Have you ever noticed how many products have achieved the status of “as-seen-on-TV?” It makes me wonder if they just add that to everything and it’s really not true or if they plug their computer into the TV get a picture of the product up on the screen, look at it, and then are able to say that it was seen on TV.
My most recent encounter with that phenomenon was with a barbecue accessory I was shopping for on Amazon, the BBQ grill mat. Now I know for a fact that there was a brand of grill mats that was introduced on an infomercial and that legitimately can claim the title of “grill mat as seen on TV.” Great. I have no problem with that.
But as I scrolled through the hundreds (okay that’s a slight exaggeration) of grill mats that Amazon offers for sale – pages of them – there were no less than eight that claimed that they were a grill mat as seen on TV. So I called the as-seen-on-TV people. You can call them too if you want. They have a website. I’m not saying you should, but it’s not big deal. Anyone can do it. And I asked them if it were possible that so many brands of the same product were entitled to that TV-fame claim. They gal on the other end of the phone laughed. She told me that product vendors make that claim falsely all the time and that there are literally hundreds and possibly thousands of products on Amazon and other online market sites that claim the as-seen-on-TV logo and they were, in fact, never officially associated with it.
I asked her if there was any way to tell if it was fake and she said there really wasn’t. And then she posed the question, “Why do you care?” That left me speechless. So we had a long talk about it. Well, not that long, really; a few minutes, anyway. We discussed whether or not it gave sellers an advantage to make that claim. Her perception was that it did. That in general people view the “Seen on TV” logo as a stamp of credibility and tend to see other identical products as knock-offs or cheaper imitations.
As I explored the issue further, I began to form my own opinions about that. When a product gets selected for the As Seen on TV phenomena, it is manufactured in enormous quantities as cheaply as possible. The credibility of the TV replaces the need for high quality. And within weeks they can make the claim of over 300,000 sold or even over 1,000,000 sold and that adds more credibility. Meanwhile someone might be selling the same product at a slightly higher price and producing it at a much higher quality level and won’t have the market edge because of the power of the “seen on” phenomena.
This is not a huge deal, of course. But I’m personally interested in the new markets that have developed due to the internet and the ways that buying and selling are changing. We all have more options than ever before in history and along with more options comes a wider diversity of quality. More absolute junk is being produced than ever before in human history and at the same time the highest quality in human history is also available. So we need to develop ways of minimizing the risk of a bad purchase.
Along those lines, I decided to eliminate the As Seen on TV products from my purchase list altogether. In my opinion, the plethora of smaller vendors that have come into existence as a result of the internet are far more likely to deliver a high level of quality in a product. The reason being, that they have to demonstrate a high level of customer service and product quality because every customer counts to them. You’re not going to see that when a company is selling millions of an item.
It’s kind of odd, but it seems that the pendulum has swung back. Here’s what I mean. For a while in the last few decades, before the internet explosion, we had lost the customer service based, owner occupied businesses of the past. Now, with the advent of internet businesses, you will more often than not be communicating with the owner of a company when you use the contact-us tab on an online website. You won’t find that with the as-seen-on-TV company or with any of the corporate enterprises. You’ll be communicating with someone who is paid to pretend they care. When you’re talking to an owner, they care in a way no one else ever would or could.
So my little undertaking to buy a bbq grill mat turned into a pretty big paradigm shift for me. I ultimately purchased from a tiny company where I was able to talk to the owner about my product choice, and I think that will be the way I purchase items online in the future too. I didn't even bother reading any bbq grill mat reviews. Here’s a little test you can do that works really well when you’re shopping on Amazon. Just click on the contact seller button and send a simple question about the product. Some sellers will answer you right away no matter what day it is. Some will even answer you in the middle of the night. These are company owners that are motivated to please the customer. Others won’t answer you at all or will answer days or even weeks later. It’s a quick and efficient way to decide who to buy from.
