181–190 of 270 posts
I’ve had my credit card stolen multiple times this year, and the thief has used my card to send ME keto pills I didn’t want. This makes the transaction more difficult to dispute and doesn’t benefit a common thief in any way. These companies are just a facade for criminal activity in my opinion, though I’ve been unable to concretely connect the dots.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Don't threaten legal action unless you already plan to follow it through: companies know this is unlikely to be followed up and will stonewall you. You actually do have to follow through if you're going to play that game. Otherwise almost everyone is just going to call your bluff, and I'm reasonably sure CS reps are now being actively trained to do so immediately at many companies. For example, any implication that y…
Small claims can work with some companies, but others simply laugh at County Court Judgements. The hard part isn't winning - which is easy if you have even a minimally credible case - it's enforcement. If the company ignores the judgement you have to go back to court to get an enforcement order. And then you'll have to engage a collections company and/or a bailiff. And if they seize goods to the value of because they…
As for enforcement, here, you're allowed to sell the debt the company owes you to collectors, and this pays 10% interest a year--not bad compared to a checking account. You can demand they show up in court again and answer to the judge why they haven't paid, and when they will, you can lay claim to rent and assets, et cetera. The court won't do that for you, but it very much does want to help legitimately harmed parties settle their score.
I agree it's not fast, though.
I like the article. It presents the way that I believe we should all behave with each other in a professional environment. Respect and Courtesy are important at all times (IMNSHO). Some folks seem to feel that being respectful is a sign of weakness, but cops are extremely respectful, as they explain to you why they will be writing a ticket for an eye-watering amount (at least, good cops are). Many moons ago, when the…
My summary of this article in terms of good and evil: - Kiss My Keto unsuccessfully tries to set up an affiliate program that doesn’t eat too much margin and is still equitable to the affiliates (I believe they are doing their best to be a force for good until proven otherwise) - Mr. Lynch gets involved and finds out the program he thought he was joining is actually not as it seems, so he reaches out to Kiss My Keto…
-Mr. Lynch advertises for KMK on a site that he has poured many hours of work and creativity into over the years. Mr. Lynch does this based on an agreement, that, in fact, relies heavily on the merchants honest reporting of sales, a metric Mr. Lynch, does not have on his own. The balance of power in this relationship is strongly favoring KMK.
-Mr. Lynch learns that KMK is not, in fact, honoring its contract, this he learns from a small admission from KMK. The balance of power shifts slightly in favor of Mr. Lynch.
-Mr. Lynch reaches out to CEO of KMK, who effectively tells Mr. Lynch to pound sand. Escalating the conflict, and retaining position in balance of power.
-Mr. Lynch continues pressing CEO, threatening losses that a reasonable CEO would not want to incur, as well as the guarantee that this cheap problem will continue to consume the bread maker-CEOs time. KMK, in a moment of clarity signals that it is open to alternative solutions without admitting fault, by effectively posing the question, ‘What do hope to accomplish?’. Balance of power is basically equal at this point.
-Mr. Lynch and KMK CEO settle on $88 to make Mr. Lynch whole. Both are mutually satisfied to never conduct business together again. At this point Balance of power is now strongly in favor of Mr. Lynch, as he has recuperated the $88, but more effectively, he has won the conflict. Using the leverage that was ironically what KMK valued most as an affiliate partner, he nukes the bridge he just crossed as a demonstration of force, but more importantly send a message to the market, ‘you don’t screw over your affiliate partners’.
Some may say it was twisting the blade a little too much, some may say it was in bad taste. I say it was Sherman-esque; harsh, but necessary, so long as he didn’t take obvious pleasure in his brutality.
I enjoyed the read. Side note: is it just me or is the Keto industry in general just like 99.5% criminals? I’ve had my credit card stolen multiple times this year, and the thief has used my card to send ME keto pills I didn’t want. This makes the transaction more difficult to dispute and doesn’t benefit a common thief in any way. These companies are just a facade for criminal activity in my opinion, though I’ve been…
I like the article. It presents the way that I believe we should all behave with each other in a professional environment. Respect and Courtesy are important at all times (IMNSHO). Some folks seem to feel that being respectful is a sign of weakness, but cops are extremely respectful, as they explain to you why they will be writing a ticket for an eye-watering amount (at least, good cops are). Many moons ago, when the…
> Respect and Courtesy are important at all times I could not disagree more. Ethical and considerate _actions_ are important at all times. Many very dishonest people help themselves sleep at night by pretending that being polite excuses their actions. It does not. Actions have real life, often irreversible, effects on those around you. Being polite has few, if any, tangible effects.
