EEVblog #751 - How To Debunk A Product (The Batteriser)

[amspire]

I am currently working on an enhanced version of the Batteriser. After the voltage is boosted so I can get double the power out of a battery, I put it through another buck converter to take it down to a voltage that exactly matches the voltage on the battery.

This has the technical advantage over the original Batteriser in that torch user get a visual feedback on the state of their batteries, and it means that electronic devices can accurately judge the state of the batteries. For example, if I was deep in a sea cave using my Triton Artifical Gills a few hundred meters underwater and if I was using the original Batteriser in my torch, I would get no warning that the battery was flat. One moment the torch is working, the next moment the battery is dead. With absolutely no light deep in this sea cave a few hundred meters underwater using my Triton Artifical Gills, I could even suffer a slight anxiety. With my revolutionary new technology, I would get a gradual indication of the lowering charge in the battery and thus eliminating all possible causes of anxiety.

I have managed to reduce the size of these dual stage inverters down to undetectable nano particles that you brush onto the positive battery terminal, upon which they immediately fuse into the metal contact and take on the exact characteristics of the contacts.

As you can understand, I cannot reveal any technical details at all because I am spending all my time applying for patents. I will be supplying my undetectable nano particles in a small plastics vial, but as far as I can see, there are millions of other apparently empty plastic vials on the market that are probably also full of undetectable nano particles. My legal team is already sending out letters to these patent violators.

There is no need to check the efficiency, because I know that I will get at least double the power out. Measurements are technical and they just confuse everyone.

[ChunkyPastaSauce]

I am currently working on an enhanced version of the Batteriser. After the voltage is boosted so I can get double the power out of a battery, I put it through another buck converter to take it down to a voltage that exactly matches the voltage on the battery.

This has the technical advantage over the original Batteriser in that torch user get a visual feedback on the state of their batteries, and it means that electronic devices can accurately judge the state of the batteries. For example, if I was deep in a sea cave using my Triton Artifical Gills a few hundred meters underwater and if I was using the original Batteriser in my torch, I would get no warning that the battery was flat. One moment the torch is working, the next moment the battery is dead. With absolutely no light deep in this sea cave a few hundred meters underwater using my Triton Artifical Gills, I could even suffer a slight anxiety. With my revolutionary new technology, I would get a gradual indication of the lowering charge in the battery and thus eliminating all possible causes of anxiety.

I have managed to reduce the size of these dual stage inverters down to undetectable nano particles that you brush onto the positive battery terminal, upon which they immediately fuse into the metal contact and take on the exact characteristics of the contacts.

As you can understand, I cannot reveal any technical details at all because I am spending all my time applying for patents. I will be supplying my undetectable nano particles in a small plastics vial, but as far as I can see, there are millions of other apparently empty plastic vials on the market that are probably also full of undetectable nano particles. My legal team is already sending out letters to these patent violators.

There is no need to check the efficiency, because I know that I will get at least double the power out. Measurements are technical and they just confuse everyone.

[akohler]

Yeah, so we get to laugh at them while they have $400k of other people's money. Their embarrassment is our amusement; I'd rather it be for something productive.

Sure, but it is what it is.
Since this whole Batteriser thing started I don't think I've met a single person who has not mentioned it to me and laughed and facepalmed. People seems to be genuinely fascinated by the stupidity of it all.

I'm one of them, but I had a moment of clarity: Not everyone gets to think this is funny.

I didn't contribute any money, as I have the knowledge to see through their claims. I get to hope that Dave and other pros will one day get their hands on a unit, and prove how useless the Batterier is in most use-cases. Or, I get to hope that Batteroo goes down in flames. I get to watch numerous people debunk, and bash, and lampoon. _We_, the people "in-the-know," are the people who are able to joke about it. We are an isolated group sharing the absurdity amongst ourselves.

Unfortunately, there are people who don't have electrical backgrounds, who gave money believing in this product. Many still do. They were hoping to give these as gifts. They still hope to. They are standing-by, waiting for Bob to say something, but he doesn't seem to have any motivation to do so.

We are the ones in the bleachers watching this freak-show, so we have the big-picture. Whether or not the Batteriser works, whether or not it's a futile effort, let's see if we can use we have observed to help out the contributors, and get them their product, or at least get them some official answers.

[Jay_Diddy_B]

I am currently working on an enhanced version of the Batteriser. After the voltage is boosted so I can get double the power out of a battery, I put it through another buck converter to take it down to a voltage that exactly matches the voltage on the battery.

