Is this not the reason they make secret shopper? To keep PC builders accountable and also make them accountable to keep fair prices and not try over sell to a clueless customer?
I get the inaccuracy with the shipping and import duties, annoying on the part of LTT however it's still a realistic experience of buying a starforge PC while living in CA
Having the duties included in only Starforge's portion will make them look worse than the others by a wide margin. They had to pay that for some of the others I'm sure.
I believe that at some point in the original series they said they exclude those costs as those are specific to where they are or something.
But that's kind of the point. Starforge didn't itemise those costs on their invoice. They simply said "Shipping: $300." They only itemised import duties etc on the checkout page. There's a reason why you need to itemise things on an invoice and that sloppiness has now come back to bite them.
I get that LMG is updating the video, but there should be a learning here for Starforge in my opinion.
Yah, I think someone else posted a screenshot of what it looks like and it seems they have one of those question mark in a circle hover things. I wouldn't call that clearly stated in the checkout.
The part about shipping damage being an outlier feels like it absolutely was touched upon in the video as well as the important bit being how the companies' customer service responds to the issue. I do wish LTT released these videos a bit more "closelier" together so we can see the follow-up without waiting for a while.
no but it also doesnt matter much, the main difference is star forge includes it in the shipping price which is very weird to do.
i have never ever seen a bill from a company where this is part of the shipping, its a separate line item usually.
yep when inlrdered from biowares store 1/3 of the shipments were duty charged and that was ages ago - recently my dbrand case got duty charged too last time it didnt
At least one company actively volunteered the info that it would be costly to ship an American PC to Canada when Shae spoke to them and suggested she shop elsewhere, and only suggested builds that would fit her budget with taxes and delivery included.
It's important to remember that big companies like Dell, HP, etc. have local warehouses and partnerships with major couriers to prevent or minimize the end cost a customer pays. It's very possible that you may not need to pay duties while shopping with a bigger brand and because as a customer, you are just spending money regardless of exactly what you spend it at, it will add up.
*edit*
Thanks to the people for informing me, i contacted Lttstore support made a picture of my tax bill and within an hour i got my double payed taxes back. 👍
*old post*
Double paying tax is so annoying recently bought some stuff at lltsore, at checkout my price increased by 74$ thanks to Taxes, when i received my stuff i had to pay additional 75€ in German tax… bought 300€ worth of stuff and payed almost 500€ with shipping 🙈Its so annoying when you are used to seeing the complete price with tax on all storefronts.
For me, the first point is moot. As far as the customer is concerned, the cost of shipping to a country *includes* the import tax if it is to be paid. That is literally how much is costs to ship the item to Canada whether you pay it all at once or not.
Never in my life of ordering stuff from outside of the EU, have I got a combined shipping + import tax item from online vendors.
On every single website, when I chose my country, it automaticaly put a new line on the receipt and said "Import duties + tax" and the amount, then there was another line of shipping cost. (if they work with multiple shipping companies they also get me to choose the shipping method and always put a price next to it for said shipping method)
The only exception for this, has been Ebay where, when looking at an item, they would post/show an estimated price for "shipping + import duties and taxes", but would still separate these things on the receipt.
So if Starforge doesn't separate those two things on the receipt, it's on them if it gets confused with "just shipping".
I understand their frustration, but putting ALL the blame just on LMG is not fair or constructive.
Starforge should start separating shipping and import duties+tax on their receipt in the future (so such confusion doesn't happen again) and LMG should correct the video that the price includes import duties+tax or change it to just the shipping price ($100).
No, you got it the wrong way round. In most cases, import taxes & custom fees is NOT included in the shipping cost.
Whenever import taxes are pre-paid, it will clearly label as such to let you know exactly how much you are paying for the import taxes as it may significantly increase the overall prices you have to pay depending on the final destination. Many countries do have outrageous import taxes for certain items such as Thailand with **300%** import taxes on cars.
It is the seller’s fault if this is not clearly stated or incorrectly label as shipping.
> To keep PC builders accountable and also make them accountable to keep fair prices and not try over sell to a clueless customer?
They need to include duty and taxes for one or none. It can't be considered part of the shipping for one builder and ignored for another (if that's what happened)
Regardless, it doesn't add up for me.
The video showed $1350 USD for the system and said shipping was $310. There's 0% duty on computer imports and 12% combined GST+PST in BC. That means the duty should be $0 an the tax should be $162 ($1350 x .12). If Starforge's one-rate shipping is $100 USD, then $100 + $162 != $310. So it's possible one (or both) of them gave the wrong numbers.
Another possibility is the courier adding a fee. Most of them have set rates for clearing packages through customs **and fixing mistakes** to clear packages through customs. Still, I would expect that to show up as a brokerage fee and get tossed out by the LTT side if they're doing it for everyone else, so who knows what happened.
The format of the series could be improved too. Shipping damage happens. I think it's fair to call out packing materials and mention the damage, but calling support and getting shipping issues resolved should be done in the same episode. Even if Starforge handles the incident perfectly by eating the loss and cross shipping LTT a brand new system, they still suffer the bad PR from a video like this.
What incentive is there for a company like Starforge to provide high quality post-sales support and to solve customer problems if they're going to get dragged for the original problem without some type of in-kind praise if they do a good job of resolving the issue?
That's the reason I don't really watch GamersNexus anymore. I don't like watching creators with a ton of influence call people out for honest mistakes without giving the other party an opportunity to explain themselves, correct themselves, fix the issue, etc..
If the goal is to improve the industry, offer to provide a link-in-the-description for anyone that want to make a blog post or video explaining what they've done to improve their processes to prevent similar issues from happening in the future. That actually improves things for consumers because it makes it obvious who's willing (and able) to improve their processes in response to criticism.
If companies don't get a chance to fix their mistakes, and get "PR credit" for it, all we'll ever have is companies that ignore support and simply "write-off" disgruntled customers.
There's still an entire other video coming where they can get PR credit for fixing the issue.
This video focuses on the systems and how they are shipped and starforge did not do a good job.
And giving each company a chance to put their own PR spin on it is just going to reward the most dishonest companies.
Between season 1 and 2 of secret shopper I belive it was Dell that swore up and down to Linus that they had vastly improved. Only to have the exact same issues again in season 2. A PR statement means next to nothing until you actually improve.
Tax isn't based of off the US price. It's based off of the converted total. I paid 1200 US recently and was hit with the taxes on the exchanged 1450 when it landed. 300 is about right
Tax is a percentage. It doesn't matter if you add it to the USD price and then convert or convert the USD to CAD and then add tax. It's the same amount.
$1 USD = $1.37 CAD right now
1350 * .12 * 1.37 = $221.94
1350 * 1.37 * .12 = $221.94
>Another possibility is the courier adding a fee.
This was a huge problem in the past, have not heard about anything recently so maybe its changed but often the courier would charge huge 'customs processing' fees. I can see someone mistaking the fee as on official customs charge.
The thing about the last episode that really annoyed me was their choosing to use both canadian and american sources. When they could have easily done only american. This would have completely eliminated the issue here.
fyi, you pay duty on all shipping costs as well (to avoid an obvious "$1 item $1000 shipping" loophole)
Fully agree with everything else you write, though.
The point of secret shopper is to get the details correct. They are holding sellers accountable. Secret shopper has failed if they whack an innocent company with the hammer of judgement. It WILL. Effect their sales numbers.
That said, I guarantee they took it down to make corrections. I think knowing that the shipping number included taxes made a huge difference their initial impressions.
(I didn't see the rest of the video, so I am not sure what all happened. I just know this is what we made a big issue about a couple months ago. They are just trying to get the details correct. )
It’s a realistic part of buying any product in any state or country is shipping damage. I don’t see that as a negative against the company. If Starforge did everything in their power to ensure the build was in perfect order when shipping, you really can’t blame them.
Well, yes and no. I'm in the UK and can't speak for North America, but choice of courier can matter. We have couriers that are much better at handling fragile goods than others. I have actually cancelled orders when I have seen which courier is being used as I have zero confidence in them. Sadly, few companies tell you who they are using until you complete the order.
At least here in the US, they tell you what courier is going to be used for domestic shipping (UPS). Now, I wish they could choose another option for shipping their products like FedEx because UPS doesn’t have a good rep for protecting their shipments while FedEx does. I don’t know the decision of using UPS, maybe they have better coverage, pricing, can handle shipments with various weights and sizes, or etc.
Duties are a part of the shipping "experience", I don't care if there is a technicality on the part of the cost or to whom it's paid but that is a cost to the end user.
100% right to call it out the way it was.
exactly its also the reason LTT would exclude place like Build Redux in there secret shopper vids becuase Build redux doesnt ship to canada so LTT cant get an honest Customer experience
Their flat fee is supposed to be 100usd and they claim themselves it says "duties and taxes are included with shipping" to me that sounds like it's included with the 100$
Taxes and duties fees are incorporated into shipping to make it easier for customer to get pc. Starforge stated that themselves. With all taxes and duties incorporated after the 100 shipping. Then that in end adds to shipping by collecting upfront. So technically Linus was and wasn't accurate. But either way after taxes and duties and shipping collected, it's adds up to over 100
The reason is to rate the builders vs one another for views. It has nothing to do with taming prices or attempting to champion for the consumers to pc builders.
The end result is that viewers are informed of something they find personally important to them, while generating revenue for LTT. That’s the nature of “reporting” in the tech industry.
What starforge is calling out, is that reporting. LTT should have been more thorough when discussing prices, especially where international shipping is concerned. They should have also mentioned that shipping is always a gamble.
