Slashdot Mirror
Kingston and PNY Caught Bait-and-Switching Cheaper Components After Good Reviews
An anonymous reader writes Over the past few months, we've seen a disturbing trend from first Kingston, and now PNY. Manufacturers are launching SSDs with one hardware specification, and then quietly changing the hardware configuration after reviews have gone out. The impacts have been somewhat different, but in both cases, unhappy customers are loudly complaining that they've been cheated, tricked into paying for a drive they otherwise wouldn't have purchased.
It amazes me when companies sell down their good name. It takes a lot of time and money to earn it, and it never brings in as much when you do this. So not too more companies on my "avoid" list. Luckily there is a lot of competition.
I'm sure they'll just call it a Hardware Revision and write it off.
Kingston has been my go-to brand for at least a decade. I've used some others for performance, but Kingston was always rock solid, with great customer service. It saddens me to hear this.
(moderately unrelated: I prefer the presentation of this article here.)
I remember Kingston being one of the top quality RAM producers. PNY wasn't quite up there, but it was still respectable. Now, this sort of ill-conceived cost cutting measure.
If this was a case of over-engineered prototypes, the second product run should've been noticeably cheaper for buyers, slightly different ID number on the boxes, and another sample sent to reviewers so they could test the full-production model.
As my Father used to say:
"You're not actually sorry for doing it, you're just sorry for being caught doing it."
Good advice - when checking reviews for a product (e.g. on Amazon), always sort them by time and check how the ratings change. Many products get good reviews first, then it dives. You won't see this otherwise.
False advertising etc... Doubtless they've found some legal loophole to let them get away with it but it shouldn't be tolerated.
Sue them. Let the lawyers latch onto their faces and lay lawyer babies in their stomachs that will after a short period burst out of their chests to fill the world with yet more lawyers.
These guys have it coming. You don't cheat your customers.
I've decided to stop wasting my time responding to AC trolls/sockpuppets... so if you want a response from me... login.
get the good review on early first year models
then substitute a cheaper tire for latter half of the first year
some of those early model tires are quite expensive and high performing or efficient, but you can at least get them aftermarket
but wholesale change of internals, that's hard to fix aftermarket
They must be... because I can't think of a faster way to poison the well and scare customers off than cheating them. The Kingston move is downright shocking... whoever is making the calls for their SSD parts needs to be fired ASAP, and some serious damage control needs to be put into play if they ever want to continue selling SSDs.
So the solution is that the professional reviewers at places like C|Net or ArsTechnica need to have a policy of redoing their testing on older models when newer models are released. If they find that the older model no longer performs as they originally reviewed it, then they need to loudly warn that the manufacturer is known for reducing the quality of the product without announcing a change.
Built up Star Wars rep by releasing the initial version where Han shot first, then watered it down to the cheaper version for bigger profits.
I would like to see the paper (email really) trail where these companies plotted to screw over consumers. After all, there is no way that this happened by accident and being deliberate means communication. I thought highly of these brands until now. Now I can only wonder how long this has been going on and how many product lines are affected. They have lost my loyalty and cannot earn it back. I will warn everyone I know to avoid all of their products and I will explain why. I have a feeling this is going to snowball into a much more publicized scandal. I just hope I don't find out any of my still currently beloved companies have been committing the same fraud.
Also, I say naive because how could they have thought in this day and age that they would not get busted? I guess they were blinded by the dollar signs in their eyes.
Brought to you by Carl's Junior.
Electronics are produced in batches. Given availability of various components, each batch will not be identical. This is nothing new. As long as the new components still meet the same specifications, the consumer hasn't been harmed. Now if the intention of the company is to build a fast model specifically for review and substitute an inferior product for the mass market, that could be fraudulent. On the other hand, at the time of review, if the current model was all built with those components, then the review is valid.
We are talking about consumer grade products here. If you buy a name brand laptop and then the identical laptop six months later, it will very likely have different chipsets and versions of roms. There are companies that will sell business grade or even military grade, where all components are guaranteed to be the same regardless of when you buy it. Those usually cost a lot more.
So is there evidence that Kingston and PNY were being fraudulent or is it simply variations between batches? What's the real story?
It was ONE guy who got other hardware than what he expected. Reddit causing another witch hunt, as they love to do.
Apparently if you build a DIY OSHW product, you either don't cheat on quality, or you are a masochist.
My dream is a world where, like we have free SW today for almost everything, you have free OS DIY HW for almost everything.
My famous project: Twibright Ronja
And my latest project: Twibright Distillcooker
I cannot for the life of me fathom a company, in this age of internet and instant news, doing this. I have purchased some things from Kingston before and I was fine with the company. However, after reading this, they are on my lifetime shit list. That is also true for anyone reading the story. And you can bet that Digg, reddit and a few other popular sites will be running the story shortly.