Dishonest people don't excuse their actions by being polite, they excuse by way of a defence which justifies their behaviour erroneously (i.e. those rules don't apply to me because...).
Dishonest people being polite is just a way of manipulating targets. Them not being polite doesn't stop them from being dishonest, it just removes a tool from their toolbox.
Keep it kind that it's easy to tell if somebody is impolite, but much harder to gauge whether they are dishonest.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
The US system is based on liability and the threat of legal action. The European system is based on their regulatory framework. If you have a complaint that is clearly managed within that framework (my laundry machine spontaneously broke down within the statutory warranty period) they'll comply, else, yeah, good luck. I moved in the other direction (to the US) and I'm amazed when my wife gets a $50 little blender rep…
Sometimes the regulatory route works in the US. We had our main business phone line go down and Verizon customer service basically shrugged their shoulders and said there was nothing they could do and no way to escalate. One call to the state regulator and not only did they fix the phone line within a couple hours, they begged us to tell them what they could do to make the regulatory complaint go away. We told them w…
My summary of this article in terms of good and evil: - Kiss My Keto unsuccessfully tries to set up an affiliate program that doesn’t eat too much margin and is still equitable to the affiliates (I believe they are doing their best to be a force for good until proven otherwise) - Mr. Lynch gets involved and finds out the program he thought he was joining is actually not as it seems, so he reaches out to Kiss My Keto…
Extorts whom for money?
> "To be clear, I want more good in the world and less evil. "
That's great. You and I have common ground.
In my experience, dividing the world into good and evil is likely to increase negativity and evil. Embracing the shades of gray, understanding nuance or being brave enough to say "I do not have enough information about this very serious urgent issue to determine the correct moral path" usually increases good.
In my opinion, your instinct to suspect Kiss My Keto could be merely misunderstood is a good and generous one. Personally, I think it's misguided, but I'd hear you out. But to then go on to ascribe actual evil motives to the blogger is, ironically, increasing evil.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Thanks for reading! Basically, you just agreed to settle and not continue to press your valid claims of potential affiliate fraud. What would have been a better course of action? Even under the most optimistic estimates, they owed me less than $500. I don't have access to their sales data, so I don't have hard proof that they're committing fraud. The company's legal team could just turn around and say, "Oh, our rep w…
Well first of all, do you plan to continue to do business with this unscrupulous company? Second, what is your general position on business ethics? If you get yours, then is it ok for them to be potentially screwing others? Basically are you of the perspective that as long as you're taken care of, who cares about the others? You're right, a class action would be the result here, and maybe it's not worth it for this f…
I don't. I stopped doing business with them after the exchange with the co-founder.
>Second, what is your general position on business ethics? If you get yours, then is it ok for them to be potentially screwing others? Basically are you of the perspective that as long as you're taken care of, who cares about the others?
I do care about the others, but I also don't think I'm obligated to spend months/years of my life leading a class-action lawsuit on their behalf.
Short of that, I don't have a good way of contacting their other affiliates at scale. I directly reached out to some of the affiliates they feature as success stories, and I reached out to other keto bloggers, but none of them were that interested in talking to me. I think there's so much shady behavior in keto affiliate advertising that the affiliates either (a) didn't care about the particulars as long as their absolute payout was decent and/or (b) didn't want to engage with a random blogger they don't know who's possibly just a disgruntled affiliate.
I wrote the article so that anyone who Googles the affiliate program will find out about their behavior. This is pretty outside the subject matter of my normal blog posts. If I was looking to write something that would appeal to lots of readers, I'd write about my usual subjects of solo entrepreneurship or software development.
What obligations do you feel I'm failing to meet here?
I like the article. It presents the way that I believe we should all behave with each other in a professional environment. Respect and Courtesy are important at all times (IMNSHO). Some folks seem to feel that being respectful is a sign of weakness, but cops are extremely respectful, as they explain to you why they will be writing a ticket for an eye-watering amount (at least, good cops are). Many moons ago, when the…
Your comment made me look up what IMNSHO means. That was pretty interesting by itself. :)