Snip..

I have managed to reduce the size of these dual stage inverters down to undetectable nano particles that you brush onto the positive battery terminal, upon which they immediately fuse into the metal contact and take on the exact characteristics of the contacts.

Snip..

I have submitted your idea  to Flakey and Shanky (along with a little money). They have rewarded awarded you with the:

"F&S 'Emperor has new clothes' award for best managed product development and for showing exceptional leadership"

(The Emperor has new clothes award, celebrates the work of Hans Christian Andersen, who made a living writing fairy stories).

From Wikipedia:

The Emperor's New Clothes" (Danish: Kejserens nye Klæder) is a short tale by Hans Christian Andersen about two weavers who promise an emperor a new suit of clothes that is invisible to those who are unfit for their positions, stupid, or incompetent. When the Emperor parades before his subjects in his new clothes, no one dares to say that he doesn't see any suit of clothes until a child cries out, "But he isn't wearing anything at all!" The tale has been translated into over a hundred languages.



A press release is being circulated on the PRNewswire, you can expect to included in CNN's best products for 2016.

I suggest you start your IGG campaign now..

[quad]

Goal posts moved to April, but of course added the weasel words...

[SL4P]

Probably the best thing at this point in the debacle - is to post various links and references to Bob, Frankie and Batteroo, and this thread on as many boards and fora as possible.

Be careful to remain objectives and non-defamatory...
Every search for any term will drop on them like a ton of bricks.
With luck, The Boobparvar team and Probes the monkey will be lucky to get a job selling hotdogs at a ball game.  Fingers crossed.

[amspire]

I have submitted your idea  to Flakey and Shanky (along with a little money). They have rewarded awarded you with the:

"F&S 'Emperor has new clothes' award for best managed product development and for showing exceptional leadership"

(The Emperor has new clothes award, celebrates the work of Hans Christian Andersen, who made a living writing fairy stories).

Thanks. Life is tough when you are living on the bleeding edge of technical innovations. It is moments like this and receiving buckets of money from investors that make it worthwhile.

[ChunkyPastaSauce]

Does Indiegogo have much power to do anything? What can they do 

[Delta]

Does Indiegogo have much power to do anything? What can they do 

These IGG *backers* seem to be under the misaprehension that they are *customers* who have purchased something!

They are not, and they are screwed.

[Godzil]

I reported another Indiegogo campaing that was trying to sell a fake Apple Watch, they goes into "investigation". But don't be foolded, it mean doing nothing.

Indiegogo don't care AT ALL about the project on they're website. They are too happy to get money from them

[Fungus]

Does Indiegogo have much power to do anything? What can they do 

I received that exact same reply six months ago when the campaign is in progress. It's just a standard reply form, they're not doing anything.

What can they do now? I assume they've already transferred the funds to Batteroo (minus their $40,000 commission). There's probably very little they can do even if they wanted to.

(which they don't - $40,000 is $40,0000...it's not IndieGoGo that's telling the lies to the backers, right?)

[apis]

I got the same reply a long time ago as well. I don't think Indiegogo cares as long as they decide the batterizer doesn't hurt them financially or publicly, at least not more than they benefit from the campaign.

[Godzil]

Here what I received when I reported another campain which was even more a scam than the batteriser..

First message:

Hi there,

Thank you for sharing your concern with us. At this time, the campaign is under review to ensure that it adheres to our Terms of Use (http://www.indiegogo.com/about/terms). We will follow up with you if we have any further questions.

So what happens now? We will include the information you have provided along with all other information at our disposal in our review of the campaign. In some cases, we will contact the campaign owner to have them edit their campaign and it will remain on our platform. If the project doesn't follow our rules, we may remove the campaign. We may also restrict the campaign owner's future activities on Indiegogo.

To protect our users' privacy, we're unable to share the action we take. At Indiegogo, we take the trust and safety of our community very seriously, and we greatly appreciate your patience and understanding throughout this review process. To learn more about Indiegogo’s Trust & Safety effort, please visit: www.indiegogo.com/trust

Please note that you do not need to contact us again. Doing so would create a new ticket and prolong the process. Thank you again for taking the time to get in touch with us and for helping to keep Indiegogo a safe and secure platform.

Second message:

Hi there,

Thank you for sharing your concern with us. At this time, the campaign, ‘XXXX’, is under review to ensure that it adheres to our Terms of Use (http://www.indiegogo.com/about/terms).

