paulieg

apologies, some of what you wrote was hard to understand.

yes. it didn't make me cry and go running to the government.


my main point was the '$99 value, yours for $9.99 if you call right now.' there are two main theories of value: the labour theory of value, which holds that the value of a given product is determined by the labour that went into producing it, and the marginal utility theory of value, which is usually somewhat inaccurately simplified to 'a product is worth whatever someone is willing to pay.' clearly, the labour that goes into any given '$99 value' item on hsn/qvc isn't worth anywhere near $99, as the value contributed by labour usually sets the price floor. beyond that, nowhere near enough people are willing to actually pay $99, or the product wouldn't be priced at $9.99; consequently, its marginal utility is clearly nowhere near $99. quod erat demonstrandum.

the point is that there is a difference between what the product is and the claims about the product. the product in question is acai berry extract - if someone offered to sell acai berry extract, people bought it and received something other than acai berry extract, that would unequivocally be fraudulent. while it is possible for buyers to avoid most such cases by buying from well-reputed sellers, it's not possible in all cases. claims are different and it is the buyer's responsibility to do enough research to determine if the claims are justified. axe deodorant advertisements claim by inference that using axe will invariably result in herds of women trampling you as they are unable to control their sexual ardor aroused by your use of axe. when you buy axe deodorant, you do indeed get axe brand deodorant. it is up to you not to be a complete waste of oxygen, expecting to be overrun by women hoping to shag you.

i'm not saying they have no right to do it - under our current socio-economic system of being born into a pre-existing social contract which forces us to give consent to be governed and precludes us from voluntarily disassociating from the group bound by that contract (society at large), they have as much right to do this as the government has to exist and do what it does in general. i would say that this state of affairs is immoral, but that's a different discussion altogether.

what i am saying is that it is undesirable, even in the current socio-economic system and said undesirability stems not just from the notion that all non-voluntarily associative government is undesirable and immoral, but on the grounds that it discourages research by consumers and consequently breaks the incentive system we're supposed to have in our pseudo-free market economy.

finally. the best prosecution is consumers googling 'acai berry weight loss studies' or something similar and choosing not to buy as a result of their research. scams can not succeed in the absence of people willing to be scammed, through carelessness, stupidity or greed.

i'm not advocating using scams to teach consumers to research. i'm simply pointing out that if the government did not step in to regulate this, people would be financially incented to do their own research and since people doing their own research is what makes the 'voting with your dollars' incentive system work, it is desirable that the government stop regulating these matters.

-p

monies

There, you said yourself. According to your argument scams cannot exist, there are only people who haven't properly researched their purchase.


Yes that's all correct but how is this the same a slanging berry rebills? Sure most people would agree that $90 discount is bullshit but the value is totally subjective. What matters is that they delivered on their product.

It can proved that berry pills don't make you lose weight. It can't be proved that the products in hsn/qvc are not worth $99. Even if their bs discount could be proven to be untrue, the buyer in effect has already accepted that the product was worth $99 and is now discounted to $9 by agreeing to the transaction.

Find me a berry offer that was sold exclusively as a "berry extract".

In a free market if a consumer could prove that he genuinely believed the axe spray would give him a endless fountain of pussy then sure the seller should be held responsible.

This is not about incentivization. Even in a real free market (which I also support) contractual agreements need to be fulfilled by all parties.

No the best prosecution is to make sure berry sellers are actually delivering a product which loses 20 pounds in 4 weeks. It doesn't matter how retarded or lazy the consumer is because like I said before, it's not the consumers responsibility to make sure the seller delivers on their product.

I also agree that the government shouldn't regulate how we market our shit, however this is about the legality of selling products that don't deliver on their claims.

Unfortunately in this case it's not the consumers that are prosecuting and reclaiming their damages, but the FTC who are wrongfully representing on their behalf.

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jetto

Wrongfully? LOL, that's their mandate. Raison d'être. If you want everyone to fend for themselves that's jungle law. There are countries like that if you that's what you're into. You can wrong or even murder someone and it's up to the victims to hunt you down. Would that be a place where you wanna live? Plenty of places like that around the world. Yea "fend for yourself". What a bunch of bullshit.

monies

Of course people should protect themselves. Who gets compensated for the consumers' damages when the FTC gets involved? The FTC.

We should be advocating for a legal system that's more accessible for small claims like these, instead of having an gov agency that does a shitty job at protecting consumers. Because then scammers would have no chance to slip under the radar.

HURRRRR Sure, let's advocate agencies like the FTC/SEC because the government knows what's best and they can protect us better than we can ourselves. DUUURRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR

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nickster

That is not the same thing at all. If Axe actually states that their deoderant will bring you hoards of women wanting to shag you then that is the same as an Acai seller stating that you will lose weight. But Axe don't say this and Acai vendors do.

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suddenly_tits

and lol @ defending CPA rebill advertisers

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blogspotter

All the n00bs who used to start "how much are you making daily threads", you can now guess :-)
PS: Considering these are gross income, over several months, they weren't balling as hard as they claimed to. except maybe Ricardo.. Not that they weren't balling at all, but still..

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invisible777

So basically the FTC just dings people for around 10% of their gross revenue?

blogspotter

Looks to me like they had very hard evidence to prove that they were running at 10% margin...
The customers/victims were dinged at gross + advertiser/network/broker-network profit margin though :-)

So basically, who gained?
The media networks, pulse360, adsonar and the likes....
Even google and facebook for quite sometime ;-)

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jsphfcll

LOL at people in this thread not knowing the difference between revenue and profit

this is not even a lot of revenue... these are not the top guys

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Herro123

lol these guys were ballers huh? doesnt one of them claim to be a super affiliate who teaches others on his blog?

These guys ball like shoefag

Kenilworth

Quality isn't the issue here...

These guys are being justly punished for skirting the law so flagrantly, but to say this is a punishment for the victims is also wrong. This really is just a tax. The FBI catch more criminals with accounting than busting in places for wrong doings.

Plenty of guys in IM make $hundredthousands and are pretty damn sketch about it. A lot of guys messed up and don't pay any tax (while using paypal...lmao). Those guys don't get caught, so to get the eye of the Feds on you for IM means you were just being an absolute tool for such a long time.

They say it was about "deceptive marketing" but you KNOW it was for some much more serious shit that they don't want to let out so more people don't figure out how to pull a fast one over them.