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Weasley Business Practices
Jun. 5th, 2019 07:39 pmSo there's an ad making the rounds on Facebook for a super cheap, super small, laptop. Maybe you've seen it? The company is weas[le]z, and I foolishly followed the link. It's about the size of a trade paperback, and allegedly cost 75CAD with free delivery. I have zero need for such a beast, since I already have a perfectly good Macbook Air, which is the first laptop I've really liked, rather than tolerated. However, that price was too good to be true, so I looked at the ad. For that much money, I could play with it for a few weeks and hand it off to someone else, guilt free.
Too Good To Be True. Think on that statement for a bit. I didn't bother trying to buy one. Oh, not because I was worried about losing $75, but because I didn't want to send my personal/credit information to FlyByNight.com. I imagine their business model involves identity theft at some point, and that's not worth it to me for a cheap laptop. Assuming I even got the laptop. The ad is new enough that googling didn't come up with anything definitive regarding it being a scam. Probably, a lot of you have read the ad too, and came to the same conclusion.
So why am I bringing it up? Because I started to read the comments, to see if anyone had more info. I didn't see any, but I did find something heartbreaking - tons of people from the developing world desperate for this to be real, many of whom wanted to be resellers. I fear a lot of poor people are going to become poorer.
Too Good To Be True. Think on that statement for a bit. I didn't bother trying to buy one. Oh, not because I was worried about losing $75, but because I didn't want to send my personal/credit information to FlyByNight.com. I imagine their business model involves identity theft at some point, and that's not worth it to me for a cheap laptop. Assuming I even got the laptop. The ad is new enough that googling didn't come up with anything definitive regarding it being a scam. Probably, a lot of you have read the ad too, and came to the same conclusion.
So why am I bringing it up? Because I started to read the comments, to see if anyone had more info. I didn't see any, but I did find something heartbreaking - tons of people from the developing world desperate for this to be real, many of whom wanted to be resellers. I fear a lot of poor people are going to become poorer.
