be delivered. Just look at the Phantom console from Infinium Labs, sure it took forever, but they delivered on the goods eventua- oh wait.
I've been hit with this callback spam, too. The thing is, the one that hit me doesn't call you back until after you say hello twice. Pretty sure it's not a timed delay. Just one more incentive to expect that much more out of people on the phone - if I say hello, and you're taking a sip of your soda or something and don't answer in a timely fashion, expect to get hung up on. I ain't saying it twice.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
That's actually the robo calls. The automated dialer is designed to listen for a short spoken word, then a pause, then if it hears another short spoken word it connects you to the call center, if it hears nothing it will eventually hang up assuming it got an answering machine.
I *never* say hello twice unless I recognize the callerID.
Do you Gentoo!?
I am pretty sure I would strongly disagree with whatever goes through the minds of the implementers of MLMs. I have dealt with more than a couple in my time and they always leave a bad taste in my mouth so to speak.
It really depends on the owners/executives of the MLM and the compensation plan. There are some really awful ones out there that are pure scams. There are ones out there that management is OK, just the compensation plan are awful. Trick is finding a MLM that has owners/management that have integrity that treat the distributors fairly for their work with a workable business plan to use.
Then you have people who think it's easy money (it's not, it requires real work) and fail to follow the business plan set up by people who are alot smarter then they are then cry about not being successful. Or they want to be babied by their sponsors and can not work without constant supervision. Like all sales, it's matter of falling through with commitment and dedication through the awful time of learning a new job. Those with fire in the belly will succeed if they are with the right product/management/compensation plan/business plan. It's hard work but it can be a whole lot of fun too.
For me, it allowed me to work from home to take care of family. I would never return carrying mail for USPS, I do not want someone else controlling me like that ever again.
Dammy
about 7 years back I was laid off looking for another job, had my resume on Monster and a couple of other resume sites and got an email saying they were opening a new office in my area and were holding interviews for someone to help run their network.
What they didn't say is that it was an MLM selling insurance, and the network wasn't a computer network, but rather a network of people. I drove an hour and a half for an interview which was just these scumbags hawking their insurance MLM to a bunch of unemployed people (There were about 50 people in the room).
As soon as I realized it was a pyramid scheme I said so in as many words and walked out. About 10 others followed.
Pissed me off, wasted a tank of gas and 4 hours of time I could have been using with my family.
Do you Gentoo!?
To me something like a Do Not Call list is bogus - it depends on the willingness of spammers to obey it, which is against their self interest. The proper thing to do is to have a list of telemarketing / spamming telephone numbers that would optionally be ignored on the client side.
We don't expect to put a sign "do not connect to this server" somewhere and then not receive any connections... we install a firewall.
Those who would give up liberty to obtain working drivers, deserve neither liberty nor working drivers.
If it looks like a scam, walks like a scam, and quacks like a scam--then it probably *is* a duck. In that case, you should probably shoot it and cook it with orange sauce.
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
Note that this situation with respect to termination is different in the USA. Over here, calls to mobiles cost the caller more, but in the USA the termination fee is (I believe) fixed for the caller and the callee pays extra if it's a mobile. This leads to some interesting economic problems. If you run a SIP client on your mobile, then you're only using something like 5MB/hour for a voice call, which is cheap on a data package, but the mobile operators want to charge a lot more if they provide the termination as well as the bandwidth. It's not a stable market situation and it's going to become even worse when they roll out all-IP networks like LTE.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
That would be great except for those who have mobile phones... only. And being able to maintain such a list? Not sure it is being done. Finally, as you may or may not know, at times these DNC marketers also spoof CLID. These latest one I speak of, however, uses a valid number for CLID in hopes you will call them back.
Yeah, when my wife and I tried one (Amway), we found it to just not be worth the effort (we made about $5 over the year, and had to pay $100/yr for the right to sell their stuff), needless to say, we just cut our losses.
