NZXT Scam

[jarablue]

We are in the matrix. You actually think real life is real? LOL. The original human, non matrix race expired a long long time ago. Welcome to the new reality. This shit is all an illusion. It's rigged the moment you're born. Good luck enjoying your immaculate dream. Pray that the people controlling this matrix allow you to enjoy what little you have. Or else they will pull the plug.

 

[ty_ger]

What competitors?

I would be repeating myself. See my previous reply.

 

[Bones]

An interesting question to ask:

How does this new GN video help consumers, who want to lease a PC?

The answer is self-explanatory..... With the details given about what was said by the ads promoting it and these statements in said ads being shown as false per the terms for getting one keeps them from being ripped off.
The very fact it has been shown as contradictory to what was advertised per other vids being circulated about it can result in a legal issue of false advertisement.

Beside an information that they probably should not use this one company, which other company should they use then?

It's not a matter of what to use, it's about what this particular company is doing that's beyond scummy.

And is the service from this company really that so much worse than the offerings from the other companies?

Do you have any helpful suggestions to that end to help resolve it?
We'll wait......

I see no real positive and helpful information in that video.

You're sounding like an employee or even one of the suits/execs, perhaps just another paid "Influencer" with that one.... Maybe representing a company or individual(s) that has a vested interest in the scam continuing for profit?
TBH about it I dunno.

However:
I must say it's exactly what one involved would say to try and brush it off as "Nothing" when there is plenty of "Something" about it.
I certainly hope that isn't the case here but again we've all seen stranger things before too and I'm not talking about the TV show.
=========================================================================================================

With all that said, if I were the host of a review channel/show or whatever and saw something like it I too would call it out for what it is.

While I can agree GN probrably needs to focus more on "What they do" concerning reviews, this is simply too egregious not to call out onto the carpet.
Any so-called reviewer worth their salt would do so and they have in this case.

I may not always agree with him/them on things and his personal faults/failings are his to bear along with the consequenses of it.... But in this case, after showing all the details about it vs what it's supposed to be, I'm glad it was done.

 

[BoggledBeagle]

First: So the basic principle of economics means you cant have a no moral compass? Where does that even make sense?

Second. Leave political reotric out of this, you dont know what youre talking about.

Third: Exactly which competition are you referring to? if you mean computer rentals, the only competition is Aaron's Rent-to-Own or Rent-a-center brick stores

I have studied economics. The two basic presumptions are that producers maximise profits and consumers maximise utility. A sole producer sucks out every single penny out of consumers which they are according to their preferences willing to pay for it. Only competing manufacturers create more favourable situation for the consumer, when he will be able to pay less.

BTW I just checked how our largest retailer rents a 70 000 CZK (normal sale price) computer, they say they will rent it to you for 2 000 CZK per month for the period of 36 months. So after three years you payed 72 000 CZK and you will have nothing left, you will return the computer to the retailer, which will then sell it for 5-15K? This does seem a lot better than what GN described.

For some products they offer "a third" program, in which you pay just a third of the cost and pay the rest in the next three months, you pay nothing extra in that case and after you pay it, you own the product fully.

 

[Dr. Dro]

How does this new GN video help consumers, who want to lease a PC? Beside an information that they probably should not use this one company, which other company should they use then? And is the service from this company really that so much worse than the offerings from the other companies?

I guess this has been answered before but in my opinion, it does so by warning them not to lease from NZXT. Predatory, ultra high APR that makes loan sharks and even the worst of credit cards look like they've got friendly interest rates. Leasing gaming PCs is risky business, I recognize that, especially when the hardware in question is not owned by the person operating it - zero incentive for this individual not to be of the cheeto-eating variety or puffing up smoke constantly on the system, perhaps even cat fur and carpet dust will be involved - high chance that the hardware is damaged, stolen, tampered with or left in very poor condition after the lease is up, but that doesn't justify that high of an APR.

