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BlueHippo Scam Collected $15M, Only Shipped One PC
An anonymous reader writes "Turns out that those BlueHippo commercials advertising financing for computers and other electronics for anybody, regardless of credit, were way more sleazy than you thought. The FTC is bringing this fraud down, but not too soon. 'According to the FTC, the company's brazen business model continued without interruption after the 2008 settlement. "In fact, in the year following entry of this Court's Stipulated Final Judgment and Order for a Permanent Injunction, BlueHippo financed — at most — a single computer to the over 35,000 consumers who placed orders for computers that could be financed during the period,' the FTC told a court (PDF) yesterday. In the meantime, the company took in a cool $15 million in payments from consumers, who don't appear to have received anything in return.'"
Not surprised that BlueHippo are a bunch of worthless subhumans; but that they would be so audacious about it.
Had they actually shipped a few thousand bottom-of-range refurb Compaqs or whatever, which are pretty damn cheap by the pallet load, they never would have attracted fire from the FTC. The way that their "business" was structured(at least back when I checked their website when I first heard about them), they should have been able to clear fairly impressive margins on the backs of the poor and clueless even without cheating. And, if they had avoided legally actionable fraud, they presumably would still be operating today.
Why would somebody do that? Is enforcement so weak that getting away with it is a rational expectation?
How many would invest with Bernie Madoff if he somehow miraculously got out of prison - regardless of the name of his company?
It's NOT me! It's the meds! I'm on 1000mg of Fukitol.
The fine print clearly stated
Oxymoron
-IOVAR Web Dev Platform
That's what user mode in Opera is for. It makes any hidden text or fine print clearly visible in a normal font. I am sure there is a Firefox addon or setting that does something similar, but it is very hard if not impossible to make fine print stay hard to read with any decent web browser.
So they have your SSN for the user name. Just think of what they could do if they knew your mother's maiden name! Oh never mind, that's the password!
https://www.bluehippo.com/csv2/Login.aspx
You can never make enough laws to keep people like this from exploiting others.
It would never occur to those of us who have been raised with an inkling of an idea of good and evil to treat others in such a despicable manner.
It has nothing to do with free market. It is an issue of ethics and values.
Without the adoption of some standard of right and good within the individual heart, there is no hope of restraining people from similar scams.
I'm not doing great financially, but those of us in the know are pretty good about staying on the connected side of the digital divide.
Not only that, but we are the same folks that keep old parts around and every now and then are able to build a workable setup for someone that could really use a computer. People that are thrilled to have something, even if it comes with a CRT monitor and has a 7 year old video card.
I've 'volunteered' hours working on crappy emachines for people because I know they can't go out and buy something fast and great.
F you BlueHippo. I know these people personally, and a computer means a lot to them.
I went to their website (Google for bluehippo), and when I clicked "Purchase" I was taken to a login screen.. where my username is my SSN, and password is my mother's maiden name. Yeah, I'll give them some more personal info after I enter that...
just make the fine print a jpeg file with low quality or embed in flash
The elderly are doing the same thing to workers right now through Social Security and Medicare.
We're promised future product (retirement money and health care) if we make payments up front. And it's unlikely the state will be able to deliver since they've already spent the money.
Sound familiar?
This is the first time that the Nyquist sampling theorem has had an application to legal bullshit, I think. Wow.
At least they used HTTPS.
Do you have any good examples?
Bruce Perens.
We've effectively gone from a system that we could opt out of (for the most part) into one where the government forces you to give it up till you bleed. Tell me how much better things are again?
I see your point, but the idea you're missing is that much of technology moves from a luxury to a necessity very quickly. Ten years ago you could compete in the job market with no computer skills, and that's no longer the case. Shorter patent lifespans would allow companies to profit from good research, but not set back an entire society to profit a single corporation. Imagine if GE came out with a solar panel that was dirt cheap to manufacture, but charged 400 times more than it cost to make. China, India, and Russia could reverse engineer the product, and then we'd be competing with international companies that pay far less for electricity.
Furthermore, you have zero input on the actions of corporations who provide these necessary luxuries, like oil, electricity, information infrastructure, and so on. At some point, you have to assign a third party with more power to keep them in check, or we'll all be living in company towns, shopping at company stores, which isn't a hell of a lot better than soviet communism.
The problem with BlueHippo was they thought small. If they got too big to fail then everything would have been alright.
People have god-given frailties, which scammers EXPLOIT by victimizing people's blind spots or weak points. Your post blaming the target of BlueHippo fraud was insensitive and cloddish. But you will mature over the next few years, and become more aware that humans who are *average* or even *below average* still deserve our respect. You, too, have your blind spots and two Achilles heels.
Wendy / the Darwin Awards
Er, is this a serious post? You do realize that the link leads to a thumbnail, don't you?
Remove the -thumb part of the URL, and you get something more readable. Still a pretty lousy scan, but perfectly legible.