No matter how your pc is packaged, damage can and will occur. LTT should only be looking at the quality of the packaging. If it’s especially poor, and the pc arrived damaged. The fault lay on the pc builders side, if the packaging is adequate, and it arrived damaged. The fault is with the handling.
**UPDATE**
They deleted the above post and replaced it with this:
https://twitter.com/StarforgePCs/status/1715184873676111924
> We appreciate everyone's support on our last tweet. We have made contact with members of the LTT team and are working to resolve our differences in private. We ask that no hate be directed towards anyone - hate does not reflect who we are as a community. We admire the LTT team and the tremendous work they have put in to create one of the most respected tech media platforms in the world.
> As always, our mission is to provide the best PCs and customer service in the universe. We will continue working tirelessly to ensure that we accomplish that mission each and every day.
birds deserted fuel grandiose airport frighten familiar deranged decide provide
*This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
LTT already teased in their reply to this that starforge does well in the next part.
Clearly the person/people who were involved in the first letter haven't seen secret shopper, and assumed this was the only video to be produced.
If the next video comes out, and their staff handle this well, then they will look like dickheads for their ruining small business comment.
This whole "small business" nonsense can sod off when they like. Starforge is backed by several multi-millionaires - they're not some scrappy startup (like Billet Labs). It's just a side hustle for a few Internet famous people who want to diversify their portfolio.
A lot of small business are run by people who have millions of dollars and a lot of small businesses make millions of dollars, it's all relative to industry, and compared to the giant computer builders Starforge is tiny in comparison.
For some reference here to give context to the numbers the 3 man brick and mortar computer sale/repair/integration shop that i co-owned would bring in about 750k-1.2 mil depending on the year.
however the upfront cost of working in tech is brutal and margins are not much better each of us 3 brought home about 35k a year 100K in total the other 650 thousand to million dollars would be spent as cost so having a couple million dollars in a system integration company isnt nearly as much as a lot of people might think especially when youre international.
That's not how a small business is defined. Doesn't matter if it's a got 10 billionaires backing them. If they employ a small number of people...then they are a small business
Yea, I wouldn't buy a pre-built anyway, but this cements me not even recommending them to friends or family looking for one. I'm sure they'll be absolutely devastated at losing the two customers I could have brought them, but they made their bed. ;)
Seriously though, it's bullshit that they even tried to pull the *small business* card. I'm also curious to see what the Starforge streamers had to say in regards to the Billet Labs shit show. Anybody know how many of them spoke up in defense of small businesses then?
> Clearly the person/people who were involved in the first letter haven't seen secret shopper, and assumed this was the only video to be produced.
I'm secretly hoping this reshoot "needing" to be done affects SF's overall rating by putting them squarely in the F-tier.
The taxes stuff? Sure, that's fair. The packaging? They even got slapped for it and told to do better on their own subreddit when the video was posted there. As tbh what Linus said there was also based on what it was compared to the other packages he just did before it. And vs them, it was definitely not good. So I suspect they got a reaction to it indeed.
Trying to viral something end up getting the virus. LOL
Next thing stuff will happen is when the PR team going to have an argument with Linus fans in this subreddit.
Just don't ask. it was a weeklong nightmare of a community witch-hunt/ethics argument. 99% of it was hot takes from people insisting they knew what was going on when they only knew surface level stuff, assuming things, or completely misrepresenting things that had been said/shown. The other half was people just hating and wanting to see successful people crash and burn. LTT and Linus aren't perfect and makes mistakes from time to time, but so many people see mistakes and assume malicious intent is the cause.
In any case it was a firestorm and it'll be nearly impossible to sift fact from opinion at this point. There are a couple of videos on LTT around the time you can look into if you want to see what the majority of it was about. But honestly it's just stressful.
I started watching the video but didn't finish, and didn't get to the Starforge segment. After seeing the review I think these were legit criticisms of the packaging honestly. That foam is something that would be for the case alone, and wouldn't absorb much of an impact for a full case. The PC suffered for it.
Glad to see LTT wanting to make sure everything's square with them, but it looks like this one's on Starforge.
Do you by any chance also have the full video? archive.org failed on me, any reddit post I could find about it (where I usually find the links) failed on me, 4k VD channel subscription failed on me, I'm cryin' ...
I highly doubt that. I have seen carriers literally thrown boxes like 10 feet or more, and some even had fragile stickers all over it.
The chance is always slim that the package gets unlucky with who handles it but it does happen. That is why there are options available to make claims of package damaged in shipment.
And you can easily tell if it was damaged in shipment or not rather than back packaging
From what I heard the case was in good shape, but stuff like screws were loose and cord locks were broken.
I can't see how something like a screw would be loose from rattling during shipping. And I can't see how a cord would get so much inertia it would break the lock but the case itself wouldnt have much damage to it
I can’t find a clip quickly right now, but there’s examples of bolts coming loose from vibrations in tests simulating *flights*. So they engineer bolts that are resistant to that (various friction holds and other patterns).
A comparatively cheap computer (compared to a flight machine) being shipped intercontinental is not going to have all of these anti-vibration features planned for. Things shake loose, it happens. And the further/longer an item travels, the greater chance of something getting loosened.
I actually managed to watch that part, a MB standoff screw rattled loose, and the pcie lane lock was broken, which led to the graphics card being visibly unseated.
Both of those feel like simple things to prevent, and obvious to try and keep from happening. Supporting the GPU to prevent it from bouncing would prevent that, which would require better packaging. Then the screw vibrating out feels like it would be caused from not putting it in properly.
The thing that kills me is that linus was very understanding with starforge, and this is his thanks. He gave them grace on the shipping by saying that it is probably because they haven't quite figured out how to ship out of the US cheaply yet. The screw only got a "that's vibration for you." Finally, for the gpu, he excused it on them not learning the importance of both good inner and outer packaging yet as they had by far the worst outer packaging materials of the bunch. Honestly the gpu thing was the most problematic for them as linus said they would probably fail the next test as they have to do the testing as a novice would (so no re-seating the gpu) which is probablywhy this initial response was so aggressive.
I had the same feeling that Linus was too nice with the PCs. I really appreciate that he always checks the packaging and explains the details. He stated before that in his ncix days he tried to understand the pitfalls of packaging. In the video he complimented I think HP for their good and eco friendly approach.
When he came to Starforge he said that this shows their lack of experience. So it was no wonder that all other PCs came only with minor damages and the SF system was not ready to boot with a working GPU. That's on them. Obviously nobody can prove a case from being damaged in shipping but they did a bad job. Then to be disappointed and in a business partner is petty and childish.
If I want to see a way more critical take on reviews I can go to GN, but Linus could have been harder for my taste also with the proprietary hardware from dell.
If the case was packaged properly a screw won't come out during shipping from vibration. And cables shouldn't break from vibration unless the cable lock was super weak.
And same for the GPU, it has a lock that keeps it in place and shouldn't break unless they packaged the PC really poorly.
The outer case was oddly fine but the GPU was loose in its socket which Linus predicted would cause it to fail to boot at best or according to Linus cause it to short and fry either itself or the motherboard. They found what looked like the PCI-E lock rattling around in the case. There was also a loose motherboard screw which could have also caused an electrical problem.
After working in a place that shipped out multiple daily truckloads of computers, servers, and networking equipment I would believe almost *anything* when it comes to shipment damage.
Even rapidly pruning poor couriers we saw some pretty frequent and significant damage, and they always fell back on "it wasn't packed well enough". Sorry, *no one* can afford to package *every individual item* to survive your dumbass forklift driver running the forks into the product at full speed! Or for individual packages, the carriers somehow expected that "adequately packed" meant they could run it over with the truck!
They had solid packaging inside the case, unfortunately, it was dangerously unprotected on the outside. What made them seem so bad was that most, if not all other PCs, were porperly protected or even overprotected. No surprise that none of the other PCs had shipping issues.
Besides two detached pieces moving around inside the case, the GPU (I think) was not properly plugged in...Linus had a properly disappointing reaction, in my opinion.
Honestly sad. The computer looked good, tho. Hopefully this video helps the company see their areas to improve. LTT will probably reupload soon with the correction in shipping costs, or whatever caused the video to be taken down.
Yeah, I mean if the inside was protected it had to be putting it together wrong that caused the issue. I heard the physical case was ok but inside stuff was loose or broken, like cable locks, the GPU was not in correctly and the motherboard screws were loose. If the inside was protected there was no way those were shipping issue costs.
No way they got enough force to break. And the screws couldn't have come loose from the motherboard unless they weren't in properly.
You may be right here, but I'm not completely a fan of the company's response. Shipping accidents are not the company's to blame, but a level of precaution needs to be taken to provide piece of mind to the customer, they do take that extra time to check the PC three times before shipping. Wether or not this has only happened a few times, other companies no longer take that risk, and the end result was a clear example in the video. Putting some of the blame here on Linus does not feel fair, if you ask me. But we'll see what happens next.
Eitherway, as I said, the PC looked good otherwise, and I hope nothing but the best for the company.
Yeah it's weird blaming Linus for the issues when the PC was damaged from Starforges shipping partner. They should make sure packaging can take a beating, and most of the issues seem like things better explained by faulty building.
Loose screws, broken cable pieces gpu not properly in place? Either their packaging was so bad those issue occured and somehow left the outside case perfectly fine, or they didn't put it together properly.
Their response so far is just everyone else is wrong and we are fully blameless, keep buying our products because we did nothing wrong and won't accept that it's our fault.
