I've actually done it the unthinkable secret shopping
my own sponsors oh oh I'm sorry you
thought you were safe because you wrote those checks to me
now to be clear this isn't about finding
excuses to cut ties with Partners what this is about is ensuring that the
brands that we work with are operating with integrity and putting the needs of
our community first unless of course there's something Shady going on in
which case we are ready and willing to cut ties notice how there aren't any
anchor products on this table it could happen to you
to ensure we weren't getting special treatment we sent secret agent Rush on a
mission to procure a product from each of these companies manufacture what we
thought was a fair common issue if we didn't encounter one organically and had
immediately to the support page do not pass go do not collect 200 to get help
and we evaluated them based on a number of criteria like how difficult was it to
get in contact with a human were they polite did the issue ultimately get
resolved Jesus a word of caution our
results May Nay Will shock you and we
logged everything with the intention of developing and maintaining a sponsor
tegerty index want to work with us in the future well you better be ready
because we are not stopping here we could even secret shop sponsors like
Best Buy upgrade your tech for next semester with Best Buy's back to school
sale where you can save big on Brands like Sony HP and more be the cool kid in
class and upgrade your Tech Arsenal at the link down below did we really buy
something this expensive to secret shop them was that really necessary I don't
know if it was necessary oh good let's kick things off with LT
sponsor and long time partner Jesus they
have gotten into some hot water recently over motherboard warranties and BIOS
updates but we actually started prepping this video months ago and purchased an
Rog strix RTX 4080 from the local Best Buy and things went perfectly right out
of the gate when we didn't even have to fabricate an issue with it you see the
card's manual specifies that you need only two eight pin PCIe power connectors
for the Triple Eight pin adapter that's included in the box and the answer to
this might seem obvious to you or to me but to someone who's building their PC
for the first time and trying to follow the age-old advice of reading the effing
manual this could be very confusing but
for Rush this resulted in a red light on the GPU and no output to his display a
natural First Step would be to contact the store we bought it from Unfortunately they told us sorry you're
gonna have to talk to ASUS and that's where things got a little bit
frustrating we ran into this navigation issue where going to the Canadians site
we'd get redirected to the American Site which would then redirect us back to the
Canadian site which would redirect us to the American site now if you're in
America or somewhere else in the world this step might go smoother for you but
for us it was absolutely infuriating to
their credit we did eventually manage to get on the phone with them which you
can't take for granted these days but only by tracking down the number
ourselves not by finding it in some intuitive place on their website
unfortunately once we got on the phone with them things didn't really go any
smoother how
sorry I'm a bit confused because the the quick start guide says I can use a six
pin and an eight pin if those are the only uh cables I have
either plugged into the power supply I'm wondering how to plug them into the GPU
it says in the quick start guide that came with the 4080 that I can just plug
this six pin or an eight pin in and I can't seem to find a place to plug them
in the the one plug that's there it looks like it's more for a like 16 pin
but you know I'm kind of concerned about the adapter you know I've read a lot of things about it melting and you know I'd
rather I'd rather not have to use it if I if I don't have to and then the quick
start guide says I can just use a six pin and an eight pin but I can't seem to
find where to plug it in okay need to plug it into the PCIe
Port yes but I I can't I can't seem to
find that on the on the GPU oh my God this conversation is extremely circular
is this 40 minutes of this there's a
second call is this just a simple documentation problem where they just
they're just reusing the same quick start guide from some old GPU wait no
this isn't from an old GPU this is an
up-to-date quick start guide it says this or this which makes it sound like
you can do either how long does it take them to figure this out so obviously
today yes so I have I have two eight pin
uh PCI cables checked to make sure yeah
the the DisplayPort cable is properly plugged into the GPU he's definitely
leveled up his technical ability since the first support call trying to help
them out a little here
guys he just wants to plug in a power connector there's a red light over the
power input on a GPU means it doesn't have the right power it is amazing to me
that in the year 2023 this is not as simple as hey can you snap a picture of
your setup for me or have them send me a picture so I can see what they've done it would
not take me 55 minutes
to ask for that do I need to connect four eight pin cables to the adapter
okay so he eventually just gives them the answer now you might think watching
this listening to me that it is not a
realistic scenario for someone to get an adapter like this with three eight pins
to a single 16 pin and think well the
quick start guide says I can just plug in two of them so that should be fine
but I've worked in customer support it happens all the time and not helping
matters is the fact that if you have one of the Quad to single adapters you
actually can leave one of them off and it will still function so if people see
that and think oh maybe I just don't need all of them they could easily end
up confused in summary then it was painful but we did get there so I'm
giving ASUS a three out of five speaking of three out of fives next up is dbrand
you may or may not know this but we have a pretty toxic relationship with our
sponsor dbrand and we may have decided to mess with them a little to see what