In my opinion, if a business venture doesn't look too safe, don't go into it

 

[y2faulty]

some trawl fishing trolling in this 3d lmao

 

[TissueBox]

I'm not saying ASUS is good or EVGA is bad, all I am doing is saying that GN appears to have singled out a company they don't care about for the views while knowing better and pretending it wasn't for the views. Feels gross.

If GN simply had a segment of 'to be fair, these other competitors do the same thing', I would have no problem with it. But instead, you have proof that they seem to purposely not do that because max rage creates max clicks, and that just feels gross. I used to support and enjoy GN.

There is an important point in the video that I didn't summarize.

GN was in a partnership with NZXT, with an ad campaign worth $23,000 USD for the next quarter that was already inked and signed. GN cancelled it in light of their discoveries with this Subscriber program. It would be inaccurate to portray this as a company GN didn't care about - it was one of their longest partnerships during their time in the industry that they self described as fairly easy money.

I think it's unrealistic to expect them to tackle an industry-wide problem; the message becomes too diluted when it's directed at everyone and often leads to zero change, and will come off more as a rant about the state of the computer hardware industry. The exposés he's done has made material changes to how some companies operate. For example, MSI's paid off reviews, Gigabyte's exploding power supplies, NZXT's H1 riser, Newegg's return policies, ASUS' RMA policies, Intel's RMA policies. It is an unfortunate system, but these exposés from "larger" media outlets have been the only successful way to change a large corporation's policies.

In an ideal world, these companies would do it themselves. In a less ideal world, the government would be the one fighting for the consumer. In our world, exposés and general outrage is the only effective means we get.

 

[stahlhart]

GN was in a partnership with NZXT, with an ad campaign worth $23,000 USD for the next quarter that was already inked and signed. GN cancelled it in light of their discoveries with this Subscriber program. It would be inaccurate to portray this as a company GN didn't care about - it was one of their longest partnerships during their time in the industry that they self described as fairly easy money.

Yeah, all of that that phony ad money posturing. He's going to more than make up for it by monetizing the traffic from all of the drooling sycophants on Reddit who incessantly eat his self-aggrandizing "I'm sticking it to the man" crap up, as he exploits people that are too impatient and financially ignorant to save the money and purchase the PC hardware outright when they can actually afford it.

 

[rv8000]

I have studied economics. The two basic presumptions are that producers maximise profits and consumers maximise utility. A sole producer sucks out every single penny out of consumers which they are according to their preferences willing to pay for it. Only competing manufacturers create more favourable situation for the consumer, when he will be able to pay less.

BTW I just checked how our largest retailer rents a 70 000 CZK (normal sale price) computer, they say they will rent it to you for 2 000 CZK per month for the period of 36 months. So after three years you payed 72 000 CZK and you will have nothing left, you will return the computer to the retailer, which will then sell it for 5-15K? This does seem a lot better than what GN described.

For some products they offer "a third" program, in which you pay just a third of the cost and pay the rest in the next three months, you pay nothing extra in that case and after you pay it, you own the product fully.

This has almost zero relation to what was actually discussed in the gn article/video; it’s not “renting a pc is bad and expensive”, it’s NZXT is actually lying, engaging in fraud and many other illegal and nefarious practices.

I haven’t seen or heard of many other companies leasing or renting pc’s doing anything in the same vein as what NZXT is engaged in right now.

And don’t get me wrong, Steve is an insufferable self loving piece of work, but unfortunately the material is well researched and aside from his cringe embellishments here and there, well done.

 

[phanbuey]

I have studied economics. The two basic presumptions are that producers maximise profits and consumers maximise utility. A sole producer sucks out every single penny out of consumers which they are according to their preferences willing to pay for it. Only competing manufacturers create more favourable situation for the consumer, when he will be able to pay less.

BTW I just checked how our largest retailer rents a 70 000 CZK (normal sale price) computer, they say they will rent it to you for 2 000 CZK per month for the period of 36 months. So after three years you payed 72 000 CZK and you will have nothing left, you will return the computer to the retailer, which will then sell it for 5-15K? This does seem a lot better than what GN described.

For some products they offer "a third" program, in which you pay just a third of the cost and pay the rest in the next three months, you pay nothing extra in that case and after you pay it, you own the product fully.