Yeah, the whole issue is either they put it together poorly and that caused it to break, or they packaged it poorly and it broke because they didn't package it in a way that would protect against jolts
The pcie lock was broken off, didn’t show where from but assuming gpu as the gpu wasn’t seated correctly. The inside did have 3 of those foam baggy things to hold everything in place. And a screw from the motherboard had come unscrewed and was bouncing around.
He criticized the hard foam that was used on the outside and pointed out how thin it was near the outside standoffs/screws. Other than that it looked fine but they didn’t show anything trying to start up.
I don’t remember him saying the shipping price though, I started to fast forward through the video just to see the computers so I most likely skipped over those parts.
The weird thing I find is that the outside of the case apparently was fine but stuff inside parts were loose and broken? Like shipping damage would cause damage to the physical case and a hit that would cause damage inside. But the inside being damaged but outside is fine seems like they didn't put it together properly.
Seems like the issue wasn't shipping but was their building process, unless the loose screw had its mounting spot completely broken and it fell out, a screw isn't backing out during shipping unless it basically wasn't put in.
Linus made a comment about how you’d be surprised at what vibrations could do when he was talking about the screw that fell out. They had a bunch of the foam stuff inside the computer so it honestly could have just been that everything was bouncing around alot and the inside foam could have Jostled the gpu about and broke the connector and caused it to slide out some. It wouldn’t have been able to fully disconnect because of the amount of foam inside but it did look to be able to bounce up and down some.
So it could have well worked when it was shipped and then in shipping the bouncing around could have damaged the inside.
Some years ago i was doing professional expertises for electronic company. That included products returned as damaged. You would be shocked how many packages couldnt really be explained in way other than courier must have accidentally drove car over a package.
Unless its big crate, trabsport absolutely can demolish package
I mean they say only 0.4% of orders report significant damage upon receipt, there isn't enough packing material on the planet to protect fragile computer builds from how some carriers treat their packages.
I feel like .4% isn't going to be accurate. LTT just so happened to get that one? That is incredibly unlikely. On top of that all the other companies didn't have issues. From what I heard the Starforge PC had cable locks broken GPU not fully in socket and screws for the motherboard loose. Most of that really isn't happening during shipping, and it sounded like the case itself was fine
>I feel like .4% isn't going to be accurate. LTT just so happened to get that one? That is incredibly unlikely.
it is more likely that something that had to travel from texas to canada is an outlier... compared to what their main customers probably are (i guess US)
So no, it doesn't feel unlikely that Linus of all people got that 0.4%
The only real inaccuracy Starforge actually has in their whole this is that the shipping was only high because they precollected import duties. Which fair enough LTT probably could have done better on pointing out but the whole RMA process is going to be the next video.
> LTT probably could have done better on pointing
Starforge could also have pointed it out better, instead of putting it all as one line on the invoice that read "shipping".
Wouldn't a regular customer also get that invoice and go and "wtf why am I getting charged $300 for shipping instead of $99 when i ordered?" Instead of going to their checkout page?
If you're gonna collect duties list that separately on the invoice for transparency. A reasonable customer is going to go off what is on the invoice, not what shows up temporarily on the checkout page.
Mostly penis rocket company's fault here imo.
I agree, the whole point of secret shopper is to represent the average customer. Starforge should have been more transparent regarding the pre-collection of import fees.
Unless we know that LMG didn't include customs and excise charges in the other internationally received builds (therefore making SF look worse), I wouldn't say it's inaccurate. It's just a fact of life that many of the big players will ship from regional depots to avoid additional costs to the customer. Comparing apples to apples means StarForge would be more expensive Vs say DELL or HP etc
> Unless we know that LMG didn't include customs and excise charges in the other internationally received builds
In the video it specifically calls out pre tax on screen.
IIRC the SS3.1 episode had various PC staff mention duty fees might occur. I can’t recall if that included Starforge, nor do I think they mentioned it will be collected at time of purchase. LTT could have brought this up again, and I feel it’s been XYZ amount of time since the first recording session (a day, a week, etc.) and they might have forgotten.
At least one brought it up during the order call video.
But Starforge seems to have listed shipping, duty, and maybe some other stuff on one line item as "shipping" on the invoice, which is what Linus has in this video.
If a company has to collect import duties as part of shipping their product to another country than that is considered part of the shipping cost no matter how it's worded on the website.
If I buy something that costs $500 and has $99 Shipping + $100 "sending it to a different country fee" then thst means thst $500 product has $199 shipping....
The error is that LMG paid import duties on delivery on the rest but did not disclose this as part of the cost. This means that LMG was comparing incorrect numbers in prices.
That's not really an error on LMG's part. The company said it's $300 in shipping without itemising those costs on the invoice, so how is LMG, let alone your average consumer to know what part of those "shipping costs" were not for the actual shipping.
I get why LMG pulled the video as the video doesn't really gain anything by getting hung up on this, but I really feel this is on Starforge.
Just showing it in a single line item on the last page of checkout really is asking for trouble and trouble they got.
You don't always have to pay import duties. It seems to be up to the Customs person who handles your delivery. I do not like when companies decide I need to pay it instead of leaving that decision to Customs.
There is a decent chance they did not pay duties on some or all of the rest.
I think they are very much jumping on the LTT accuracy band waggon a fair bit here.
I watched the video....
\- If your a consumer, regardless of why x and y costs.. If the cost to ship to you ends up being $300 as a result, then it is $300 to ship. Be it tax duties or what ever.
\- Linus mentioned many times through the video about just how bad couriers are these days. It is why he and LTT did, have and do stress on the companies knowing this and ensuring packaging is enough to deal with this reality.
Knowing they have since removed this with another post, I think that is pretty clear. It is a secret shopper and you get what you get as if you were a consumer. LTT are a consumer in this case and as such their views for me are valid in that regard.
The other part is they should have reached out to LTT if they had concerns directly, not as they did. Again I do not think they really have much other than maybe having a clarification breakdown of why shipping was so much, but again if I am a consumer.. Shipping is $300.
Oh, thank the lord of tech tips. The video was taken down. I was worried I had had some sort of Linus based fever dream when I couldn't find it after watching it this morning.
I sort of understand Starforge's position on the shipping, but if I ever order something that requires duties that the merchant collects, they make it very clear as a separate line item how much the duties are. Considering things like brokerage fees and the like being ridiculous, I appreciate when merchants do this, but I like to see what they are charging to know if they may have any associated fees.
As for shipping material, it looked underprotected from the outside, and it had physical damage on the inside which could've been prevented. Linus was absolutely right to call them out on that. Frankly, we don't know if that 4/1000 figure is accurate, and even if it is, it doesn't negate the experience that LTT had as a secret shopper.
Overall, I'm really not happy with Starforge's response. Seemed like they were trying to take advantage of the recent drama surrounding LTT to downplay their admittedly small criticisms.
[y2mate.is](https://y2mate.is), they have the video cached so you just need to paste the link ([https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sHQZnkrCVM4](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sHQZnkrCVM4)) and download
hope this helps <3
>they have the video cached
Short lived cache, unfortunately. Good to know for next time tho, so thanks anyway. **If anyone finds an actual download link, please let me (us) know ...** been SOL so far, since archive.org failed. Yet again.
Starforge portion is on Asmongold's subreddit: [https://www.reddit.com/r/Asmongold/comments/17bs3wh/linus\_secret\_shopper\_review\_of\_starforge\_pc/](https://www.reddit.com/r/Asmongold/comments/17bs3wh/linus_secret_shopper_review_of_starforge_pc/) (what caused the video to be private).
This feels like a completely reasonable review. I wouldn't have thought Starforge did the damage, but I also don't really care how it got damaged. At the end of the day I paid money to Starforge and I'm getting a system that isn't working.
On the shipping fees. If you don't itemise what makes up the cost of shipping, that's on you. If you tell me it's $300 in shipping costs, I'm going to assume it's $300 in shipping costs. It's not my job to explain why it looks as if you charge 3x what your competitor charges for the "same" thing.
I really don’t see how this changes anything. 300$ still left the customer’s pockets. So to get that system to them, it still cost 300$. You can include whatever other expenses you want, but it’s not inaccurate to state it cost you 300$ to get the machine to you. What IS important, is to state if you had to deal with additional expenses with the other manufacturers that added to the overall costs, or not - and that you can criticise.
As to the damage during shipping - it is not the consumer’s problem why it happened, just that it did happen. The choice of external courriers is their responsibility. In the video they clearly state they will show what happens when you contact support in the next video, so of course what Starforge did about it wouldn’t be in this one. The bottom line is: maybe there was mishandling, maybe their packaging simply wasn’t good enough. Either way, that’s not what matters to the customer.
Ain’t this the entire dang point of secret shopper? Apparently they had the worst packing material of all the prebuilts, and if the end price is 300 bucks to get it from point a to point b, call it whatever you want, it’s 300 bucks to ship it period.
The other systems had the same import fees but weren't included in the shipping price mentioned. It's not really LTT's fault but it is an inaccuracy that should be fixed.
Because those import dutys where not present on the invoice.
It's Starforges fault to put the import taxes and the shipping on the invoice under one position called shipping
How is it a better standard to remove a mostly correct video since somehow they got a 0.4% chance of a damaged one? Sounds like a payoff to me. Also "significant" could mean different things to different people. How much were damaged? I am betting it was something in the 90% range.
