See how many scummy things you can find in the ad! Wow, a shitty laptop for only 52 payments of $50; what could be better!? A couple of my friends and I were so outraged by this that we prank-called them a couple of times, just to see if they were really as unscrupulous as they seemed. It turns out they pretty much were, dodging questions and offering half-answers when asked about the pricing structure, and simply lying outright regarding the product itself. Don’t take my word for it; we actually recorded one of my friends! The resulting conversation is enlightening, in a sad sort of way:

Here are a few of the outrages revealed by this conversation:

1. The sales rep allows the customer to believe that he will only be making 5 weeks of payments and pay only a total of $380, rather than the full lifetime price of $2730 (!!!).
2. She lies about the length of the creditworthiness payment period: it’s actually 13 weeks, not 5.
3. She lies about the free printer deal, though the website clearly features it on the laptop page.
4. She lies about the computer’s specs: it has a 256K cache, not 256 Megabytes of RAM, and it has only a CD-ROM drive, not a CD-DVD combo drive.
5. She lies about the included software, saying it comes with word, which it obviously doesn’t.

Thus it was with glee that I found an article on ArsTechnica today describing the FTC’s probe into BlueHippo’s affairs. They’ve discovered that BlueHippo raked in 15 million dollars and only shipped one PC. That’s right, only one PC. Based on the tactics their sales staff uses, I can believe it.

It sounds like the FTC is finally getting its act together to bring down the hammer, and I say it’s about time! My friends and I were shocked three years ago when we discovered that a business like this actually existed, and I’m still shocked today that it hasn’t been shut down yet!

On a somewhat related note, I’ll mention that I’m often asked how the poor will be protected from predatory scams like this in a Libertarian society. The answer is actually pretty close to what the FTC is already supposed to do: enforce anti-fraud laws. The sales rep my friend talked to over the phone flat-out lied to him, a potential purchaser. That should be illegal. Like, Federal-pound-me-in-the-ass-prison illegal. The functioning of a market economy relies on sellers’ and purchasers’ abilities to make informed decisions. When participants lie to each other, bad products get bought and sold; wealth is squandered; trust is lost; people feel cheated.

A more Libertarian society would recognize that the free flow of information is paramount to voluntary exchange and therefore harshly punish deception and fraud. BlueHippo’s business is a textbook definition of these abuses. The ArsTechnica article mentions some fees it has so far been forced to pay; a truly just restitution would see the company forced to return all the money it accumulated from its customers in a fraudulent fashion, and 100% of that money would go back to the victims, not the enforcement agency. This would reduce the company’s lifetime revenue to zero, and its profit to something negative, thus putting it deep into debt and almost certainly probably out of business. That sounds like a fair punishment to me, and it’s more than has actually happened in this case.

What I have stumbled on is the Canon CanoScan LIDE 100 scanner.¹ It’s a very neat, very thin, and very cheap desktop scanner. You can get the dang thing for about 60 or 70 bucks, but when I found a $50 deal on Amazon a few months ago, I had to pull the trigger. Here’s what it looks like on my desk beside a horde of Orks and Tyranids:

I can’t really say much about the included software because I tossed it out without even looking at it. My time in IT has taught me that scanner software that comes from the manufacturer is universally, 100% shoddy beyond belief. Why is this? I’m honestly confused.

I instead elected to use Mac OS X’s built-in Image Capture software, which I find to be not only perfectly sufficient for my purposes, but also quite pleasant to use (caveat: I’m talking about the Snow Leopard version. In Leopard and before, it’s kinda lousy too). The scan button on the front even opens Image Capture and starts a scan, just like it should! How cool is that?

I mostly use it for scanning receipts, documents, and things like that, because I am obsessed with disaster preparedness and I want records of everything I own in case the place blows up and my renter’s insurance company is being a dick. For that purpose, the scans it produces are perfectly nice-looking, and text is extremely sharp and crisp.

In terms of speed, I have to admit it’s not the fastest scanner in the world. From placing the document on the bed to having a file on disk, it’ll probably take you maybe 30-45 seconds to have a finished product. But that’s perfectly suitable for my relatively infrequent needs.

The one issue I’ve had is that sometimes Image Capture can’t find the scanner. I don’t know if this is Image Capture or the scanner’s fault, but momentarily unplugging it never fails to beat whichever is the guilty party into comprehension of the other. Works for me!

For a $50 scanner, it’s held up great, and produces good results. It makes a great addition to my home office and if you need an unobtrusive, low-duty scanner, this one is pretty nice.

Update: I forgot to mention that the scanner is also USB-powered, which means that it doesn’t have to be plugged into the wall, which saves power and reduces clutter. I find it sort of silly that I neglected to mention this, since it was one of the primary features that drew me to it! Oh well, better late then never.

1. FCC notice: you’ll never know whether or not Canon has sent me free stuff, fuckers! Bite me.