You don't need to be an economist to know that signing an agreement entering into that rental agreement is insane. If a predatory loan (i.e. illegal high interest loan) is actually cheaper than what you're offering, then what you're offering is a scam.

Does that largest retailer rent the machine you were going to buy, or do they go in a back room and get another machine that's way older and materially slower to give to you for that price?

You're trying very hard to avoid the actual issue. It's not really working.

 

[FreedomEclipse]

J2C has finally been bullied into responding if anyone cares to watch

He too has had NZXT as a channel sponsor for a long time and promoted a lot of their loot over the years.

::EDIT::

It does feel like he either got bullied to talk about it by his viewers/subscribers or he was on the fence about the issue, waiting for a response from NZXT. Watching how things unfolded till it probably got to a point where he couldnt avoid not talking about it anymore. NZXT never responded but I didnt expect they would have because if they did they would probably be digging themselves into a much deeper hole.

I dont think there is anything they could say when they've been caught with their pants down like this. An "Its not how it looks..." or any form of trying to play it down or pass it off to calm the internet down is just going to throw fuel on the fire.


(I would also like to apologise to the mods who probably have had to do much monitoring of this thread. I didnt expect any sort of heated debate to go on here)

 

[Hecate91]

Yeah, all of that that phony ad money posturing. He's going to more than make up for it by monetizing the traffic from all of the drooling sycophants on Reddit who incessantly eat his self-aggrandizing "I'm sticking it to the man" crap up, as he exploits people that are too impatient and financially ignorant to save the money and purchase the PC hardware outright when they can actually afford it.

The point you're missing is he dropped the sponsorship, I could care less if he's sponsored or not but most tech channels wouldn't do the same in order to truthfully discuss a company that went way over the line into scamming people. I don't see how informing tech enthusiasts of a scam is exploitation but you're welcome to that opinion, the only ones I've seen being negative towards GN on reddit are the Linus fanbois that are still unreasonably angry because GN did an exposé on LTT's errors in their videos.

 

[DemonicRyzen666]

How about Nvidia?

Now I've got a reason to add Amazon.
This is the first time I ever seen Amazon do this
But about 75% of the items right now don't even say add to cart right now becuase of cybermonday.
Instead it all says" join Prime"
Talk about predator tactics for subscribtion service.

 

[A Computer Guy]

Now I've got a reason to add Amazon.
This is the first time I ever seen Amazon do this
But about 75% of the items right now don't even say add to cart right now becuase of cybermonday.
Instead it all says" join Prime"
Talk about predator tactics for subscribtion service.

YouTube asks the users to cancel their subscription even if they don't have one in order to get them to sign up.

 

[FreedomEclipse]

Now I've got a reason to add Amazon.
This is the first time I ever seen Amazon do this
But about 75% of the items right now don't even say add to cart right now becuase of cybermonday.
Instead it all says" join Prime"
Talk about predator tactics for subscribtion service.

You can add it but it wouldn't be at the discounted prime price. I've been monitoring the prices of a few things over black Friday and the difference for prime and non prime can be as low as £5 and as high as £30 (could be more)

So you'd buy it at the non prime price. I don't think Amazon are in the business of blocking people from buying things that they want to buy. That would be counter productive

 

[lexluthermiester]

Sometimes I wonder if it's really boneheaded mistakes

My guess is it was deliberate greed.

or industrial sabotage.

Now THAT is an interesting idea.

For those wondering why JayzTwoCents hasn't chimed in, he likely isn't able to as he is currently in a sponsorship contract with them. So who knows when he'll be able to chime in.

Um..

J2C has finally been bullied into responding if anyone cares to watch

He too has had NZXT as a channel sponsor for a long time and promoted a lot of their loot over the years.



::EDIT::

It does feel like he either got bullied to talk about it by his viewers/subscribers or he was on the fence about the issue, waiting for a response from NZXT. Watching how things unfolded till it probably got to a point where he couldnt avoid not talking about it anymore. NZXT never responded but I didnt expect they would have because if they did they would probably be digging themselves into a much deeper hole.

