Analysis Topic: Consumer Watch
The analysis published under this topic are as follows.
Sunday, November 20, 2022
Why Most Amazon Black Friday Sales are FAKE! Stock Price Set to Crash to NEW BEAR Market LOW / ConsumerWatch / Shopping
By: Nadeem_Walayat
It's Back Friday, no wait it's Black Friday WEEK, In fact longer than a week as Amazon spreads Black Friday from 18th November all the way to 28th of Number, A 10 DAY SALE! But is it real or is it fake find out in my latest video as I take a look at this creaking tech giant, on the tricks it tends to pull to try and get people to hit the buy button on items that can cost more DURING the sale then barely a few weeks ago!
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Wednesday, October 12, 2022
Barratt Smith Brown - How Britains' Debt Collectors Actually Operate, Treat Victims of Energy Firms / ConsumerWatch / Debt & Loans
By: Nadeem_Walayat
Firms such as Barratt Smith and Brown are literally a law onto themselves, wracking up self imposed 'penalties' onto NONE EXISTENT DEBT! All courtesy of Administrators such as ENSORS ACCOUNTANTS. As this article illustrates how they play their milk the debt victim game which includes PREVENTING victims from being able to pay off 'debts' all whilst the so called Financial Ombudsman and Financial Conduct Authority sleep,
Firstly how does one cross paths with Debt Collecting outfit such as this if one has NO debt?
In step Britain's Energy companies that walked away from fixed rate tariff contracts, dumping their customers onto the regulator to parcel off onto the the likes of EDF resulting in huge hikes in tariffs. For instance I paid in advance above the market rate to fix my Gas tariff at 2.5p per kwh with Zog Energy who instead of honouring their contract took the money and ran, dumping their customers onto the regulator who ditched all onto EDF that hiked the tariff rate to 7.5p per kwh, three times the fixed rate! So triple the gas bill!
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Monday, August 08, 2022
WARNING Corsair MP600 NVME2 M2 SSD Are Prone to Failure Can Prevent Systems From Booting / ConsumerWatch / Computing
By: HGR
NVME drives are supposed to herald greater speeds coupled with greater reliability over traditional platter spinning drives. However clearly the technology has yet to mature. And worse than mechanical hard drives when they go they tend to go fast! As illustrated by this 1tb Corsair MP600 drive which despite being listed as being 93% Good died within minutes, with the failure resulting in preventing the system from booting from it's good boot drive. So a sign that your NVME2 is on the verge of dying is if you experience failure or slow boot times.
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Friday, January 14, 2022
What Happens When Your Flight Gets Cancelled in the UK? / ConsumerWatch / Travel & Holidays
By: Stefan_Paulo
Flight cancellation happens for various reasons; it could be due to security, bad weather, lack of passengers, crew out of time, lack of aircraft or crew, or mechanical issues, among others. If you are a frequent traveller, you’ve probably have had to deal with flight cancellations at some point. But what happens after that? If you are travelling from the UK or intend to land in the UK, what do you do in the event that your flight gets cancelled? This article seeks to address the most important things following a flight cancellation.
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Sunday, January 09, 2022
NVME M2 SSD FAILURE WARNING Signs - Corsair MP600 1tb Drive / ConsumerWatch / Computing
By: HGR
Corsair MP600 is a PCIE4.0 SSD drive with advertised read speeds of upto 4950 mb/s and write speeds of upto 4250 mm/s. After some 8 months of usage had already dropped in performance to about half advertised, well that should have been taken as a warning of worse to come as one of the two 1tb MP600 drives in my system FAILED within a few hours of first showing warning signs. Find out why you NEED TO BACK UP YOUR MP600 DRIVES ASAP because when you first get a warning you may not have much time left to start backing up as transfer speeds drop! It also illustrates why it's wise to have multiple drives in case one fails.
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Tuesday, January 04, 2022
Corsair MP600 NVME2 1tb Drive Sudden DEATH Failures - Back Up NOW! / ConsumerWatch / Computing
By: HGR
Corsair MP600 is a PCIE4.0 SSD drive with advertised read speeds of upto 4950 mb/s and write speeds of upto 4250 mm/s. After some 8 months of usage had already dropped in performance to about half advertised, well that should have been taken as a warning of worse to come as one of the two 1tb MP600 drives in my system FAILED within a few hours of first showing warning signs. Find out why you NEED TO BACK UP YOUR MP600 DRIVES ASAP because when you first get a warning you may not have much time left to start backing up as transfer speeds drop! It also illustrates why it's wise to have multiple drives in case one fails.