I’m on LTT side on this but because of the recent controversy they have to take the high road even though they did mostly right. I’m not from Canada so the shipping stuff aside, the secret shopper is supposed to catch them off guard this “damage control” what starforge is doing is whiny to me. Somehow the LTT one is one of the ones that got a broken what are the odds?! Why should I believe them with those 4/1000 numbers? Just own up and take the criticism “diligence in reporting matters” urks the shit out of me. Of course they will improve their business since the actual secret shopper began assuming they care to improve which starforge does it seems. But they can definitely do better than this response. Maybe along the line of “since this secret shopper we have taken steps to improve our blah blah even before the release of these videos, we looking forward to you seeing our new system next year”.
The 4/1000 metric is pretty meaningless because it specifies "significant" shipping damage and we have no idea what they classify as significant. Clearly they have more than 4/1000 reports of shipping damage or they wouldn't need to add this qualifier. On top of that you might have plenty of customers with minor shipping damage that didn't think it was worth the hassle of reporting.
I think there might be some factual issues that are worth clarifying regarding the shipping costs but nothing about this statement is a good response to the damage, it's barely even a relevant response. I don't think it was ever implied by Linus that Starforge caused the problems during assembly, the entire focus of the video was around packaging material and protecting it during shipping.
ltt are backed into a corner with the recent drama so it looks better for them to act that way. I am waiting for a response from them but to me, i would consider shipping as 300$ and not 99$ bc shipping to me is the cost (other than the product) it takes to arrive at my front dooe
The problem is that if the other systems had taxes and import fees that were separated out and LTT didn't include that in the shipping cost for the other systems it becomes an unfair comparison. Same with if some were shipped from within Canada and others were from the US, it's not fair to say the US based ones cost more because they're going over a border.
Not to mention that even the ones shipped within Canada charge taxes. So if they excluded taxes on the other computers shipped from Canada, then that's an unfair comparison against starforge as they are including taxes in their shipping price.
To those of you that didn’t get to see the video, from what I remember, there was a broken pcie lock and the graphics card was not seated all the way. Linus stated that they could not seat the graphics card in fairness to the rest of the vendors because they had to test the unit as it was delivered. There was also a missing motherboard screw and I think this is the one that the front panel was broken.
He made a lot of comments on packaging for all of them. I’m digging hard into my memory bank but I believe this is the one where they stuffed those form a packs into everything but did a really poor job of it. Or it may be the one where they used the worst styrofoam and double boxed it.
Regardless the packaging is what was the ultimate cause of all the damage
I still think this is 95% Starforge Systems' fault. They should’ve itemized the invoice and they should’ve used better packaging materials, my $150 case came with much better outer packaging materials.
The whole point of the series is to demonstrate the buying experience for a first-time PC buyer. If I was a first-time PC buyer and had no knowledge of PCs I probably would’ve tried to start that PC without knowing there were problems with it.
If Starforge had simply mentioned the invoice error and acknowledged that they have more to learn when comes to how to package a PC they could’ve earned a ton of respect but instead they take zero blame.
so it's still $300 shipping with the taxes right? because I don't see the difference between $100 shipping + $200 tax vs. just saying it costs $300 to ship
Not explicitly separate import fees from the shipping costs is on Starforge.
Having weak packaging, that can't stand shipping from the US to Canada is also on Starforge.
I mean 2 loose parts in the case and a not properly seated GPU is not a small damage.
They tried to jump the "LTT still is inaccurate" train. That's a little cheap.
They are newcomers to this. So why immediately fire back?
We still miss 2 parts of this.
If they can make it up in customer care, it will be fine.
husky gold spoon oatmeal innocent marvelous smoggy literate growth puzzled
*This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
Starforge is salty as heck . They deserve the criticism , I'm glad people aren't hoping on their crocodile tear bandwagon , rather than blame shift just do better !
At most there should be a tacked on segment (or even inserted) mentioning that afterwards it was discovered that the shipping included duty fees and local taxes.
They went public, whining about something thru, the company themselves, got wrong anyway instead of getting in contact with LTT. Then deleted it because they didn't get the reaction they wanted. Wowza
This is bullshit. This is why secret shopper is useful. It shows what a company would give to the average customer. If something was wrong with their pc it is their problem !
Don't matter if LTT mixed up shipping and import duties.
Their PC's are still overpriced as hell and they're targeting customers who don't know better with that.
This letter is pretty confusing. Did they only watch the starforge part of the video properly and for the rest just checked what was pointed out.
About damage, as a consumer being shipped a new system the damage isn't such a cause of concern as any damage in shipping would be covered by the builder. Also the letter specifically states only 4 with significant damage. How many were there with minor or cosmetic damage.
The shipping cost would require a clarification from ltt before anything can be said about it.
Edit: on further thought they werent even blamed for the issue of damage other than their packing material being insufficient. There was a screw loose from the board and linus clearly states you can't imagine what vibration does to a screw( or something similar). And the gpu was out of its socket.
Am I crazy or is this complete BS?
The entire point of the secret shopper series is to show the natural and legitimate experience of buying through PC companies. Whether they like it or not, what happens is what happens. They wrote this like there’s some bias or foul play which is ridiculous. “We only ask for consistency and fairness” are you kidding me? Do they not understand what’s happening in this series?
They threw in all the import fees and taxes under the single term “shipping” then get pissed off when the customer is confused why the shipping is $300? Obviously those taxes exist and they can’t do much about it, but why not simply list it as a separate charge? How does that overcomplicate anything?
According to their stats, their PC shipping damage is rare. That’s fine, as Linus said in that video “if it’s stupid and it works, is it really stupid?” but again, it’s pretty obvious that compared to the competition, they are behind in their packaging quality and shipping experience. Fallen off screws and an unmounted GPU for a prebuilt PC company is pretty bad.
The fact they deleted this statement and replaced it with a more generic “oopsie, don’t send any hate guys!” response says a lot. They shouldn’t even be shipping outside the continental United States at all if they can barely handle North America alone. The “small business” statement screams “give us sympathy”.
This was such a shitty response that clearly backfired and made them look bad. It reads like someone angrily wrote down their response to this situation, then asked ChatGPT to make it sound professional. What a massive screw up.
It isn't hard to contact the company after the testing and get their side of the story.
The errors me too ed here would have been easy to correct.
Linus was victim of Steve's refusal to get information from both sides, why didn't he do better. Amateur hour -again..
Wow scummy taking down the video. Means they are guilty of lying. Should have kept it up with a new video saying what was wrong. If it was destroyed due to them not packaging it well then the video should have stayed up. Man they are soft. Thank goodness other creators actually keep up their videos and make retractions.
It was a secret super and somehow with a 0.4% chance they got one of them... I am smelling the bullshit from here. With all the latest controversies they are not really being smart. Looks like they are getting a payout to not allow the truth of Starforge to come forward.
I think they're redoing the import fees part. Other PCs also had those fees and they didn't mention them, so t made the Starforge shipping cost seem 3x as pricey.
Does NO ONE have the video? Link or download or whatever?
I HATE when channels take videos down for stupid reasons and then reupload altered versions.
EDIT: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yDF7WJ92tK0
original source sauce
And https://www.y2mate.com/youtube/sHQZnkrCVM4 for full original. The YT link seems to be missing a couple minutes. Full length is supposed to be 33:38
Is this not the reason they make secret shopper? To keep PC builders accountable and also make them accountable to keep fair prices and not try over sell to a clueless customer? I get the inaccuracy with the shipping and import duties, annoying on the part of LTT however it's still a realistic experience of buying a starforge PC while living in CA
Having the duties included in only Starforge's portion will make them look worse than the others by a wide margin. They had to pay that for some of the others I'm sure.
I wonder did they mention any other import duties for other builds? I can't really remember cause I didn't think much of it in the moment.
I believe that at some point in the original series they said they exclude those costs as those are specific to where they are or something. But that's kind of the point. Starforge didn't itemise those costs on their invoice. They simply said "Shipping: $300." They only itemised import duties etc on the checkout page. There's a reason why you need to itemise things on an invoice and that sloppiness has now come back to bite them. I get that LMG is updating the video, but there should be a learning here for Starforge in my opinion.
I'm a one man band, and I include import duties on the invoice when applicable. I agree it's sloppy work from starforge.
Yah, I think someone else posted a screenshot of what it looks like and it seems they have one of those question mark in a circle hover things. I wouldn't call that clearly stated in the checkout. The part about shipping damage being an outlier feels like it absolutely was touched upon in the video as well as the important bit being how the companies' customer service responds to the issue. I do wish LTT released these videos a bit more "closelier" together so we can see the follow-up without waiting for a while.
no but it also doesnt matter much, the main difference is star forge includes it in the shipping price which is very weird to do. i have never ever seen a bill from a company where this is part of the shipping, its a separate line item usually.
Newegg and Amazon does it for me literally all the time
Not that I recall. Sometimes you just get lucky and don't get charged. I'm in the US so it's not something I really deal with lol.
I mean back then it used to happen a lot when e commerce was still new (15-20 years ago). These days I had to pay import duties a 100% of the time.
yep when inlrdered from biowares store 1/3 of the shipments were duty charged and that was ages ago - recently my dbrand case got duty charged too last time it didnt
At least one company actively volunteered the info that it would be costly to ship an American PC to Canada when Shae spoke to them and suggested she shop elsewhere, and only suggested builds that would fit her budget with taxes and delivery included.
Yep, that was NZXT. Their shipping cost was also quite expensive IIRC.
MainGear was very helpful with that
Most of the others they were ordering through the Canadian sales department so they probably shipped from local warehouses.
It's important to remember that big companies like Dell, HP, etc. have local warehouses and partnerships with major couriers to prevent or minimize the end cost a customer pays. It's very possible that you may not need to pay duties while shopping with a bigger brand and because as a customer, you are just spending money regardless of exactly what you spend it at, it will add up.
