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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's surprising. Kingston? I thought they were a good brand.
When a company pulls this kind of trick, they are dead to me. I don't understand why companies think that they will get away with such actions. It may slip through once but it only takes one time getting caught and then people will start looking back at past hardware releases to see if they did the same thing before. The damage to a company's reputation can be devastating, all to earn some extra profit.. Such a shame.
As my Father used to say:
"You're not actually sorry for doing it, you're just sorry for being caught doing it."
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.
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.
Why do you figure? As a top-ranked Amazon reviewer familiar with the reviewer "community", a hell of a lot of reviewers will give only positive reviews because they are afraid that any negative comments will stop the flow of free electronics and media coming. A lot of reviewers make a decent living eBaying products that we are sent gratis with a request for a review.
Plus, when you are getting a steady flow of free stuff to review, you are busy enough with the latest arrivals that you don't want to spend time going back and reworking a review you've already written. That's already ancient history for some.
I imagine these same problems exists at many independent tech review sites too.
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?
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?