I know some who are quite successful with this program, but it just isn't for the hermetic slashdotter.
Right now in the US the price for some carriers data plans is pretty much covered by the voice billing. If they lose that, either the data plan pricing will jump a bunch or they will just fold up. My guess is that the only way out for these folks, like T-Mobile, is for them to get sold and the rate plan is converted over. Say Verizon buys them. As T-Mobile contract holders age out of their contracts the prices go up to Verizon's levels.
So instead of $20 a month for a unlimited data plan you get 5MB for %45.
Nobody is going to like this, but what else are they going to do? The Verizon pricing is probably more realistic and self-sustaining whereas the T-Mobile plan assumes lots of voice billing to sustain operations. Of course, T-Mobile is also shooting themselves in the foot with UMA (unmetered access, using WiFi) over the long term. But it gets them lots of customers looking for a bargain. Too bad the bargain can't last.
192 kbps is 32 KB/s
1 MB is 1024 KB
1024/32 is 32, so 1 MB in 32 seconds, make it 30 seconds
2 MB/min
120 MB/hour
3000 MB (GB = 1000MB)
3000 MB / 120 MB/hr = 25 hours
You have 25 hours of play at 192 kbps after 3 GB
You are fined 0.015 CENTS per KB over. It matters.
Zero? This has something to do with Obama?
...targets a fellow con artist. The theory is that a natural con artist is greedy and seeks to get the better of someone else, and so you play upon his greed and convince him that he is doing just that (sometimes to you, sometimes to a third party). The confidence he gains from feeling like he has an advantage over some weaker-minded victim motivates him to put up some money, which you then take and run.
However, there are variants of that theme, in which you try to convince the con artist that this shifty job is totally legit, but based on some sort of secret advantage or secret knowledge that will make it more profitable than other ventures.
I wonder if, in this case, Petschel himself is a victim of a technical con. Some developer sold him on impossible claims and is going to run off with the VC money while Petschel takes the fall. Since he is already a demonstrated con artist, and presumably not a technical expert, he is certainly vulnerable to such a con.
Not that I am expressing sympathy or anything mind you...I am just trying to understand why someone who has already done jail time for this sort of thing would do it again, in such a highly-visible way. He is obviously stupid to do so...but it may be that his stupidity is numbering him among the victims this time.
Wasn't this just another pyramid scheme?
It's a Sierpinski gasket which just looks like a pyramid, but requires less actual material...
Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities. - Voltaire
Learn to speak a little known foreign language, and speak only using it to telemarketers. I guarantee you that they'll take you off their list.
The funniest one I did, was answered the phone, and pretended I'm deaf. Hilarious.
Agent K: A *person* is smart. People are dumb, stupid, panicky animals, and you know it.
Similar story happened to me, though fortunately not as long a drive. About a year ago, I was in the job market, and I had my resume on the various computer job sites and my local paper's site powered by HotJobs (a spam site in itself, but that's another story). At some point I get called for an interview; an HR person for Ameriprise saw my resume and wanted to talk with me, or so they said. Now, at the mere mention of Ameriprise I'm sure you're all groaning and saying of course it's not a real job interview. For those who aren't, these are the financial advisers who love to put those fish bowls in the lobby of restaurants and have you put your business card into it for a chance at a free lunch. I knew that going in, but I figured they may need a computer guy too.
The interview was set for a Monday morning, and they called to confirm on Friday afternoon. The only problem is that they start telling me it's a presentation and some other preliminary; I don't remember the exact words they used. This took me a bit by surprise so I asked about the interview and they said it was a mass interview. Because I was led to believe it was relevant to my resume, I didn't ask anything else, but a little while later after their offices closed I had some red flags going off in my mind. Of course, I'd have to wait the whole weekend before I could ask anyone there.