I dont think there is anything they could say when they've been caught with their pants down like this. An "Its not how it looks..." or any form of trying to play it down or pass it off to calm the internet down is just going to throw fuel on the fire.

Well there it is..
@ JayzTwoCents,
Thank You for stating your position and letting us know what your situation is.

(I would also like to apologise to the mods who probably have had to do much monitoring of this thread. I didnt expect any sort of heated debate to go on here)

Though I can't speak for them, I think mods understand that tough situations like this need discussion and public awareness and thus they engage in "chaos management" for these type of threads.

 

[BoggledBeagle]

If a predatory loan (i.e. illegal high interest loan) is actually cheaper than what you're offering, then what you're offering is a scam.

It is not a scam, you have all the information upfront and clear.

I just checked the video again and it seems that NZXT montly payments are intended for two years period, when the amount of payments equals to double the value of the computer. Their service is twice more expensive than the service of our local retailer (in the plan for three years the sum of monthly payments is equal to the value of the computer), but comparing two services on two different continents is problematic.

From the consumer point of view, this is simply a BAD SERVICE, you are getting worse configuration for the rental and it is also very expensive.

Attacking a company for a bad service without providing any reference and comparison to competing services is simply BAD JOURNALISM.

 

[Vayra86]

I always thought they were kinda scummy.

This for sure proves it lol.

Never held NZXT in high regard. Overpriced, low quality junk that sells by trying to look fresh.

I'm glad I never bought anything from them.

 

[Paganstomp]

Tech Jesus trying to explain why he disagrees with the way NZXT are trying to increase their profit margin. Think Gamer Nexus is finding more ways to piss off PC companies over these last few years, too.

 

[DeathtoGnomes]

It is not a scam, you have all the information upfront and clear.

obviously you didnt watch the video nor understand its content, its been explained that the only thing upfront is the cost, its NOT clear what build you will be getting because its different from the webpage from which you signed up.

Attacking a company for a bad service without providing any reference and comparison to competing services is simply BAD JOURNALISM.

Classic case of denial here. I called you out on naming a competing service and you came up with a local rent to own store. Thats not a competing service. Again you didnt watch nor understand the video.

Tech Jesus trying to explain why he disagrees with the way NZXT are trying to increase their profit margin. Think Gamer Nexus is finding more ways to piss off PC companies over these last few years, too.

While GN is pissing off companies, those same companies are exploiting consumer weaknesses while making customer service difficult to get, not all companies are anti-consumer but there are a lot of them.

After watching the J2C video, it reminded me of one thing that wasnt talked about in this thread, thats what NZXT is doing with the consumer information its collecting from this service, basically it was said they could do whatever they want with it, they will sell in ways that bend over the consumer.

I just read that NZXT is owned by an equity firm : Fransico Partners

 

[rv8000]

It is not a scam, you have all the information upfront and clear.

I just checked the video again and it seems that NZXT montly payments is intended for two years period, when the amount of payments equals to double the value of the computer. Their service is twice more expensive than the service of our local retailer (in the plan for three years the sum of monthly payments is equal to the value of the computer), but comparing two services on two different continents is problematic.

From the consumer point of view, this is simply a BAD SERVICE, you are getting worse configuration for the rental and it is also very expensive.

Attacking a company for a bad service without providing any reference and comparison to competing services is simply BAD JOURNALISM.

The fact you’re still missing the point and or points of the video/article is clear you haven’t watched it, or for some reason refuse to understand the actual issues. Not sure how many times people need to explain its not just “this cost lots of money, so is bad”.

 

[BoggledBeagle]

Perhaps I am too simple to understand all the nuances of the video.

I understand only simple and basic things, for example that most companies are immoral, they need to be controlled by legislation, they obey the law only if they really have to, if they break the law and are fined, they contest the fine, even though they know perfectly well what they did and that the fine is just, etc. In that point of view seeing somebody bashing a company because it is immoral is amusing.