That trick doesn’t work with corporate enterprise because they pay someone to make you think they are. But it works great when it’s the owner that responds to you. Don’t ever stop learning!
My most recent encounter with that phenomenon was with a barbecue accessory I was shopping for on Amazon, the BBQ grill mat. Now I know for a fact that there was a brand of grill mats that was introduced on an infomercial and that legitimately can claim the title of “grill mat as seen on TV.” Great. I have no problem with that.
But as I scrolled through the hundreds (okay that’s a slight exaggeration) of grill mats that Amazon offers for sale – pages of them – there were no less than eight that claimed that they were a grill mat as seen on TV. So I called the as-seen-on-TV people. You can call them too if you want. They have a website. I’m not saying you should, but it’s not big deal. Anyone can do it. And I asked them if it were possible that so many brands of the same product were entitled to that TV-fame claim. They gal on the other end of the phone laughed. She told me that product vendors make that claim falsely all the time and that there are literally hundreds and possibly thousands of products on Amazon and other online market sites that claim the as-seen-on-TV logo and they were, in fact, never officially associated with it.
I asked her if there was any way to tell if it was fake and she said there really wasn’t. And then she posed the question, “Why do you care?” That left me speechless. So we had a long talk about it. Well, not that long, really; a few minutes, anyway. We discussed whether or not it gave sellers an advantage to make that claim. Her perception was that it did. That in general people view the “Seen on TV” logo as a stamp of credibility and tend to see other identical products as knock-offs or cheaper imitations.
As I explored the issue further, I began to form my own opinions about that. When a product gets selected for the As Seen on TV phenomena, it is manufactured in enormous quantities as cheaply as possible. The credibility of the TV replaces the need for high quality. And within weeks they can make the claim of over 300,000 sold or even over 1,000,000 sold and that adds more credibility. Meanwhile someone might be selling the same product at a slightly higher price and producing it at a much higher quality level and won’t have the market edge because of the power of the “seen on” phenomena.
This is not a huge deal, of course. But I’m personally interested in the new markets that have developed due to the internet and the ways that buying and selling are changing. We all have more options than ever before in history and along with more options comes a wider diversity of quality. More absolute junk is being produced than ever before in human history and at the same time the highest quality in human history is also available. So we need to develop ways of minimizing the risk of a bad purchase.
Along those lines, I decided to eliminate the As Seen on TV products from my purchase list altogether. In my opinion, the plethora of smaller vendors that have come into existence as a result of the internet are far more likely to deliver a high level of quality in a product. The reason being, that they have to demonstrate a high level of customer service and product quality because every customer counts to them. You’re not going to see that when a company is selling millions of an item.
It’s kind of odd, but it seems that the pendulum has swung back. Here’s what I mean. For a while in the last few decades, before the internet explosion, we had lost the customer service based, owner occupied businesses of the past. Now, with the advent of internet businesses, you will more often than not be communicating with the owner of a company when you use the contact-us tab on an online website. You won’t find that with the as-seen-on-TV company or with any of the corporate enterprises. You’ll be communicating with someone who is paid to pretend they care. When you’re talking to an owner, they care in a way no one else ever would or could.
So my little undertaking to buy a bbq grill mat turned into a pretty big paradigm shift for me. I ultimately purchased from a tiny company where I was able to talk to the owner about my product choice, and I think that will be the way I purchase items online in the future too. I didn't even bother reading any bbq grill mat reviews. Here’s a little test you can do that works really well when you’re shopping on Amazon. Just click on the contact seller button and send a simple question about the product. Some sellers will answer you right away no matter what day it is. Some will even answer you in the middle of the night. These are company owners that are motivated to please the customer. Others won’t answer you at all or will answer days or even weeks later. It’s a quick and efficient way to decide who to buy from.
That trick doesn’t work with corporate enterprise because they pay someone to make you think they are. But it works great when it’s the owner that responds to you. Don’t ever stop learning!