So what happens now? We will include the information you have provided along with all other information at our disposal in our review of the campaign. In some cases, we will contact the campaign owner to have them edit their campaign and it will remain on our platform. If the project doesn't follow our rules, we may remove the campaign. We may also restrict the campaign owner's future activities on Indiegogo.

To protect our users' privacy, we're unable to share the action we take. At Indiegogo, we take the trust and safety of our community very seriously, and we greatly appreciate your patience and understanding throughout this review process. To learn more about Indiegogo’s Trust & Safety effort, please visit: www.indiegogo.com/trust

Please note that you do not need to contact us again. Doing so would create a new ticket and prolong the process. Thank you again for taking the time to get in touch with us and for helping to keep Indiegogo a safe and secure platform.

Regards,

Brian
Trust and Safety

Indiegogo|
Generosity

Both as just plain generic answer, with no human interraction, I'm sure of that

[akohler]

My holier-than-thou diatribe from yesterday may be moot. The indiegogo natives are really starting to freak-out on their own.

[EEVblog]

Does Indiegogo have much power to do anything? What can they do 

They can't do anything. Batteroo already have the money.

[Brumby]

Does Indiegogo have much power to do anything? What can they do 

They can't do anything. Batteroo already have the money.

Maybe Batteroo has the money - but aren't there non-financial actions they could take?

[Wytnucls]

From an alleged Frost & Sullivan Roohparvar interview dated July 2015:
VS: What kind of customer feedback mechanism do you have in place to ensure that the product development and innovation matches market and customer needs?
  BR: From the start, Batteriser is committed to maintaining a strong online presence, which will allow for customers to contact us whenever they’d like. Consumers will be able to reach out to us through our web site, via e-mail, and via social media like Facebook and twitter.
  Further, one of the critical elements of our crowdfunding campaign is early shipping of product and direct feedback access to the Batteriser team, allowing for an active dialogue between our team and our early-adopters.
  As we enter broader distribution, we will continue to take consumer feedback very seriously, by scaling up our CRM tools to facilitate swift communication.

Time to scale up your CRM tools, Bob... [cricket noises]

The full article here: https://www.frost.com/sublib/display-market-insight.do?id=295404655

[akohler]

good find

[WN1X]

The funny thing is they haven't done any of that.

Sorry Bob, you are so full of shit.

[EEVblog]

Maybe Batteroo has the money - but aren't there non-financial actions they could take?

Well, ok, IGG could publicly (on the page) ask questions of overdue and questionable projects like this and have a ticking time limit for a reply from the campaigners. The question and reply (or lack of reply) would be publicly visible on the page. Make it a separate tab called "Questions/Discussion" or something, and have the comments in that section not deletable by the campaign backers.
Also, they need to actually put dates on updates, comments etc. None of this "2 Months Ago" rubbish.

[akohler]

From an alleged Frost & Sullivan Roohparvar interview dated July 2015:
[...]

Could someone here, who is a batteriser contributor, post this on their site?

[Jay_Diddy_B]

Hi,

The Batteriser team must be having a good time somewhere, or they are busy working on the shipment 

I have noticed that they have become slower in deleting comments on the IGG.

I would have expect the comment about the He-Shes in Thailand would be long gone.

How can they attempt to sell the company with these comments on the IGG campaign? Also if you type Batteriser into Google the second suggestion is "Batteriser Scam".

Regards,

Jay_Diddy_B

[quad]

They've stopped checking as regularly, for sure. No doubt they'll do a big comments cleanse when they bother to check. A link to Dave's debunking video cannot last long!!

An interesting side note, the number of backers displayed everywhere is now 7385. They used to be difference in these numbers (as people would get refunds). 

The latest:

[Fungus]

From an alleged Frost & Sullivan Roohparvar interview dated July 2015:
VS: What kind of customer feedback mechanism do you have in place to ensure that the product development and innovation matches market and customer needs?
  BR: From the start, Batteriser is committed to maintaining a strong online presence, which will allow for customers to contact us whenever they’d like. Consumers will be able to reach out to us through our web site, via e-mail, and via social media like Facebook and twitter....

Oooh! I feel another Facebook ban coming on. That's too good to not post it there.

[bills]

Do real people even use facebook ?
 
 to much time on there hands. ( yes I have too time on my hands but none to waste )