When somebody wants to educate consumers that some service is bad, they should just compare it to competition. Use relevant and understandable criteria for comparison. Have logical and fair method for the comparison. Be very careful about collecting and processing data and document everything to have defense ready for the case they are sued for defamation, damages, etc.

If NZXT is the only company in the US renting computers, they have THE BEST service available. Also, when comparing it to bank loans, not everybody can get any reasonable loan to get the PC. Also the terms and conditions of the rental and bank loan are different in many other ways than just about who is eligible to get them.

The video could have been just a nice, friendly educational video to teach consumers the best way to get a computer, when they dont have money for it, in which a particular service did not do well at all. That is enough. There is no need for this drama and immature attacks.

 

[dirtyferret]

While GN is pissing off companies,

GN and Jay are both making money off this. They both posted 20+ minute videos in order to maximize their youtube revenue. So lets not pretend either one is working pro bono here. They both benefit making these videos go viral and each made them to the length youtube recommends for revenue.

After watching the J2C video, it reminded me of one thing that wasnt talked about in this thread, thats what NZXT is doing with the consumer information its collecting from this service, basically it was said they could do whatever they want with it, they will sell in ways that bend over the consumer.

Unfortunately every company does this and there has been no current evidence of NZXT "bending over the consumer" with the data (doesn't mean they won't)

 

[A Computer Guy]

When somebody wants to educate consumers that some service is bad, they should just compare it to competition.

When a service is bad there isn't need for a comparison although comparisons may help the argument. Just explanation of what makes it bad with supporting evidence and arguments is sufficient. Then the consumer can use that to make a more informed choice.

If NZXT is the only company in the US renting computers, they have THE BEST service available. Also, when comparing it to bank loans, not everybody can get any reasonable loan to get the PC. Also the terms and conditions of the rental and bank loan are different in many other ways than just about who is eligible to get them.

It may be difficult for some to hear but if one needs to get a bank loan to buy a PC for gaming one might need to re-evaluate their priorities. It's great to have financing options when you want something sooner rather than later but in the end, when the rent is due, you still need to pay up. Save, wait, purchase, then own without all the drama of 3rd party shenanigan's.

The video could have been just a nice, friendly educational video to teach consumers the best way to get a computer, when they dont have money for it, in which a particular service did not do well at all. That is enough. There is no need for this drama and immature attacks.

It's YouTube so it's either clickbait cleavage pics, or clickbait titles, or drama and immature attacks. Take your pick. At the moment I'm ok with GN's style as long as the facts are solid as I can ignore the rest if need be. If it ever gets to the point of harry chest video covers or jumping around screaming in Mandarin about poor case design then I'll probably unsubscribe.

 

[_roman_]

Unfortunately every company does this and there has been no current evidence of NZXT "bending over the consumer" with the data (doesn't mean they won't)

Did you watch the video? Full 100%?

It'S in the video - described - how - why - by a lawyer. PArt of the screen were the contract to read and than an explanation.

While GN is pissing off companies, those same companies are exploiting consumer weaknesses while making customer service difficult to get, not all companies are anti-consumer but there are a lot of them.

When you decide to sign a contract or stick to a contract (i only know hte german term for it) - you accepted the contract. You rent and you pay with your data.
I also like to have harddrives full with data. I really wonder why people delete harddrives before selling their computers usually? That is totally stupid. Do not delete harddrives - so the next guy do not need to setup everything. Can go shopping - see pictures from your painted wall and bedroom. ...

I really wonder which company is not anti-consumer? I can not name a single one. You should not go with the argument, but there is a single one which is not bad. Stick to the topic. NZXT - their contract - their renting business modell. I dislike seeing very often the argument, not everyone is ..., but there is one of many who does - who does not ....

GN and Jay are both making money off this.

I do not understand that argument.

A newspaper, a youtube channel, a tech outlet like techpowerup.com needs regularly new contents so a visitor stays on the site and reads text or watch a video.
GN dig up the topic. Got the specialist, made an order and explained the situation. This costs a lot of cash. I suspect they have a huge loss with that single video.