In other words, Kingston is fucked, with a capital F.
Even if the company president comes over and cleans my house for a month, the bad name will prevail.
These guys are morons.
Is this brand at risk also ?
I needed a half-dozen 8 gig USB keys to serve as flash boot and installers.
I figured I might as well get USB3 versions since about half the time they would be written on USB3 based systems. I found a Kingston on Amazon, it was cheap and I bought them without thinking, figuring they were decent.
When I went to use them I had a WTF moment when they were so slow. Benchmarked them against a PNY 128 and another off-brand, both USB3 and the performance with them was as expected but the Kingston one was performing like a slow USB2 key.
Went to Amazon and read the reviews and found out that everyone was bitching and each review had a vendor followup from some flack at Kingston explaining that they were USB3 but considered "value" USB3 and that if I wanted "performance" USB3 I should buy another Kingston product at a ridiculous price.
Nowhere on the packaging does it say "slow, USB2-style speeds".
Anyway, this is just more news that Kingston is happy to bait and switch.
On a very related note, about a year ago I bought a Kingston 16 GB Class 10 SD card, but when I benchmarked it, it performed like a Class 4 card. After searching online, I found other people also complaining of this.
Irony: captch = recall
Well, time to disqualify them as SSD providers in our corporate system. Offhand it looks like it'll trickle down to a pretty significant loss of orders for them. For commodity SSDs our system just looks up all qualified vendors and goes by cheapest price. These guys were there previously, and now not....
It's a bit more subtle a scam than you think. Kingston/PNY haven't changed the specs of the product at all, all they did was ship hardware that's cheaper/closer to spec. That is, they never promised the crazy performance reviewers were getting, they just overbuilt the first run of components and then switched to something cheaper that still met spec requirements. Hardware manufacturers reserve the right to reformulate product all the time without indicating as much, so long as the spec is still the same. So basically, they spec a $100 box, but put $200 worth of components in it for the first few customers and review units. Once the good reviews go out, they pull the expensive components out of the box. But it's "technically not a scam" because they "technically never promised such a good deal", they just accidentally happened to give reviewers a good deal.
From a reviewer's point of view, however, I'd be incredibly skeptical of parts that perform too good compared to what they should be doing on paper. If you have something that is supposed to get 200mb/sec writes, but is actually getting 400 or more, then you should probably question the manufacturer and perhaps even score the product lower for being overbuilt, on the expectation that future hidden product revisions will stop overbuilding it.
Had bought a supposed (on the box) 128MB GeForce4 TI4800 made by PNY. Turned out to be the TI 4200, 64MB.
I have not touched PNY products for a very long time due to that.
Remember the original specs for the PS3? Now look at the last version and compare. Kingston et al are late to the game.
Any product that has been in production for a while will incorporate engineering changes during it's production cycle.
These changes can arise from some perfectly legitimate reasons including:
1. Fixes for problems found after production starts.
2. Improvements in manufacturing process to improve yield etc.
3. Changes needed to compensate for changes in upstream sources.
The idea that something essentially a prototype given to reviewers will not be changed once it's been in production for a while is nuts.
HOWEVER if the product is changed in such a way that the result is inferior as this article seems to indicate then the manufacturer has a lot to answer for.
I suspect most non-geeks who have SSDs get them as part of pre-built systems and have no choice about which parts to use.
Geeks tend to overestimate their influence dramatically in this sort of situation.
Now, system manufacturers, on the other hand, have their own reputations and margins to protect. If they are buying units by the thousand of a device that wasn't the one they previously evaluated, and then they start seeing a surprisingly high rate of failure, that is not good news for the device vendor at all.
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
And what is a "decent living" to you? I can't imagine any reviewer gets enough free stuff to sell that they are making a living at it. if so, their idea of a living is a lot different than mine. Although that may be the case regardless.
This has been happening for many years in computer monitors and televisions also. There will be an initial version sold for a few months that gets the reviews, and then the specs are changed - completely different LCD panels made by different manufacturers are substituted silently, often with different technology. Anecdotally early versions of an Acer monitor having a MPVA panel, and then the exact same model then shipping with TN panels that pale in performance compared to the original. With monitors, you are buying an AO Optronics panel in a box labeled Samsung, so when the same model gets you something inferior to both specifications and original reviews, it borders on fraud.
Stupid consumers... This is why they do this and get away with it.
This is not the first event, only the first that was caught.
As long as the product meets the advertised spec, why is there a guarantee it should exceed the advertised spec?
This is similar to years ago when people were buying P4 Celeron CPUs because many could be converted to a higher clock rate just by soldering a jumper. Not all worked this way, but many did. So when someone buys a Celeron and performs the jumper mod and is unable to get the CPU to clock at the higher rate, they really had no reason to complain.