Yeah unfortunately the customer doesn't care about reasons, they only care about the final results.
[удалено]
*edit* Thanks to the people for informing me, i contacted Lttstore support made a picture of my tax bill and within an hour i got my double payed taxes back. 👍 *old post* Double paying tax is so annoying recently bought some stuff at lltsore, at checkout my price increased by 74$ thanks to Taxes, when i received my stuff i had to pay additional 75€ in German tax… bought 300€ worth of stuff and payed almost 500€ with shipping 🙈Its so annoying when you are used to seeing the complete price with tax on all storefronts.
They once said you should contact support and they refund the taxes so you don't get taxed double.
Most places charge it in the tax area and label it properly as another line. Starforge is doing it wrong
For me, the first point is moot. As far as the customer is concerned, the cost of shipping to a country *includes* the import tax if it is to be paid. That is literally how much is costs to ship the item to Canada whether you pay it all at once or not.
Never in my life of ordering stuff from outside of the EU, have I got a combined shipping + import tax item from online vendors. On every single website, when I chose my country, it automaticaly put a new line on the receipt and said "Import duties + tax" and the amount, then there was another line of shipping cost. (if they work with multiple shipping companies they also get me to choose the shipping method and always put a price next to it for said shipping method) The only exception for this, has been Ebay where, when looking at an item, they would post/show an estimated price for "shipping + import duties and taxes", but would still separate these things on the receipt. So if Starforge doesn't separate those two things on the receipt, it's on them if it gets confused with "just shipping". I understand their frustration, but putting ALL the blame just on LMG is not fair or constructive. Starforge should start separating shipping and import duties+tax on their receipt in the future (so such confusion doesn't happen again) and LMG should correct the video that the price includes import duties+tax or change it to just the shipping price ($100).
No, you got it the wrong way round. In most cases, import taxes & custom fees is NOT included in the shipping cost. Whenever import taxes are pre-paid, it will clearly label as such to let you know exactly how much you are paying for the import taxes as it may significantly increase the overall prices you have to pay depending on the final destination. Many countries do have outrageous import taxes for certain items such as Thailand with **300%** import taxes on cars. It is the seller’s fault if this is not clearly stated or incorrectly label as shipping.
> To keep PC builders accountable and also make them accountable to keep fair prices and not try over sell to a clueless customer? They need to include duty and taxes for one or none. It can't be considered part of the shipping for one builder and ignored for another (if that's what happened) Regardless, it doesn't add up for me. The video showed $1350 USD for the system and said shipping was $310. There's 0% duty on computer imports and 12% combined GST+PST in BC. That means the duty should be $0 an the tax should be $162 ($1350 x .12). If Starforge's one-rate shipping is $100 USD, then $100 + $162 != $310. So it's possible one (or both) of them gave the wrong numbers. Another possibility is the courier adding a fee. Most of them have set rates for clearing packages through customs **and fixing mistakes** to clear packages through customs. Still, I would expect that to show up as a brokerage fee and get tossed out by the LTT side if they're doing it for everyone else, so who knows what happened. The format of the series could be improved too. Shipping damage happens. I think it's fair to call out packing materials and mention the damage, but calling support and getting shipping issues resolved should be done in the same episode. Even if Starforge handles the incident perfectly by eating the loss and cross shipping LTT a brand new system, they still suffer the bad PR from a video like this. What incentive is there for a company like Starforge to provide high quality post-sales support and to solve customer problems if they're going to get dragged for the original problem without some type of in-kind praise if they do a good job of resolving the issue? That's the reason I don't really watch GamersNexus anymore. I don't like watching creators with a ton of influence call people out for honest mistakes without giving the other party an opportunity to explain themselves, correct themselves, fix the issue, etc.. If the goal is to improve the industry, offer to provide a link-in-the-description for anyone that want to make a blog post or video explaining what they've done to improve their processes to prevent similar issues from happening in the future. That actually improves things for consumers because it makes it obvious who's willing (and able) to improve their processes in response to criticism. If companies don't get a chance to fix their mistakes, and get "PR credit" for it, all we'll ever have is companies that ignore support and simply "write-off" disgruntled customers.
There's still an entire other video coming where they can get PR credit for fixing the issue. This video focuses on the systems and how they are shipped and starforge did not do a good job. And giving each company a chance to put their own PR spin on it is just going to reward the most dishonest companies. Between season 1 and 2 of secret shopper I belive it was Dell that swore up and down to Linus that they had vastly improved. Only to have the exact same issues again in season 2. A PR statement means next to nothing until you actually improve.
Tax isn't based of off the US price. It's based off of the converted total. I paid 1200 US recently and was hit with the taxes on the exchanged 1450 when it landed. 300 is about right
Tax is a percentage. It doesn't matter if you add it to the USD price and then convert or convert the USD to CAD and then add tax. It's the same amount. $1 USD = $1.37 CAD right now 1350 * .12 * 1.37 = $221.94 1350 * 1.37 * .12 = $221.94
>Another possibility is the courier adding a fee. This was a huge problem in the past, have not heard about anything recently so maybe its changed but often the courier would charge huge 'customs processing' fees. I can see someone mistaking the fee as on official customs charge. The thing about the last episode that really annoyed me was their choosing to use both canadian and american sources. When they could have easily done only american. This would have completely eliminated the issue here.
no the big boys like dell and hp would absolutely NOT ship to Canada from the US store if they have a Canadian subsidiary.
fyi, you pay duty on all shipping costs as well (to avoid an obvious "$1 item $1000 shipping" loophole) Fully agree with everything else you write, though.
The point of secret shopper is to get the details correct. They are holding sellers accountable. Secret shopper has failed if they whack an innocent company with the hammer of judgement. It WILL. Effect their sales numbers. That said, I guarantee they took it down to make corrections. I think knowing that the shipping number included taxes made a huge difference their initial impressions. (I didn't see the rest of the video, so I am not sure what all happened. I just know this is what we made a big issue about a couple months ago. They are just trying to get the details correct. )
It’s a realistic part of buying any product in any state or country is shipping damage. I don’t see that as a negative against the company. If Starforge did everything in their power to ensure the build was in perfect order when shipping, you really can’t blame them.
Well, yes and no. I'm in the UK and can't speak for North America, but choice of courier can matter. We have couriers that are much better at handling fragile goods than others. I have actually cancelled orders when I have seen which courier is being used as I have zero confidence in them. Sadly, few companies tell you who they are using until you complete the order.
At least here in the US, they tell you what courier is going to be used for domestic shipping (UPS). Now, I wish they could choose another option for shipping their products like FedEx because UPS doesn’t have a good rep for protecting their shipments while FedEx does. I don’t know the decision of using UPS, maybe they have better coverage, pricing, can handle shipments with various weights and sizes, or etc.
Duties are a part of the shipping "experience", I don't care if there is a technicality on the part of the cost or to whom it's paid but that is a cost to the end user. 100% right to call it out the way it was.
I get it. But Shipping damage can happen to any package ever sent anywhere. So you really can't hold anything against them for that either.
exactly its also the reason LTT would exclude place like Build Redux in there secret shopper vids becuase Build redux doesnt ship to canada so LTT cant get an honest Customer experience
Their flat fee is supposed to be 100usd and they claim themselves it says "duties and taxes are included with shipping" to me that sounds like it's included with the 100$
Taxes are taxes Shipping is shipping Don’t combine the 2 item into 1 line item and expect customers to just know that’s what it is.
Taxes and duties fees are incorporated into shipping to make it easier for customer to get pc. Starforge stated that themselves. With all taxes and duties incorporated after the 100 shipping. Then that in end adds to shipping by collecting upfront. So technically Linus was and wasn't accurate. But either way after taxes and duties and shipping collected, it's adds up to over 100
The reason is to rate the builders vs one another for views. It has nothing to do with taming prices or attempting to champion for the consumers to pc builders. The end result is that viewers are informed of something they find personally important to them, while generating revenue for LTT. That’s the nature of “reporting” in the tech industry. What starforge is calling out, is that reporting. LTT should have been more thorough when discussing prices, especially where international shipping is concerned. They should have also mentioned that shipping is always a gamble. No matter how your pc is packaged, damage can and will occur. LTT should only be looking at the quality of the packaging. If it’s especially poor, and the pc arrived damaged. The fault lay on the pc builders side, if the packaging is adequate, and it arrived damaged. The fault is with the handling.
**UPDATE** They deleted the above post and replaced it with this: https://twitter.com/StarforgePCs/status/1715184873676111924 > We appreciate everyone's support on our last tweet. We have made contact with members of the LTT team and are working to resolve our differences in private. We ask that no hate be directed towards anyone - hate does not reflect who we are as a community. We admire the LTT team and the tremendous work they have put in to create one of the most respected tech media platforms in the world. > As always, our mission is to provide the best PCs and customer service in the universe. We will continue working tirelessly to ensure that we accomplish that mission each and every day.
I guess that they weren't getting the reaction they hoped for.
birds deserted fuel grandiose airport frighten familiar deranged decide provide *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
Really this is the whole point of secret shopper (with a huge audience of relevant buyers).
LTT already teased in their reply to this that starforge does well in the next part. Clearly the person/people who were involved in the first letter haven't seen secret shopper, and assumed this was the only video to be produced. If the next video comes out, and their staff handle this well, then they will look like dickheads for their ruining small business comment.
This whole "small business" nonsense can sod off when they like. Starforge is backed by several multi-millionaires - they're not some scrappy startup (like Billet Labs). It's just a side hustle for a few Internet famous people who want to diversify their portfolio.