we could get away with so Rush ordered a kill switch case and a Nintendo switch
screen protector which he promptly smashed and then demanded a replacement
there is absolutely no way that this
happened in shipping I will be very curious to see what they say can you
send a few pictures we're sorry it arrived in that state that is a highly
unusual thing to happen yeah I should think so we'll be sending you a
replacement pack no further action is required I was hoping you'd throw in
something extra for the inconvenience what a best no way they did it they said
no because they had already shipped the replacement and then he's like pretty
please and they send him a skin great job dbrand I mean I personally wouldn't
let a customer get away with quite this level of tomfoolery but uh what can I
say five out of five next up a brand we've
partnered with a number of times over the past few years to show off their
various outdoor and off-grid Power Solutions jackery for the video we
purchased their Explorer 1000 and good news or bad news I don't know once again
we didn't have to fabricate a problem this top USB port super fragile and
there are Reports online that it is extremely easy to accidentally break so
we decided to put those claims to the test I can see you guys looking at this
and thinking gee that seems a little unfair you'd think they would have to
break it with a USB cable not with a screwdriver but the reason we did this
was because there are numerous Reddit threads complaining about the fragility
of this particular connector and I guess we were trying to Fast Track the process
also we tried on the lower USB he couldn't do it I guess what I want to
know now then is is this actually an issue with the top port or are we just
being unreasonable I saw how easy it was for him to break it can we do the same
thing with the bottom I did manage to break it but I had to go in there pretty
good mmm came loose in a piece flood is there
anything that can be done oh we had to follow up 12 days later okay
sorry this got lost we need your address a picture of the issue and the serial
number okay that seems reasonable and here's a new one they even cover return
shipping wow that's actually a big deal considering uh
how heavy these things are however we
had to follow up two weeks later again but we get a reply the same day and we
get a tracking number six days later I
couldn't help noticing that this says that we got a replacement but this is
still broken we wanted to make sure that it wasn't just a one-off problem so you
broke the second one we broke the second one which you've just broken further oh
good yeah you broke it you broke it even more I want to see if I can break us
something else what about this U green Charger I just want to know if we're being totally unreasonable here because
it is plastic and we did stick a screwdriver in it
it does seem to be a little on the fragile side but I don't think it's so
bad that I would say this is a horrible dangerous product and needs to be taken
off the market I got to take some points off for them being kind of slow here but
to their credit replacement pretty much no questions asked and they covered the
return shipping so I got to give them let's say a three and a half
you know maybe I'd go even better four and a half if it wasn't for how long the
communication took now let's get into one of our longest time sponsors
I fix it an email chain you say good God
gravy these emails though sorry I'm getting ahead of myself a little bit I
fix it we love these guys here and up until the launch of our own screwdriver
which by the way we have a knock to Edition coming soon sign up for a
notification lttstore.com we use their tools almost exclusively around here
unfortunately we had a small problem with our order and that's that our gamer
bundle was uh I'm missing some pieces first up
confirmation email that's nice three days later sorry to hear you can't hear
it please send photos of the contents you received as well as the packaging
for our records and we'll go from there sorry I lost the packaging it's pretty
typical I throw away packaging pretty much immediately after things arrive but
it looks like they are absolutely unwilling to engage with you if you
don't take a picture of your packaging materials that is something hi I think
there's been a misunderstanding I got rid of the packaging because there's nothing in it I wouldn't have thrown it
away if it had something inside it and then we got ghosted for two weeks after
two weeks we get back the same copy pasted email finally we give in and we
did have the packaging we just wanted to know if they would take care of us send
them pictures of the packaging and
immediately they turn it around same day response can we send this to the address
on file are you also missing the Jimmy no I don't seem to have it
here's your replacement next day response boom boom and everything
arrived I don't really know what to make of this has people fraudulently
requesting replacement parts been a huge issue for them maybe and they just need
to prove they ever got a box or like this is weird like Dr Jekyll Mr Hyde
over here in fairness to them it does say on their support page don't recycle
those packing materials until you've checked them thoroughly maybe it's not
fraud maybe it's just people accidentally throwing things away and
they just can't keep sending out Replacements to people who are dum-dums
and throw away their stuff either way it wasn't a great experience I would still
give them a four just because they did ultimately get us sorted out but I have
got to take a star off for basically ghosting us and generally taking too
long to reply to our messages now for a fun one manscaped these guys were a
staple for us for a long time and they haven't worked with us recently but no
hard feelings guys that is as long as
our experience goes okay here we bought the premium package 4.0 with the
subscription but uh oh something in
their formula doesn't gel with our partner sensitive skin and I'm afraid
we're gonna need a refund and a cancellation first we tried their
contact form internal server error no