Just like if McDonalds started giving out a gold coin in the bottom of every cup of coffee. People would flock to McDonald's to buy coffee to get the free gold coin. And then one day, they quietly start slowing down the rate they are giving out coins. First 1 in 2 cups. Then 1 in 5. Then 1 in 10. Then 1 in 100. Then they quit all together. Guess what, if they weren't advertising "free gold coin with every cup," people have no reason to be mad they didn't get a gold coin.
Or if Honda advertised a car that had 150 HP, and the first ones off the line actually would dyno at 210 HP, but they made a spec change and the HP was effectively reduced down to 175. Do you really have a reason to complain, when you're buying a 150 HP car? I don't think you do.
Granted, maybe it's not the best thing for Kingston to do, given their reputation. But i'm not certain it was done with any malice intended. You people saying "Kingston is now dead to me" ... bah ... Who's stuff are you going to buy? Go ahead, and feign disgust, but I don't know that it's all that terrible in the grand scheme of things.
Considering the Benchmark Brief the article in question actually quotes not only presents numerous benchmarks of the two versions, all clearly showing the performance impact, but also states outright at the start "In order to achieve a balance of price and performance, we must maintain the flexibility to source NAND Flash components from various Tier 1 NAND manufacturers. At times, this will mean that there is a difference in benchmarked performance, where certain builds outperform our advertised specification (450MB/s Read / Write) while other drives will meet the advertised specification." it's bit hard to see where the article immediately comes to the conclusion this must be a malicious bait-and-switch.
Any rational person must conclude that IS a possibility, but given Kingston has gone to trouble of assigning the two versions different product names (V300 120S & V300 120A) and publishing a benchmark brief showing the performance loss using no fewer than 7 different benchmarks, it's hard not to accuse the original article, its Slashdot submission & posting of shady deception.
That 20c saved isn't passed onto the customer. It's pocketed by the corporation.
Quality is no longer a characteristic business compete with. Why spend another 20c making a better product? It's the age of Amazon.com, and all anyone cares about is the lowest price. So, corporations have a new recipe for success:
1) Buy your competition to reduce competition.
2) Collude with your remaining competition so that everything is made in China and is sold at the same price.
3) Nickel & dime the consumer to maximize your profit.
By the time the business goes bankrupt due to piss-poor products and a loss of customer faith, the execs have already leached away all its capital. Once an exec makes it to the top, what incentive do they have to do what's best for the company or the consumer?
I may not be using Kingston SSDs for my home computer, but I do use many of their other products, as well as recommending them to my friends and family. This will definitely not be the case now.
As for PNY, they have never made it to my consider-it list. Over the years, I have kept a mental list of brands I would avoid for a while, particularly after bad failure rates or some bad reviews. However, I have never kept a permanent-avoid list. This may be a first.
The problem with the race to the bottom is that everybody ends up at the bottom. Usually sooner than expected.
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
This is why real professional reviewers, like Consumer Reports (and their nonprofit Consumers Union parent) don't accept advertising, and don't accept gratis review products. They go out and buy products from off the shelf from some random store. It also means they don't review vaporware products previews or pre-release samples that are typically cherry-picked before being sent to reviewers. They do auction or sell off products after review so as to reduce their expenses.
Hint, they've learned enough to being still in business of just reviewing products since 1936. Most review websites are increasingly obvious about how much of a shill they are. Personally I can't believe Extreme Tech to be so naive as to be surprised by this behavior.
Manufacturers typically don't advertise which controllers or brand of Flash RAM they use, because they are not willing to be held hostage to their suppliers. As far as they are concerned, as long as the product so do what the (brand) manufacturer claims, not what some reviewer claims from their sample of one testing, it is not false or misleading advertisement necessarily.
Then again I'm reminded that many tech enthusiasts websites rejected Bob Colwell's The Zen of overclocking (paywall; IEEE Computer, Volume 37 Issue 3, March 2004) as anti-overclocking drivel. Even though he was the chief IA-32 architect at Intel for of the Pentium Pro to Pentium IV processors.
"They" don't care about Us. These companies are manned at the top by bastards, who are by now are filthy rich, and couldn't care less if they drive their companies into the ground. Same with politicians. I just pity us fools.
One of these days us peasants are going to revolt -- "we're mad as hell and we're not going to take it anymore!" -- right? Wrong. We're going to keep taking it. So long as we keep not reading books, and not taking walks in the park, and not acting on our principals.
So act! Start by canceling your Cable -- there's less demand for hard drives, cables, etc. Next, put off your cell phone upgrade for two more years. It's going to hurt -- jobs will be lost, and you'll have to cut down on your beer budget. But the garden vegetables you'll reap will be worth it.
But it's "technically not a scam" because they "technically never promised such a good deal", they just accidentally happened to give reviewers a good deal.