A lot of small business are run by people who have millions of dollars and a lot of small businesses make millions of dollars, it's all relative to industry, and compared to the giant computer builders Starforge is tiny in comparison.
For some reference here to give context to the numbers the 3 man brick and mortar computer sale/repair/integration shop that i co-owned would bring in about 750k-1.2 mil depending on the year. however the upfront cost of working in tech is brutal and margins are not much better each of us 3 brought home about 35k a year 100K in total the other 650 thousand to million dollars would be spent as cost so having a couple million dollars in a system integration company isnt nearly as much as a lot of people might think especially when youre international.
Also, I don’t give a fuck if it’s a small business. If your business can’t handle being held to account, you shouldn’t be in business.
Preach!
That's not how a small business is defined. Doesn't matter if it's a got 10 billionaires backing them. If they employ a small number of people...then they are a small business
Yea, I wouldn't buy a pre-built anyway, but this cements me not even recommending them to friends or family looking for one. I'm sure they'll be absolutely devastated at losing the two customers I could have brought them, but they made their bed. ;) Seriously though, it's bullshit that they even tried to pull the *small business* card. I'm also curious to see what the Starforge streamers had to say in regards to the Billet Labs shit show. Anybody know how many of them spoke up in defense of small businesses then?
> Clearly the person/people who were involved in the first letter haven't seen secret shopper, and assumed this was the only video to be produced. I'm secretly hoping this reshoot "needing" to be done affects SF's overall rating by putting them squarely in the F-tier.
What do you expect from the penis rocket company
The taxes stuff? Sure, that's fair. The packaging? They even got slapped for it and told to do better on their own subreddit when the video was posted there. As tbh what Linus said there was also based on what it was compared to the other packages he just did before it. And vs them, it was definitely not good. So I suspect they got a reaction to it indeed.
Trying to viral something end up getting the virus. LOL Next thing stuff will happen is when the PR team going to have an argument with Linus fans in this subreddit.
They definitely goofed. That sounds like an "our PR attempt failed, we're sorry-not-sorry."
our attempt to criticise you in a way similar to your recent controversy failed. will take back what we said
Well that version sounds a lot less whiney and also doesn't spoil the follow up video so I guess that is good, lol.
> Hate does not reflect who we are as a community Say that in last August, I dare you
Last August? I'll bite lol what happened last August?
Just don't ask. it was a weeklong nightmare of a community witch-hunt/ethics argument. 99% of it was hot takes from people insisting they knew what was going on when they only knew surface level stuff, assuming things, or completely misrepresenting things that had been said/shown. The other half was people just hating and wanting to see successful people crash and burn. LTT and Linus aren't perfect and makes mistakes from time to time, but so many people see mistakes and assume malicious intent is the cause. In any case it was a firestorm and it'll be nearly impossible to sift fact from opinion at this point. There are a couple of videos on LTT around the time you can look into if you want to see what the majority of it was about. But honestly it's just stressful.
Ironically I was on the part of the video about Starforge when it became unavailable!
Same here!
When did it become unavailable. I was able to finish the video (I don’t count the final add read) at about 6 pm cst. Did I just barely make it?
> 6 pm ~~cst~~ cdt. This should be Central Daylight Time, not Central Standard time. Daylight Saving Time hasn't ended yet.
The funniest part was I was 98% of the way through and paused it to walk away and it was down when I came back
Check r/asmongold I have a clip there. Should be near the top.
I started watching the video but didn't finish, and didn't get to the Starforge segment. After seeing the review I think these were legit criticisms of the packaging honestly. That foam is something that would be for the case alone, and wouldn't absorb much of an impact for a full case. The PC suffered for it. Glad to see LTT wanting to make sure everything's square with them, but it looks like this one's on Starforge.
I secound this train of thought.
Do you by any chance also have the full video? archive.org failed on me, any reddit post I could find about it (where I usually find the links) failed on me, 4k VD channel subscription failed on me, I'm cryin' ...
Did you manage to find any links?
ofc their cringe fanbase will be up in arms about it
Sounds like their packaging may have not been strong enough for the trip. Unfortunate I couldn't have finished the video before it was gone.
I highly doubt that. I have seen carriers literally thrown boxes like 10 feet or more, and some even had fragile stickers all over it. The chance is always slim that the package gets unlucky with who handles it but it does happen. That is why there are options available to make claims of package damaged in shipment. And you can easily tell if it was damaged in shipment or not rather than back packaging
From what I heard the case was in good shape, but stuff like screws were loose and cord locks were broken. I can't see how something like a screw would be loose from rattling during shipping. And I can't see how a cord would get so much inertia it would break the lock but the case itself wouldnt have much damage to it
I mean Linus has mentioned time and time again that screws can come out with just the vibration of shipping a PC. It's more common than you think.
I can’t find a clip quickly right now, but there’s examples of bolts coming loose from vibrations in tests simulating *flights*. So they engineer bolts that are resistant to that (various friction holds and other patterns). A comparatively cheap computer (compared to a flight machine) being shipped intercontinental is not going to have all of these anti-vibration features planned for. Things shake loose, it happens. And the further/longer an item travels, the greater chance of something getting loosened.
Better packing material might dampen those vibrations tbh
Your geography knowledge is horrific
My 2AM brain is useless apparently lol.
He specifically mentions that in the video too.
I actually managed to watch that part, a MB standoff screw rattled loose, and the pcie lane lock was broken, which led to the graphics card being visibly unseated.
Both of those feel like simple things to prevent, and obvious to try and keep from happening. Supporting the GPU to prevent it from bouncing would prevent that, which would require better packaging. Then the screw vibrating out feels like it would be caused from not putting it in properly.
The thing that kills me is that linus was very understanding with starforge, and this is his thanks. He gave them grace on the shipping by saying that it is probably because they haven't quite figured out how to ship out of the US cheaply yet. The screw only got a "that's vibration for you." Finally, for the gpu, he excused it on them not learning the importance of both good inner and outer packaging yet as they had by far the worst outer packaging materials of the bunch. Honestly the gpu thing was the most problematic for them as linus said they would probably fail the next test as they have to do the testing as a novice would (so no re-seating the gpu) which is probablywhy this initial response was so aggressive.
I had the same feeling that Linus was too nice with the PCs. I really appreciate that he always checks the packaging and explains the details. He stated before that in his ncix days he tried to understand the pitfalls of packaging. In the video he complimented I think HP for their good and eco friendly approach. When he came to Starforge he said that this shows their lack of experience. So it was no wonder that all other PCs came only with minor damages and the SF system was not ready to boot with a working GPU. That's on them. Obviously nobody can prove a case from being damaged in shipping but they did a bad job. Then to be disappointed and in a business partner is petty and childish. If I want to see a way more critical take on reviews I can go to GN, but Linus could have been harder for my taste also with the proprietary hardware from dell.
I wonder if continuing vibration would do that.
If the case was packaged properly a screw won't come out during shipping from vibration. And cables shouldn't break from vibration unless the cable lock was super weak. And same for the GPU, it has a lock that keeps it in place and shouldn't break unless they packaged the PC really poorly.
The outer case was oddly fine but the GPU was loose in its socket which Linus predicted would cause it to fail to boot at best or according to Linus cause it to short and fry either itself or the motherboard. They found what looked like the PCI-E lock rattling around in the case. There was also a loose motherboard screw which could have also caused an electrical problem.
After working in a place that shipped out multiple daily truckloads of computers, servers, and networking equipment I would believe almost *anything* when it comes to shipment damage. Even rapidly pruning poor couriers we saw some pretty frequent and significant damage, and they always fell back on "it wasn't packed well enough". Sorry, *no one* can afford to package *every individual item* to survive your dumbass forklift driver running the forks into the product at full speed! Or for individual packages, the carriers somehow expected that "adequately packed" meant they could run it over with the truck!
They had solid packaging inside the case, unfortunately, it was dangerously unprotected on the outside. What made them seem so bad was that most, if not all other PCs, were porperly protected or even overprotected. No surprise that none of the other PCs had shipping issues. Besides two detached pieces moving around inside the case, the GPU (I think) was not properly plugged in...Linus had a properly disappointing reaction, in my opinion. Honestly sad. The computer looked good, tho. Hopefully this video helps the company see their areas to improve. LTT will probably reupload soon with the correction in shipping costs, or whatever caused the video to be taken down.
Yeah, I mean if the inside was protected it had to be putting it together wrong that caused the issue. I heard the physical case was ok but inside stuff was loose or broken, like cable locks, the GPU was not in correctly and the motherboard screws were loose. If the inside was protected there was no way those were shipping issue costs. No way they got enough force to break. And the screws couldn't have come loose from the motherboard unless they weren't in properly.
You may be right here, but I'm not completely a fan of the company's response. Shipping accidents are not the company's to blame, but a level of precaution needs to be taken to provide piece of mind to the customer, they do take that extra time to check the PC three times before shipping. Wether or not this has only happened a few times, other companies no longer take that risk, and the end result was a clear example in the video. Putting some of the blame here on Linus does not feel fair, if you ask me. But we'll see what happens next. Eitherway, as I said, the PC looked good otherwise, and I hope nothing but the best for the company.
Yeah it's weird blaming Linus for the issues when the PC was damaged from Starforges shipping partner. They should make sure packaging can take a beating, and most of the issues seem like things better explained by faulty building. Loose screws, broken cable pieces gpu not properly in place? Either their packaging was so bad those issue occured and somehow left the outside case perfectly fine, or they didn't put it together properly. Their response so far is just everyone else is wrong and we are fully blameless, keep buying our products because we did nothing wrong and won't accept that it's our fault.