Monday morning rolled around and I called to clarify, but the person didn't answer. At that point I figured it wasn't a long ride over, and even though my BS meter was blaring I still decided to check it out. I was raised not to bail on an appointment without notice, and I figured I had maybe a half hour of driving to lose if it was bull. Long story short, I walked in and asked clearly whether this was a computer-related job, was told it was a "financial adviser" position, and promptly walked out after explaining that I was led to believe otherwise. I was a little pissed, but I sort of expected it beforehand. Doesn't really hold a candle to your story, but I was just reminded of it. Plus, it's a good forum to spread the word on Ameriprise Financial... how they and Amway/Quixtar can still get prime-time commercial spots is beyond me.
I'm guessing some lawyer told them that if the call isn't answered by someone at the home, then it can't be prosecuted under the Do Not Call list provisions, and that if someone calls THEM, they're fair game and down on a list of 'known good' numbers.
This is false. Calling and hanging up is just the same as calling and staying on the line. When they trace the number back to a commercial entity that should have followed DNC rules, the company can and will still be held liable, assuming the consumer is savvy enough to get a lawyer.
Remember, you're entitled to money under DNC provisions if someone violates the DNC.
Job? I don't have time to get a job! Who will sit around and bitch about being broke and unemployed then?
Where are you sourcing your information?
Presumably both Virgin Mobile and Sprint (Virgin Mobile USA is partially owned by Sprint and uses their network) make money on these plans:
http://web.virginmobileusa.com/broadbandPlans
I can see where Sprint has built out a certain capacity for voice service and is willing to sell data cheaply in order to increase utilization of that capacity, but it seems like you are overestimating the costs.
Nerd rage is the funniest rage.
I figured it wouldn't belong before a comment like this shows up. All pyramid schemes are scams. Of COURSE there is a potential to make money. But it is ONLY by scamming the people below you. As long as you're on top, you can make big money. If you're on the bottom, you're just one of the pawns. Eventually the market gets saturated. And that's when everybody jumps on some new MLM scheme.
I would say it works pretty well. The only calls I get at this point are from scammers (lately it has been the car warranty people, but that was months ago, nothing recent).
Hopefully the guy who complained that congress passing the law would kill the industry will be proven to be prescient (I really have no idea, as from my perspective, the legitimate industry appears dead).
I guess it did take me answering about 6 or 8 calls over Christmas to get companies with established business relationships to stop calling my mom's phone. "Do you have a courtesy do not call list?" was quite effective at getting the person on the other end of the line to shut up and edit the database. It probably helps that I am a crank and have no qualms whatsoever about talking over them as they start their pitch.
Nerd rage is the funniest rage.
I know it's novel, but they could adopt a business model which involves selling the commodity that they control a lot of (mobile bandwidth), rather than some arbitrary related service (POTS bridging to their wireless network). Provide a low-cost VoIP service and sell data at a reasonable price. They already sell data-only services. These aren't subsidised by voice calls because the plans don't include any voice connection. Move everyone to this kind of billing, where you get charged separately for bandwidth and for POTS bridging.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
I see, so ultimately termination fees are directly absorbed by the recipient in their bill, rather than indirectly by rate hikes. Still the same sort of problem for Zer01, mind you: if they provide unlimited calls, they have to foot an unlimited termination fee bill.
No kidding!!! What do you say at this point?
I agree with that!
Todd DiRoberto
http://www.emediawire.com/releases/americansatellite/todddiroberto/emw2401714.htm
Why don't they just use these (http://www.sandstorm.net/products/phonesweep/). Amusingly enough, the company sells arms to both sides of the telemarketing conflict, with (http://www.sandstorm.net/products/sandtrap/).
That's why some countries have the government do the price fixing. With corporations they can price fix whatever they want without my knowledge or consent, the government relies on my co-operation, for at least one event in every four years so if someone's going to be price fixing, I can tell you who I prefer.
Yay telecom regulations.
Calling someone a "hater" only means you can not rationally rebut their argument.