THE BOOK--Playing The Percentages In Baseball

Friday, January 14, 2011

Power Balance wristbands and when smart people say dumb things…

My friend, who is a personal trainer, bought a silicone “power balance wrist band” which purports to promote greater balance, strength, etc.  They also sell power balance pendants.  The wristbands go for around $30.00.  They contain some kind of hologram which, according to their web site works by:

Power Balance is based on the idea of optimizing the body’s natural energy flow, similar to concepts behind many Eastern philosophies. The hologram in Power Balance is designed to resonate with and respond to the natural energy field of the body.

I hope that I don’t have to tell anyone here that this is B.S. and I really hope that any possible merit of this product does not need to be discussed here either.  And the first person to mention “the placebo effect” will be permanently banned from this site!

In case you don’t go to the site, I’ll tell you that it is slick, the product/company has endorsements from high profile professional athletes in several sports, and appears to be ready to take over the name of the Sacramento King’s arena (it is apparently partners with Maloof Sports and Entertainment, the company that owns the Kings and the Palms Casino in Las Vegas).  The Power Balance company is a California LLC.  They must be making huge money or they expect to make huge money, in order to pay all these athletes, pay the Kings (reportedly a million a year, which seems quite low to me for an NBA arena name), etc.  I don’t know how long they have been around.

There are 3 or 4 things in the world that really piss me off, to the point that I become almost enraged when I see or hear about them.  One of them is scam products.

It boggles my mind that something so obviously retarded like this can be endorsed by professional athletes and can become partners with a billion dollar legitimate company like Maloof.

Now here is the kicker:

It looks like they have been selling lots of this crap in Europe and in fact all over the world.  Recently, they were apparently forced by the Australian government to admit that their product is a sham.  Like any reasonably intelligent person needs them to admit that.  Somewhere on the Autralian version of their web site, it says this:

Corrective Advertisement
Power Balance wristbands

In our advertising we stated that Power Balance wristbands improved your strength, balance and flexibility.

We admit that there is no credible scientific evidence that supports our claims and therefore we engaged in misleading conduct in breach of s52 of the Trade Practices Act 1974.

If you feel you have been misled by our promotions, we wish to unreservedly apologise and offer a full refund.

(I guess they spell apologize with an “s” in Europe.)

One other thing that amazes and saddens me is the fact that Australia actually has a regulation that can force a company to admit something like this, but we (the U.S.) don’t.  I’m all for Freedom of the Press (not that I am “for it” per se, which is meaningless, it is part of the First Amendment), but why doesn’t the U.S. have something similar?  There are literally thousands of scam products advertised in the U.S. every second of every day.  Manufacturing, promoting, and selling useless products diminishes the prosperity of a nation (unless of course they sell them to other countries, which diminishes THEIR prosperity and is therefore immoral).

The reason I wrote what I wrote in the title of this thread is this:

There is a discussion about Matt Kemp endorsing this phony product on BBTF.  In it, Voros (the DIPS guy and occasional participant on this blog) wrote:

How exactly are Power Balance wristbands a “scam?” You get the wristband, right?

A scam is when you buy something and don’t get what was promised. With this when you buy it, you get exactly the same wristband they offered you to begin with. That it doesn’t work to your satisfaction is your fault for buying the damned thing, you ought to know better.

When I read that, I thought, “That can’t be Voros. He is a really, smart and reasonable person.”

Someone responded to him with this:

Right. So if they tell you you’re getting a product that will improve your strength, balance and flexibility, but then they ship you a product that doesn’t actually do those things, it’s a scam.

Later on, the same person posted this:

Selling a useless product isn’t a scam. Selling a useless product under the knowingly false pretense that it has a specific use is a scam.

The victims of most scams “ought to know better.” That doesn’t mean they weren’t scammed.

That should have been the end of it, and Voros should have responded, “Of course you are right.  What was I even thinking.  My bad.”

Instead, as even really smart and reasonable people can do, he refused to admit that he completely ***ed up, and dug his heels in with this:

How do you know it hasn’t done those things? Does it claim it works in 100% of cases? Hell antibiotics can’t claim that so I don’t think this does.

It’s not a scam, it’s a useless product. To me, there’s a difference.

Wow, is all I can say.  His last sentence is just mincing words of course, which is not relevant to the discussion at hand between these two posters.  Here are two definitions of “scam” BTW, from the internet:

“deprive of by deceit.”

“obtaining money by means of deception.”

I don’t see any ambiguity here with regard to this product.

We don’t know that Santa Claus doesn’t exist either.  If I sold you something that was predicated on his existence, yes, it would be a scam or whatever you would like to call it.