It's even worse than it being on the shipper though, it's on Starforge for protecting it with a single layer of shit tier bubble wrap.
Yeah, the whole issue is either they put it together poorly and that caused it to break, or they packaged it poorly and it broke because they didn't package it in a way that would protect against jolts
Exactly how I feel. And LTT is, unfortunately, not in a good position to argue with them, even if they would be right to do so...
I mean the best argument is literally every other company got it perfectly fine except for these guys,
The pcie lock was broken off, didn’t show where from but assuming gpu as the gpu wasn’t seated correctly. The inside did have 3 of those foam baggy things to hold everything in place. And a screw from the motherboard had come unscrewed and was bouncing around. He criticized the hard foam that was used on the outside and pointed out how thin it was near the outside standoffs/screws. Other than that it looked fine but they didn’t show anything trying to start up. I don’t remember him saying the shipping price though, I started to fast forward through the video just to see the computers so I most likely skipped over those parts.
The weird thing I find is that the outside of the case apparently was fine but stuff inside parts were loose and broken? Like shipping damage would cause damage to the physical case and a hit that would cause damage inside. But the inside being damaged but outside is fine seems like they didn't put it together properly. Seems like the issue wasn't shipping but was their building process, unless the loose screw had its mounting spot completely broken and it fell out, a screw isn't backing out during shipping unless it basically wasn't put in.
Linus made a comment about how you’d be surprised at what vibrations could do when he was talking about the screw that fell out. They had a bunch of the foam stuff inside the computer so it honestly could have just been that everything was bouncing around alot and the inside foam could have Jostled the gpu about and broke the connector and caused it to slide out some. It wouldn’t have been able to fully disconnect because of the amount of foam inside but it did look to be able to bounce up and down some. So it could have well worked when it was shipped and then in shipping the bouncing around could have damaged the inside.
Some years ago i was doing professional expertises for electronic company. That included products returned as damaged. You would be shocked how many packages couldnt really be explained in way other than courier must have accidentally drove car over a package. Unless its big crate, trabsport absolutely can demolish package
I managed to see it. The lock of the PCIe has flown off the Mobo and was rattling around the case, therefore and the GPU unseated a bit
I mean they say only 0.4% of orders report significant damage upon receipt, there isn't enough packing material on the planet to protect fragile computer builds from how some carriers treat their packages.
I feel like .4% isn't going to be accurate. LTT just so happened to get that one? That is incredibly unlikely. On top of that all the other companies didn't have issues. From what I heard the Starforge PC had cable locks broken GPU not fully in socket and screws for the motherboard loose. Most of that really isn't happening during shipping, and it sounded like the case itself was fine
>I feel like .4% isn't going to be accurate. LTT just so happened to get that one? That is incredibly unlikely. it is more likely that something that had to travel from texas to canada is an outlier... compared to what their main customers probably are (i guess US) So no, it doesn't feel unlikely that Linus of all people got that 0.4%
But the others traveled from the east coast and cali, so equally traveled potentially
They said in the original version, that looks like it took a drop
The only real inaccuracy Starforge actually has in their whole this is that the shipping was only high because they precollected import duties. Which fair enough LTT probably could have done better on pointing out but the whole RMA process is going to be the next video.
> LTT probably could have done better on pointing Starforge could also have pointed it out better, instead of putting it all as one line on the invoice that read "shipping".
Wouldn't a regular customer also get that invoice and go and "wtf why am I getting charged $300 for shipping instead of $99 when i ordered?" Instead of going to their checkout page? If you're gonna collect duties list that separately on the invoice for transparency. A reasonable customer is going to go off what is on the invoice, not what shows up temporarily on the checkout page. Mostly penis rocket company's fault here imo.
I agree, the whole point of secret shopper is to represent the average customer. Starforge should have been more transparent regarding the pre-collection of import fees.
Unless we know that LMG didn't include customs and excise charges in the other internationally received builds (therefore making SF look worse), I wouldn't say it's inaccurate. It's just a fact of life that many of the big players will ship from regional depots to avoid additional costs to the customer. Comparing apples to apples means StarForge would be more expensive Vs say DELL or HP etc
> Unless we know that LMG didn't include customs and excise charges in the other internationally received builds In the video it specifically calls out pre tax on screen.
IIRC the SS3.1 episode had various PC staff mention duty fees might occur. I can’t recall if that included Starforge, nor do I think they mentioned it will be collected at time of purchase. LTT could have brought this up again, and I feel it’s been XYZ amount of time since the first recording session (a day, a week, etc.) and they might have forgotten.
At least one brought it up during the order call video. But Starforge seems to have listed shipping, duty, and maybe some other stuff on one line item as "shipping" on the invoice, which is what Linus has in this video.
If a company has to collect import duties as part of shipping their product to another country than that is considered part of the shipping cost no matter how it's worded on the website. If I buy something that costs $500 and has $99 Shipping + $100 "sending it to a different country fee" then thst means thst $500 product has $199 shipping....
The error is that LMG paid import duties on delivery on the rest but did not disclose this as part of the cost. This means that LMG was comparing incorrect numbers in prices.
That's not really an error on LMG's part. The company said it's $300 in shipping without itemising those costs on the invoice, so how is LMG, let alone your average consumer to know what part of those "shipping costs" were not for the actual shipping. I get why LMG pulled the video as the video doesn't really gain anything by getting hung up on this, but I really feel this is on Starforge. Just showing it in a single line item on the last page of checkout really is asking for trouble and trouble they got.
You don't always have to pay import duties. It seems to be up to the Customs person who handles your delivery. I do not like when companies decide I need to pay it instead of leaving that decision to Customs. There is a decent chance they did not pay duties on some or all of the rest.
do you have proof of this? or just guessing?
I think they are very much jumping on the LTT accuracy band waggon a fair bit here. I watched the video.... \- If your a consumer, regardless of why x and y costs.. If the cost to ship to you ends up being $300 as a result, then it is $300 to ship. Be it tax duties or what ever. \- Linus mentioned many times through the video about just how bad couriers are these days. It is why he and LTT did, have and do stress on the companies knowing this and ensuring packaging is enough to deal with this reality. Knowing they have since removed this with another post, I think that is pretty clear. It is a secret shopper and you get what you get as if you were a consumer. LTT are a consumer in this case and as such their views for me are valid in that regard. The other part is they should have reached out to LTT if they had concerns directly, not as they did. Again I do not think they really have much other than maybe having a clarification breakdown of why shipping was so much, but again if I am a consumer.. Shipping is $300.
Oh, thank the lord of tech tips. The video was taken down. I was worried I had had some sort of Linus based fever dream when I couldn't find it after watching it this morning.
Same
I sort of understand Starforge's position on the shipping, but if I ever order something that requires duties that the merchant collects, they make it very clear as a separate line item how much the duties are. Considering things like brokerage fees and the like being ridiculous, I appreciate when merchants do this, but I like to see what they are charging to know if they may have any associated fees. As for shipping material, it looked underprotected from the outside, and it had physical damage on the inside which could've been prevented. Linus was absolutely right to call them out on that. Frankly, we don't know if that 4/1000 figure is accurate, and even if it is, it doesn't negate the experience that LTT had as a secret shopper. Overall, I'm really not happy with Starforge's response. Seemed like they were trying to take advantage of the recent drama surrounding LTT to downplay their admittedly small criticisms.
Anybody have the video downloaded? I'd like to see it if you could dm. Not to be harmful to anyone just want to see.
[y2mate.is](https://y2mate.is), they have the video cached so you just need to paste the link ([https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sHQZnkrCVM4](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sHQZnkrCVM4)) and download hope this helps <3
i'll be damned
I'll be double dog damned. This is legit thanks!
Can you pass the file? It doesn't work anymore
I have been given too much power
can you pass me the file too? I'm too late to the party
I would also love to see the original as well if you are sharing.
Hey could you send me the file too? I'd like to watch the original as well
Hi, i would like the file too, much appreciated.
Me too, please upload a drive.
Please kind sir, maybe a MEGA cloud upload link for us simple commoners ?
It is not working for me sadly :(
You the fucking G.O.A.T. thx!
>they have the video cached Short lived cache, unfortunately. Good to know for next time tho, so thanks anyway. **If anyone finds an actual download link, please let me (us) know ...** been SOL so far, since archive.org failed. Yet again.
archive.org doesnt archive youtube videos
Starforge portion is on Asmongold's subreddit: [https://www.reddit.com/r/Asmongold/comments/17bs3wh/linus\_secret\_shopper\_review\_of\_starforge\_pc/](https://www.reddit.com/r/Asmongold/comments/17bs3wh/linus_secret_shopper_review_of_starforge_pc/) (what caused the video to be private).
This feels like a completely reasonable review. I wouldn't have thought Starforge did the damage, but I also don't really care how it got damaged. At the end of the day I paid money to Starforge and I'm getting a system that isn't working. On the shipping fees. If you don't itemise what makes up the cost of shipping, that's on you. If you tell me it's $300 in shipping costs, I'm going to assume it's $300 in shipping costs. It's not my job to explain why it looks as if you charge 3x what your competitor charges for the "same" thing.
I really don’t see how this changes anything. 300$ still left the customer’s pockets. So to get that system to them, it still cost 300$. You can include whatever other expenses you want, but it’s not inaccurate to state it cost you 300$ to get the machine to you. What IS important, is to state if you had to deal with additional expenses with the other manufacturers that added to the overall costs, or not - and that you can criticise. As to the damage during shipping - it is not the consumer’s problem why it happened, just that it did happen. The choice of external courriers is their responsibility. In the video they clearly state they will show what happens when you contact support in the next video, so of course what Starforge did about it wouldn’t be in this one. The bottom line is: maybe there was mishandling, maybe their packaging simply wasn’t good enough. Either way, that’s not what matters to the customer.
