Reply To: Amplitube 5 for $29.99 and POSSIBLY GET IN IK’S GROUP BUY

[LinkedMusicians]

On swijaya said

So this disclaimer on the page itself is incorrect, thus can be disregarded?

I find it strange then, why did they put such an uninviting clause, when on the contrary they should be saying the opposite, to encourage more sales.

Ah, I wonder if that’s new. @jeffdrawscomics, did you see that disclaimer prior to making your purchase? I don’t recall seeing that. This story gets more complex. My GUESS has been that Bedroom Producers Blog started promoting this as qualifying for the Group Buy when IK already made clear that it did not, but it caused so much confusion that IK decided to let those customers in anyhow so that they wouldn’t blame and resent IK. That’s a total guess. But Peter’s (IK) communication that this DOES NOT qualify was clear on page one of LM’s IK Group Buy thread and yet people have been able to get in the GB with the purchase.

If I’m going to be super candid — Bedroom Producers Blog is going for an all-out cash grab. They reach a large audience, and at that rate, there’s a lot of money to be made from affiliate commissions, so they’re looking to make as much money as possible (a small community like LM doesn’t have the traffic to generate a good deal of commissions from affiliate programs; BPB has a lot of traffic and does generate a lot of money). But that puts IK in a bad position, because if they don’t honor this deal and what BPB has been promoting, people who bought the deal, which is fantastic even without the GB, are going to be angry at the IK brand. I really don’t think BPB is operating in the most ethical manner, considering their reach how easily they could have reached out to IK. If I were managing the affiliate program they were a part of, I would be having a talk with them about ethics (okay, I realize that A LOT of marketers don’t care about ethics, but stuff like this also hurts brands long term; I have more thoughts on the whole management of this and how all of this confusion could have been avoided, but I realize that most of you don’t care! Haha).

Consequently, after seeing that message I’m again going to modify the original post in this thread and urge people to hit pause until we get an official message from @peter-ik or anyone else who officially represents IK.

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