Info about the first buyer kendog4: From http://thepoolguyslies.blogspot.com/2008/07/pool-guy.html
The Pool Guy said…
Here’s a comment I bet you won’t publish; Your salt system was featured on Woot on June 2nd, 2008. From the word GO there was misrepresentation in the sales of your systems. Not by Woot, but apparently by Woot’s supplier.
Kendog4 was the first to buy one and posted this: “I live in South Florida and nearly everyone has a salt pool. My brother spent over $1500 for his and I think it was for a smaller pool. At $699 this seems like a good deal.”
Oddly, the sales map registered the sale in Texas.
Then, Kendog4 posts this: "review can be found here: http://www.poolproductreviewsmagazine.com/CPSC_Series.htm "
Now, this is supposed to be some impartial product review magazine that’s reviewing your product and comes to the conclusion that it’s one heck of a deal. But after only 1 hour and 16 minutes of sales, someone comments:
"Hmm, the only states lit up at one o’clock were Texas and Missouri. I suspect insider trading.
How is that Kendog lives in Florida, bought the first unit, but only missouri and Texas were lit up?
How did Kendog find that review when it’s a page that you can’t get back to the root of? More later."
Then, 20 minutes later, someone posts:
"So I can buy it on woot for the same price I can order one on the web everyday! What a deal…
http://www.discountsaltpool.com/How_it_works.htm
$699 every day! Deal? Na… "
Then, Kendog4 volunteers this info at 2 pm:
“You can get a replacement cell at www.discountsaltpool.com for $289.”
To which someone responds: “Why can’t I find that anywhere on the site? Did you call them?”
At 2 am? I kinda doubt it.
By 2:30 pm someone posts: "…this makes me wonder, only because the website’s main page doesn’t work, and this seems to be the only page that does (on the site).
the whois info points to a guy named ken, and the link you posted was already posted once in this thread by a guy named ken. sort of a coincidence…
also, a google search returns no other pages from that website."
And then at 7 pm:
“Strange site referred to there. No access to home page or anything other page that I can tell, except for this review, and it doesn’t show up when googling.”
and from another Wooter: "Here are the headers of a request for that page:
HTTP/1.1 200 OK
Date: Tue, 03 Jun 2008 00:30:17 GMT (this is the time of my request)
Server: Apache
Last-Modified: Mon, 12 May 2008 22:08:08 GMT (this is the modification time)
(It may be public information, but please do not post it on our forums.)
A Google Search on that address lists many businesses and domain names registered under the same address (see the google search I used here)
This review might be used by this network of websites to sell pool products and might not reflect an objective point of view on the product."
A few minutes later someone writes, “…if you can’t get a replacement cell in the U.S., its only good for a few years. I can’t find anyone who is selling the replacement cell, including the one website mentioned above [that would be Ken Uhle’s place]. I called them and they said they do NOT sell replacement cells.”
It turns out those “many businesses” are discountsaltpool.com, poolbids.com & productreviewsmagazine.com, all registered to Ken Uhle, aka Kendog4, the helpful Wooter that was always right there with the info that no one else seemed able to find. The one who said at 2 am that “they” sell replacement cells, and then told a Wooter over the phone that, no, you’re mistaken.
But there’s more. After 8 days, the units start arriving on people’s doorsteps. Here are some of the comments:
“I just received mine and it looks like carp [I think he means crap]. It was obviously used and scratched all over. It was packaged terribly with just a thin cardboard sheath around the original box. The box was torn and it was partially falling out when Fed-Ex delivered it. The product has scratches and black scuff marks all over it that did not happen in shipping. You can also see where it was connected and disconnected as there are salt deposits on it as well. Did these say they were used or refurbished?”
“I just got mine also. I didn’t have any of the issues that you described, but mine didn’t have the angle connectors.”
"No connectors here either. Mine seemed a little banged up while being shipped (coulda had a better packing job) and the package weighing 26 lbs. I’m surprised with the packaging job it wasn’t worse. As for the 110V connection instructions mine were on the outer box inside the packing list enclosed- maybe check that. Looking at the instructions, I’m not impressed but that one isn’t on Woot. One additional piece of information I noticed someone blackened out the warranty in the back of the manual and I recommend everyone who bought one to fill in the information from Woot’s listing as I have that the warranty for this item is as follows:
Warranty: 2 Years on Power Controller 1 Year Full Warranty on Cell, 4 Years Pro-rated on Cell by Compu-Pool ".
Oh, and the product reviews magazine domain name? It’s for sale for a mere $510 at http://www.iowareview.com/
I guess he was done using it for the Woot sale, huh?
So, with all this, I suppose all that matters is that you guys sold 184 units in 24 hours.
Like I said, I know you won’t publish this comment. But that’s okay, because I’ll just work it up into a piece for my blog. It really is a neat little mini-drama. That’s the funny thing about the internet. Everything you - or in this case, your Texas agent - say hangs around in cyberspace forever.
Good luck with that.
TPG