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Sunday, December 12, 2021
AMAZON Christmas SCAMS WARNING - Buyers Beware. Always CHECK What You Buy / ConsumerWatch / Shopping
By: HGR
Tis the season for Amazon SCAMS! What is wrong with Amazon?? About 1 in 6 of the items I buy tend to turn out to be SCAMS! Some scams are less obvious than others i.e. I bought a WD Blue drive and was sent a 10 year old HGSTR drive with a Blue label stuck on it.
Today's scam delivery was more obvious, I paid for 60 TEPE Easypick Dental Picks and instead they delivered just 24! Looking at the Amazon comments show this supplier does this on a regular basis with numerous customers.
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Sunday, August 01, 2021
Vuze XR VR 3D Camera Takes Near 2 Minutes to Turn On, Buggy Firmware / ConsumerWatch / Technology
By: HGR
This Vuze XR VR 180 and 3D camera is proving to be a pain in the butt as it takes literally for ever to turn on! 2 MINUTES! How can one grab those moments when one has to wait for 2 minutes before it videos anything! Here's what the issue is straight out of the box that will probably require a firmware update to fix.
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Saturday, July 10, 2021
WD MY Book DUO Drives Lottery - What Disks are Inside - Red or Blue - 28tb Model / ConsumerWatch / Computing
By: HGR
What Drives are inside a Mybook DUO is it a red or blue find out as I open up a 28TB My Book DUO enclosure and find out.
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Monday, March 08, 2021
How Scan Computers Builds Your Custom Built PC - Scan.co.uk Review (2) / ConsumerWatch / Computing
By: HGR
The day has finally arrived when Scan computers has actually started to build our custom build PC system. Here's what to expect in terms of time and feed back during Scans build process which covers all key aspects from hardware build, to software installs to memory and burn in tests all the way to dispatch when buying a custom computer from Scan.co.uk in 2021.
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Wednesday, February 17, 2021
WARNING Oculus Quest 2 Update v25 BROKE My VR Headset! / ConsumerWatch / Virtual Reality
By: HGR
A few days ago putting on the headset prompted me with a message to upgrade the Oculus Quest 2 software to the latest version 25, existing version was 23. This should have been a straight forward seamless excercise one of clicking okay to the update and then wait a few mins for the download to complete and install with the update applied. However after a reboot the system was far from better! First off the home screen was mostly black with a floating rectangle that was the environment, a bit like looking into a floating window! And that's not the worst of it, find out in my video below of what could happen to your headset following an update to v25.
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Tuesday, February 09, 2021
Scan Computers 2021 RTX 3080 Waiting List Queue 1 Month After Ordering a Custom Built PC Stock / ConsumerWatch / Computing
By: HGR
It's now over a month since I ordered and paid for a custom built PC from Scan Computers UK (Scan.co.uk), a Ryzen 5950x, Asus RTX 3080, 64gb ram etc.. Full specs in the video and below. Anyway we all know demand is high and supply is tight, so where does my order now stand in the queue in terms of build and delivery expectations as a guide of what to expect when ordering a custom built PC during 2021 from likely most custom builders and not just Scan Computers.
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Sunday, February 07, 2021
Land Rover Discovery Sport EGR Design Flaw - Engine Management Warning Light On Again! / ConsumerWatch / Land Rover
By: HGR
The engine management warning lights been on again for a while, not driven it much during lockdown so before taking it down to a garage and paying as much as £150 to get the code read at a dealer, I thought after some research I would give a relatively cheap OBD2 code reader bought off amazon a try, the Nexpeak NX501, https://amzn.to/36twU54, And it worked1 reads the code and more! So what did it reveal ? EGR! EGR! EGR! Bloomin EGR AGAIN! THESE LAND ROVERS ARE A NIGHTMARE WHEN IT COMES TO MAINTENANCE COSTS! EGR's are supposed to last 100,000 miles! Not less than 20,000! Blooming Discovery Sports pieces of garbage not made to last. Anyway check out my video because I am pretty sure there will be many land rover discovery sport owners out there with the SAME problem!