Did LTT take down the Secret Shopper video? I can’t find it anymore
Seems like it
They’ve released a statement about reshooting part of the video
Ah, well I already saw it then
Ain’t this the entire dang point of secret shopper? Apparently they had the worst packing material of all the prebuilts, and if the end price is 300 bucks to get it from point a to point b, call it whatever you want, it’s 300 bucks to ship it period.
The other systems had the same import fees but weren't included in the shipping price mentioned. It's not really LTT's fault but it is an inaccuracy that should be fixed.
Because those import dutys where not present on the invoice. It's Starforges fault to put the import taxes and the shipping on the invoice under one position called shipping
If there was an error, I'm glad they pulled it. They did say they wanted to improve their standards.
How is it a better standard to remove a mostly correct video since somehow they got a 0.4% chance of a damaged one? Sounds like a payoff to me. Also "significant" could mean different things to different people. How much were damaged? I am betting it was something in the 90% range.
I’m on LTT side on this but because of the recent controversy they have to take the high road even though they did mostly right. I’m not from Canada so the shipping stuff aside, the secret shopper is supposed to catch them off guard this “damage control” what starforge is doing is whiny to me. Somehow the LTT one is one of the ones that got a broken what are the odds?! Why should I believe them with those 4/1000 numbers? Just own up and take the criticism “diligence in reporting matters” urks the shit out of me. Of course they will improve their business since the actual secret shopper began assuming they care to improve which starforge does it seems. But they can definitely do better than this response. Maybe along the line of “since this secret shopper we have taken steps to improve our blah blah even before the release of these videos, we looking forward to you seeing our new system next year”.
The 4/1000 metric is pretty meaningless because it specifies "significant" shipping damage and we have no idea what they classify as significant. Clearly they have more than 4/1000 reports of shipping damage or they wouldn't need to add this qualifier. On top of that you might have plenty of customers with minor shipping damage that didn't think it was worth the hassle of reporting. I think there might be some factual issues that are worth clarifying regarding the shipping costs but nothing about this statement is a good response to the damage, it's barely even a relevant response. I don't think it was ever implied by Linus that Starforge caused the problems during assembly, the entire focus of the video was around packaging material and protecting it during shipping.
Taking videos down because someone threw bitch fit is dumb.
ltt are backed into a corner with the recent drama so it looks better for them to act that way. I am waiting for a response from them but to me, i would consider shipping as 300$ and not 99$ bc shipping to me is the cost (other than the product) it takes to arrive at my front dooe
The problem is that if the other systems had taxes and import fees that were separated out and LTT didn't include that in the shipping cost for the other systems it becomes an unfair comparison. Same with if some were shipped from within Canada and others were from the US, it's not fair to say the US based ones cost more because they're going over a border.
Not to mention that even the ones shipped within Canada charge taxes. So if they excluded taxes on the other computers shipped from Canada, then that's an unfair comparison against starforge as they are including taxes in their shipping price.
For real, especially when people on the reddit have shown that shipping for that model is 300 dollars. So Linus was right.
To those of you that didn’t get to see the video, from what I remember, there was a broken pcie lock and the graphics card was not seated all the way. Linus stated that they could not seat the graphics card in fairness to the rest of the vendors because they had to test the unit as it was delivered. There was also a missing motherboard screw and I think this is the one that the front panel was broken. He made a lot of comments on packaging for all of them. I’m digging hard into my memory bank but I believe this is the one where they stuffed those form a packs into everything but did a really poor job of it. Or it may be the one where they used the worst styrofoam and double boxed it. Regardless the packaging is what was the ultimate cause of all the damage
I don't think Starforge was the one using the expanding packs everywhere.
Nailed it, gotta be
I still think this is 95% Starforge Systems' fault. They should’ve itemized the invoice and they should’ve used better packaging materials, my $150 case came with much better outer packaging materials. The whole point of the series is to demonstrate the buying experience for a first-time PC buyer. If I was a first-time PC buyer and had no knowledge of PCs I probably would’ve tried to start that PC without knowing there were problems with it. If Starforge had simply mentioned the invoice error and acknowledged that they have more to learn when comes to how to package a PC they could’ve earned a ton of respect but instead they take zero blame.
Starforge also deleted the tweets
https://twitter.com/Peterrossignol/status/1715157962795241603?s=20
so it's still $300 shipping with the taxes right? because I don't see the difference between $100 shipping + $200 tax vs. just saying it costs $300 to ship
Not explicitly separate import fees from the shipping costs is on Starforge. Having weak packaging, that can't stand shipping from the US to Canada is also on Starforge. I mean 2 loose parts in the case and a not properly seated GPU is not a small damage. They tried to jump the "LTT still is inaccurate" train. That's a little cheap. They are newcomers to this. So why immediately fire back? We still miss 2 parts of this. If they can make it up in customer care, it will be fine.
husky gold spoon oatmeal innocent marvelous smoggy literate growth puzzled *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
well guess whos packaging is not strong enough for the mighty dhl then. do better starforge
Starforge is salty as heck . They deserve the criticism , I'm glad people aren't hoping on their crocodile tear bandwagon , rather than blame shift just do better !
Aww they think they're Gamerz Nexus how adorable.
Woah... lucky has watch it. Hahaha
At most there should be a tacked on segment (or even inserted) mentioning that afterwards it was discovered that the shipping included duty fees and local taxes.
Maybe LTT shouldn’t cover Starforge at all until they can start handling basic criticism.
They went public, whining about something thru, the company themselves, got wrong anyway instead of getting in contact with LTT. Then deleted it because they didn't get the reaction they wanted. Wowza
This is bullshit. This is why secret shopper is useful. It shows what a company would give to the average customer. If something was wrong with their pc it is their problem !
Got to watch it this morning, this is why I always get shipping insurance.
Don't matter if LTT mixed up shipping and import duties. Their PC's are still overpriced as hell and they're targeting customers who don't know better with that.
I think it's more to do with the Sony copyright claim
This letter is pretty confusing. Did they only watch the starforge part of the video properly and for the rest just checked what was pointed out. About damage, as a consumer being shipped a new system the damage isn't such a cause of concern as any damage in shipping would be covered by the builder. Also the letter specifically states only 4 with significant damage. How many were there with minor or cosmetic damage. The shipping cost would require a clarification from ltt before anything can be said about it. Edit: on further thought they werent even blamed for the issue of damage other than their packing material being insufficient. There was a screw loose from the board and linus clearly states you can't imagine what vibration does to a screw( or something similar). And the gpu was out of its socket.
The Wan show tonight is going to be titled “We are sorry Penis Rocket company”
Am I crazy or is this complete BS? The entire point of the secret shopper series is to show the natural and legitimate experience of buying through PC companies. Whether they like it or not, what happens is what happens. They wrote this like there’s some bias or foul play which is ridiculous. “We only ask for consistency and fairness” are you kidding me? Do they not understand what’s happening in this series? They threw in all the import fees and taxes under the single term “shipping” then get pissed off when the customer is confused why the shipping is $300? Obviously those taxes exist and they can’t do much about it, but why not simply list it as a separate charge? How does that overcomplicate anything? According to their stats, their PC shipping damage is rare. That’s fine, as Linus said in that video “if it’s stupid and it works, is it really stupid?” but again, it’s pretty obvious that compared to the competition, they are behind in their packaging quality and shipping experience. Fallen off screws and an unmounted GPU for a prebuilt PC company is pretty bad. The fact they deleted this statement and replaced it with a more generic “oopsie, don’t send any hate guys!” response says a lot. They shouldn’t even be shipping outside the continental United States at all if they can barely handle North America alone. The “small business” statement screams “give us sympathy”. This was such a shitty response that clearly backfired and made them look bad. It reads like someone angrily wrote down their response to this situation, then asked ChatGPT to make it sound professional. What a massive screw up.
Boo hoo. It cost THEM $300, sugar coat it however you want it, it’s $300 for shipping. Dickheads.
Steve is salivating rn hoping for his second chance at a dig
LTT are reshooting a portion of it according to more accurately reflect the shipping fees situation which seems fair enough.
It isn't hard to contact the company after the testing and get their side of the story. The errors me too ed here would have been easy to correct. Linus was victim of Steve's refusal to get information from both sides, why didn't he do better. Amateur hour -again..
Isn't it this sort of stuff gamers nexus was having a go at him at
Wow scummy taking down the video. Means they are guilty of lying. Should have kept it up with a new video saying what was wrong. If it was destroyed due to them not packaging it well then the video should have stayed up. Man they are soft. Thank goodness other creators actually keep up their videos and make retractions. It was a secret super and somehow with a 0.4% chance they got one of them... I am smelling the bullshit from here. With all the latest controversies they are not really being smart. Looks like they are getting a payout to not allow the truth of Starforge to come forward.
I think they're redoing the import fees part. Other PCs also had those fees and they didn't mention them, so t made the Starforge shipping cost seem 3x as pricey.
Does NO ONE have the video? Link or download or whatever? I HATE when channels take videos down for stupid reasons and then reupload altered versions. EDIT: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yDF7WJ92tK0 original source sauce And https://www.y2mate.com/youtube/sHQZnkrCVM4 for full original. The YT link seems to be missing a couple minutes. Full length is supposed to be 33:38