worries we'll simply reach out via email well that's a good response no back and
forth just stop using it discard the product you're refunded and your future
replenishments have been canceled that's an A plus response
however we did notice a couple of kind
of Shifty things on their website this kind of time limited advertising that's
not limited to the next 10 minutes you guys if you're going to offer a discount
just offer a discount with my order there's nothing wrong with trying to
convey urgency to a customer but this is fake urgency also I really don't like
this check box under 30 day money back guarantee that has nothing to do with a
money back guarantee and everything to do with signing up for your mailing list
with that said there was no confusing Maze of buttons like if you're trying to
get out of a gym membership or a Prime subscription that contact form did end
up working the next day so I don't want to take too many points off for that
four maybe even four and a half Stars oh
tested I guess I'll leave these in the bag
that is one solid USBC charging brick
thing we ordered this from ugreen it's their digit nest whatever that means
Cube charging station and we immediately scratched it and then reached out to
customer service demanding that they do something about our damaged item or at
least we tried to reports and
it does nothing okay hold on a second is
this still broken though good Lord this is slow okay support
what's the difference between warranty and return in exchange oh okay I guess
return in exchanges if I actually want to exercise my warranty ooh self-service
return application okay that's pretty reasonable but how do I contact them
returns will not be given if there are visible scuffs okay so how do I do
something then contact our customer support team how is this the problem
were you guys also not able to figure out how the devil to contact them he
eventually found a service at ugreen email hold on hold on no no contact us
the point is we found an email address let's have a look at what they had to
say oh that's a lot of pictures can you take a picture for us to check the
package looked sealed I didn't look at it closely and ghosted for two weeks oh
but they reply same day now there's no way the support rep's name is Hugh green
hahaha I didn't even see that okay like I said
it looks sealed I didn't look at it closely do you have an unboxing video
no I didn't take a video of myself unboxing it why would I think I would
need to do that really you guys you want a video so that you can go and claim
insurance with the carrier on like what is this thing even worth this is more
work than it's worth at this point except for this may I know the Charger's
function Works Rush could have been a little bit more forthcoming that the
charger does in fact work they also took a lot of follow-ups wow eight days here
in your situation we can apply a five dollar refund is that acceptable for you
I guess that would be fine I don't see a five dollar refund
eight days later oh oh here it is
another two weeks later our refund arrives story for the late reply can you
check you mean sorry I didn't do it until now same day that the refund
actually went through in the end we got a five dollar discount for an issue that
pretty clearly didn't happen in shipping I still think it's at best a three and a
half star experience if I'm gonna dock a star from everyone else based on
response time I have got a DACA star here I can't fault the quality of the
product or the price so you green you're still in our okay books just try not to
spy on everyone then deny it like anchor did so you can keep being a cable and
charging partner for us I gotta say on the one hand I was kind of hoping for
something majorly disappointing to happen like that we would get scammed or
something it's more entertaining but on the other hand I'm pretty pleased to see
that our sponsors are doing all right overall I mean obviously it could be
better in some cases Jesus you guys are selling thousands sometimes two thousand
plus dollar products please do better and Guy everyone
actually your support portal it needs to be responsive it needs to be easy to
find but overall everyone's 50 or better
and we're going to have links to all the stuff we bought today down below now if
you've made it this far in the video you might be looking for a more serious
Summary of why exactly it is that we are
doing all of this it's something that we're working every day to build and by
developing new I think fairly Innovative processes like our sponsor complaint
thread on the Forum or this secret shopping program we are going to be able
to ensure that you guys can always trust us whether it's a fully sponsored video
or just an integration we don't want to Hawk anything that's garbage or being
pushed by a garbage company and no one's perfect and we've certainly worked with
some controversial Brands but I think if we work together you guys can help us
ensure that we have a solid stable of Partners who work hard to ensure that
those of you who do choose to do business with them have a good experience there's going to be a lot
more where this came from but uh Hey as
long as you're doing a great job over there you have no need to worry secret
lab you may know them from their sick gaming chairs but did you know secret
lab makes desks too that's the real secret their Magnus Pro isn't your
average sit to stand desk because it's packed with unique features hate having
loose cables dangling around all over the place we'll have the cleanest setup
around with their patent-pending integrated power supply column and the
full length built-in Cable Management tray the Magnus Pro is also fully
adjustable as a sit to stand desk with a Sleek integrated control panel and to
top it all off pun intended it has a premium full metal table top so check
out the Magnus Pro and all of secret lab's other offerings at the link down
below if you guys enjoyed this video maybe go check out the PC secret shopper
Series where we had special agents Janice and Sarah go undercover in order
from major PC Building brands Shenanigans definitely ensued there