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Friday, January 29, 2021
Real Reason for GPU and CPU Price Hikes! RTX 3080 Now Costs Over $1100! / ConsumerWatch / Computing
By: HGR
GPU's are seeing insane price hikes! For instance, 3 weeks ago I bought and paid for a custom PC build system from Scan computers that cost £3235 with components that included an Asus RTX 3080 TUF Gaming graphics card that was supposed to sell for around $700 or £500 but cost me £750 or over $1000. However the price has just kept increasing since were 10 days ago it had risen to £780, and today jumped by another £35 to £815.
Which at the current exchange rate puts that card at over $1100 converting to $1116. This is a ridiculously crazy high price for a GPU! We are really being ripped off in the UK to a very great extent.
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Sunday, January 03, 2021
Buy a Landrover Discovery Sport in 2021? 3 Year Driving Review / ConsumerWatch / Land Rover
By: N_Walayat
Thinking of treating yourselves to a landrover discovery sport in 2021? Either New are Used then here is my review of what you need to know after having owned and driven a Discovery Sport for 3 FULL YEARS!
Landrover Discovery Sport HSE BLACK that I bought under Approved Used when the car was about 15 months old, with 13,000 miles on the clock, so still under manufacturers warranty, followed by a few months under Land Rovers Approved Used extended warranty and then it's third year of ownership out of warranty.
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Saturday, December 26, 2020
Oculus Quest 2 Design FLAW! And the Quick Fix Solution / ConsumerWatch / Technology
By: HGR
Many VR enthusaits buying the Quest 2 soon experience a blatent flaw in it's design that spoils the experienc of using the headset. Fine out more about the design flaw and and en easy quick fix solution.
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Monday, December 14, 2020
Oculus Quest 2 Dumped on Doorstep! Amazon Deliveries Handed to Sleeping Resident / ConsumerWatch / Amazon
By: N_Walayat
It's Sunday morning when usually everyone's having a lie in, though I wake up early for a change 9am and one of the first things i do is to check my email. Your Amazon Item has been delivered at 7.52am, handed to resident! WHAT? All the emails to date had said it was going to be delivered Monday, and what resident was it handed to since all are sleeping! So out a rush to see what's happened!
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Friday, December 11, 2020
Should You Buy a Land Rover DISCOVERY SPORT? 3 YEAR Owner Driver Review / ConsumerWatch / Land Rover
By: HGR
If your thinking of buying a Land Rover Discovery Sport either New are Used then here is my review of what you need to own after having owned and driven a Disco Sport for 3 FULL YEARS!
Landrover Discovery Sport HSE BLACK that I bought under Approved Used when the car was 15 months old, with 11,000 miles on the clock, so still under manufacturers warranty, followed by a few months under Land Rovers Approved Used extended warranty.
So if you really want to know what to expect after buying a land rover discovery sport then do watch my video that could save you from potential inexpected grief.
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Wednesday, December 09, 2020
Warning NO Windows Licence Keys for OEM Systems! Burnt Onto Motherboards / ConsumerWatch / Computing
By: HGR
When buying a new system invariably you'll opt for an expensive copy of Windows 10, I say expensive because you can pick up licence keys for near 1/10th what the system builders will be charging. And it gets WORSE! Because unlike in years past, you don't get a licence key sticker that enables you to for whatever reason move your copy of windows to another machine. Instead the licence info is burnt onto the motherboard (coded into the bios). What this means is if your motherboard dies then so will likely your copy of windows unless you are able to retrieve it from the bios before hand which I will cover how to do in another video.
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Tuesday, December 01, 2020
Amazon Black Friday vs Prime Day vs Cyber Monday, Which are Real or Fake Sales / ConsumerWatch / Amazon
By: HGR
Cyber Monday has just ended the third online sales event of the past 2 months on the worlds No1 shopping portal Amazon. However with real world examples, which of the three, Black Friday, Prime Day and Cyber Monday are the real sales event or just a fake marketing ploy? Find out in our latest video where we take a look at how Amazon prices changed in reaction to prices.
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