{"id":1750,"date":"2009-11-14T08:30:43","date_gmt":"2009-11-14T13:30:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.homewiththekids.com\/blog\/?p=1750"},"modified":"2009-11-19T21:48:41","modified_gmt":"2009-11-20T05:48:41","slug":"wow-blue-hippo-was-worse-than-i-thought","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.homewiththekids.com\/blog\/wow-blue-hippo-was-worse-than-i-thought\/","title":{"rendered":"Wow. Blue Hippo Was Worse Than I Thought"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I posted last year about some radio ads I was hearing that really pissed me off. They were for a company called <a href=\"https:\/\/www.homewiththekids.com\/blog\/2008\/09\/how-hard-can-it-be-to-get-a-new-laptop\/\">Blue Hippo<\/a>, and they were offering computers to anyone, regardless of credit. All you had to do was make all 13 payments to pay it off to get the computer.<\/p>\n<p>Umm, except they didn&#8217;t actually <a href=\"http:\/\/arstechnica.com\/tech-policy\/news\/2009\/11\/like-taking-candy-computers-from-a-baby-the-poor.ars\">bother to send computers out<\/a> until the FTC really got on their case. Except once, and that apparently was a mistake somehow. Out of 35,000 orders. I&#8217;m kind of confused about how you send out single computer by mistake, since it indicates you have some method of fulfilling other orders, but maybe that&#8217;s just me.<\/p>\n<p>It&#8217;s not a work at home scam, but this kind of scam still drives me nuts. It&#8217;s taking such advantage of people who have very little money. Rather little money sense too, if they couldn&#8217;t save up that money on their own or buy a cheaper computer, but that&#8217;s beside the point.<\/p>\n<p>Just reading the article is horrifying. Everything about how the business was run screams that it was set up only as a scam, never with an intention of being an honest business. I guess the owner&#8217;s feeling was that if you&#8217;re going to run a scam, you may as well be consistent about it.<\/p>\n<p>They even suggest using your SSN and mother&#8217;s maiden name for login information. Really. Check this screenshot from their site (click to enlarge):<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.homewiththekids.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2009\/11\/bluehippo.gif\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-1753 alignnone\" title=\"blue hippo\" src=\"https:\/\/www.homewiththekids.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2009\/11\/bluehippo-300x155.gif\" alt=\"blue hippo\" width=\"300\" height=\"155\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>This is the kind of stuff that makes me want to laugh and cry at the same time. Both because it&#8217;s so obvious. It just hurts that people fall for this kind of stuff, but the lack of subtlety is hard to not be amused by.<\/p>\n<p>Then there&#8217;s the really tragic part that they could have run this legitimately by shipping out cheap computers and still made insane profits. But some people only understand outright theft, I guess.<\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;ll repeat some of my advice from last time. You need a computer so badly, save up for it. Or buy refurbished. Or check <a href=\"http:\/\/www.craigslist.org\/\">Craigslist<\/a>. Or <a href=\"http:\/\/www.freecycle.org\/\">Freecycle<\/a>. You can get a decent computer for a few hundred dollars, and even find laptops in the $400 or less range. They won&#8217;t be fancy, but they&#8217;ll do enough. <a href=\"http:\/\/www.amazon.com\/b?%5Fencoding=UTF8&amp;site-redirect=&amp;node=565108&amp;tag=homewiththeki-20&amp;linkCode=ur2&amp;camp=1789&amp;creative=9325\">Amazon<\/a><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" style=\"border: medium none  ! important; margin: 0px ! important;\" src=\"http:\/\/www.assoc-amazon.com\/e\/ir?t=homewiththeki-20&amp;l=ur2&amp;o=1\" border=\"0\" alt=\"\" width=\"1\" height=\"1\" \/> also has some pretty good deals.<\/p>\n<p>This kind of scam is a great reminder to always do your homework when dealing with an unfamiliar company online. It can be online shopping or a home business opportunity, but you don&#8217;t want to share your information or pay until you&#8217;re comfortable that you&#8217;re likely to get what you expected.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I posted last year about some radio ads I was hearing that really pissed me off. They were for a company called Blue Hippo, and they were offering computers to anyone, regardless of credit. All you had to do was make all 13 payments to pay it off to&#46;&#46;&#46;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[25],"tags":[478,187,1341],"class_list":["post-1750","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-scams","tag-blue-hippo","tag-ftc","tag-scams"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v27.9 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>Wow. 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