It's a scam and they're liars. It's really as clear and un-subtle as that. When they deliver a review unit, the expectation is that it will be representative of the products that end users will by buying. They'll have gone over it with a fine toothed comb, sure, to make sure it doesn't have any obvious defects. But the nature of a review is that the reviewer will be getting the same product that you and I will. Without that implicit contract, the whole concept of a review is utterly worthless.
In fact, Kingston and friends burned their reviewers' reputations, not just their own. If I buy something because Joe Smith says he liked it and it turns out to be a piece of junk, I'll never trust Joe Smith's opinion again. If I'd written about one of these units - particularly for a major review site - I'd be raising holy hell, warning all of my readers, and distancing myself from it as far as possible. It'd be along the lines of "Kingston lied to me and I passed it along to you. For that, I am very sorry, and I will never review another of their products." and updating the original review to add a giant red disclaimer and explanation at the top.
This isn't subtle. It's a flat-out lie to customers and can only reasonably be seen as such.
Dewey, what part of this looks like authorities should be involved?
Something about Ford engineers changing a part to fix a critical issue without changing the part number. How did it ended up again? Something about courts?
Do "first looks" with no recommendation on pre-released items and only do full reviews on items purchased from a random retail outlet.
This is old news in the industry that dates back to the "Computer Shopper" days. Basically be skeptical that the product sent to you prior to release for free will actually be the same product sold to consumers when it is released.
The first clue should be that the pre-release products reviewed are available several months prior to the final product actually ships.
These comments are my own and do not necessarily reflect the views or opinions of my employer or colleagues...
*Please* tell me you filed a complaint with the BBB and more importantly your state AG! I would also name the retailer as a co-conspirator if they left this fraudulent product up for sale even after the manufacturer confessed.
As a builder, I can say Kingston and PNY are off the list. It's true that "you only get one opportunity to make a first impression", but the first impression is when you actually buy and use the product, not when you're reading reviews about it.
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
Apple uses tight tolerances when they just bring a product on the market. Later when complaints arise of instability and crashes they release a firmware or OS update that gives more room to components that are not within spec. I suspect they do this to lower the return/repair rate.
We develop software for iPhone, for this we keep first release of all iPhone models and don't update them and a second one that follows all updates. To test our software on all firmware versions. When benchmarking we find that even in tight loops it becomes slower after some firmware updates, these slowdowns can only be attributed to a GPU and memory timings. We found this to be true for the 4, 4s, 5, 5s and 5c, with the largest slowdown mostly within the first or second firmware update.
Similar behavior I have found on my Macbook air. Before and after OS update I benchmarked the SSD and it became 17% slower, I reverted the OS from a backup just before the update and it was still slower. The only explanation I can think of is that they changed the SSD firmware or some hardware settings to slow it down.
to convince everyone that they still have a good reputation.
So how often did a review sample perform worse than subsequent manufacturing changes?
Apple knows all about this
They should not do so, then no one will believe them. Consumers now are very smart
air asia viet nam
and it is far more common than a niche product like SSDs. The cycle goes thus: develop a really great, but expensive improvement and test/market that. Then turn it over to the business support teams who "optimize" the cost but using cheaper materials, wider specs, etc. The trick is to compare your new version to the most recent version rather than the original version using weak methods. This provides a racheting effect that is not immediately obvious.
Almost every single PSU review I've found, the PSU(s) in question are usually long gone by the time that I'm buying -> generally speaking best to stick to better brands or better yet the actual ODMs
I was going to buy a couple flash drives so I read reviews on the target product... and a disturbing number had the same complaint when using a USB3 flash drive on a USB2-equipped computer:
Data corruption.
This wasn't just the usual crowd of knobs who don't know shit about hardware; it was largely reasonably savvy-sounding folks.
Anyone know what the issue might be?
~REZ~ #43301. Who'd fake being me anyway?
Misrepresented sales is fraud.
In the civilised (non-US) West, this is simply known as "American Business Practices" (when our own businesses do it, we call it "flagrantly dishonest", or "obtaining financial advantage by deception"). It's part of the shonky, US-originated raft of shady business practices - e.g., "Up to" (X% off, Y% improvement in dandruff, Z% reduction in fine lines). In fact, the Yank practice of "puffery" is now so widely understood, as to be considered worthy of running as a defence ... e.g., S&P's defence of the DoJ's lawsuit; S&P's defence in Australian courts (which, given that Australia is part of the civilised (i.e., non-US) West, got thrown out with costs, then rejected on appeal).
If a company sells a product and then sells another (inferior) product by the same name and model number, isn't that fraud? Not just in the casual sense of the word, but in a legal sense?
Apparently not, or they would have gotten their asses sued off. I'd like to hear a definitive explanation of where the border lies between "we changed our product some" and "we're cheating people" and the rationale, from someone more knowledgeable than me.
There's no time like the present. Well, the past used to be.