Chummie Dilemma Resolved for Costco.

In July, 2015 Chummie flashed on as many “billboards” and internet sites as they could that “Theos Medical Systems, the manufacturer of award winning Chummie Bedwetting Alarms, announces the launch of the Chummie Premium Bedwetting Alarm Kit at Costco.”

The final Order and Consent Decree for a case in the United States District Court, Northern District of California for an agreement reached in the Court in February, 2015 in which Theos Medical Systems and its owner Saket Bhatia (Theos/Chummie/Bhatia) was not signed by Bhatia till July 14, 2015. This is a delay of over four months. In our posting on this blog dated July 22, 2015 we postulated:

“Knowing what we now know, both with respect to Theos/Chummie's business practices which we have very often complained about in this blog, and the substantiation of many of our concerns and complaints by the Honorable Judge in his Order, we can hypothesize what lies behind Theos/Chummie's machinations in delaying this Court Order as long as possible:

1.            The longer Theos/Chummie could continue to operate in its prior free-wheeling manner, the longer it could continue to promote and sell its products to unwitting customers who may withhold their business as they became better aware of true matters. This would have a much more severe effect on Theos/Chummie if it had the standing of a Court Order!

2.            The longer Theos/Chummie could keep its abusive and false behavior out of the public eye, the better its chances of making a "deal" with some other large seller. This would be much like what Theos/Chummie did to become a direct vendor with Amazon, by falsifying facts and making themselves look exemplary. Again, something that should prove very difficult to do with a Court Order detailing much of Theos/Chummie's misbehavior and ordering them to cease and make corrections!

This has become fact with our observing that Costco now carries a Chummie bedwetting alarm on Costco.com . We very much doubt that Costco would have done this if they knew the true facts about Theos/Chummie, which the Court Order certainly points out quite adequately.”

In a relatively short period since July (this is October), we now no longer find any Chummie product on Costco or Costco.com. So let us again postulate some possible reasons for Chummie no longer appearing on Costco.com, in the order of increasing likeliness: 

1.    Theos/Chummie/Bhatia found it in their best interests to desert the “sinking ship” that was Costco, and therefore not go down with it.
2.    This is a mix-up at Costco and for some unknown reason Chummie slipped out of Costco’s site. Costco is working on it. 
3.    Costco ran out of inventory on the Chummie products, and did not want to mislead customers that they could get the product immediately. 
4.    Costco, now that it was more aware of the actual characteristics and competitiveness of the Chummie products it was hyped into selling, as well the dubious background and history of Theos/Chummie/Bhatia, decided to rid themselves of the burden that they may have unwittingly acquired.

Now, if Amazon had the sense to look into these Theos/Chummie/Bhatia matters as Costco probably did …..

Chummie Fake Amazon Reviews - Chummie Premium Bedwetting Enuresis Alarm

We read with considerable delight the recent news that Amazon was suing about 1,000 persons who had advertised that they could place fake Amazon Reviews and were offering this unethical service to Sellers who may be sufficiently unethical and incorrigible enough to pay them for these services. The Seller gets his/her (his) 5-stars reviews on Amazon.com, a corresponding boost in his Amazon rank and, possibly, a corresponding boost from sales to gullible and oblivious Buyers who may lack the ability to identify and discount fake reviews, and possibly punish these fraudulent Sellers for their ethical abuses by not buying these products. This abuse of Amazon Reviews by unethical Sellers is something that we have been pointing at for a long time, and recommending that Amazon needs to be taking strong action in the matter. Amazon is, at last, taking some appropriate action by going after these unethical review providers.

Amazon’s suing these unethical persons who advertised their offering of fake Amazon reviews on Fivver is only the tip of the iceberg. We strongly suspect that there are other services (like Fivver) or other media including more local “rags” in places such as “Silicon Valley” where many sellers may be located, where the fake reviews provider may consider it to be worth his while to advertise his services. Many such providers may also convey their services to unethical Buyers by having more “direct” connections to Sellers that are well known to be using such services. A reader only needs to look at this blog to identify at least one Seller in this small industry that may fall into this category. Yes, we are referring to Theos Medical Systems, the manufacturer and Seller of Chummie, and its owner Saket Bhatia. We have and will referred to this combined entity as Theos/Chummie/Bhatia.

We have been pointing out the illicit behavior of the primary deceiver in the bedwetting alarms industry, Theos/Chummie/Bhatia, for more than two years. To other unethical Sellers and/or desperate Sellers, Theos/Chummie/Bhatia may have a model worth following. Among other acts, Theos/Chummie/Bhatia has used the services of fake reviewers extensively. Theos/Chummie/Bhatia has effectively admitted this by accepting a Federal Judge’s Order/Consent Decree in a lawsuit involving them.

Identifying Fake Reviews:

How do we identify fake reviews? Without complete records and information relating to the review and the “Customer” who posts such reviews, we cannot be 100% certain that a review may be false or fake. So we apply a variety of tests. Here are some of our considerations. A reviewer, who only has a single review for the product and no other reviews, is immediately suspect. Even if the reviewer is a “Verified Purchase.” We believe that many Sellers will spend more money, effectively paying the reviewer to purchase the product. That not only allows the Buyer to appear more credible, but it also allows the Buyer to get more money by returning the product to Amazon (get a refund) if he has not been directly compensated for his purchase by the Seller. For the Seller, this purchase increases his product sales on Amazon, helping his rank on Amazon.com. We also consider “recent” reviews which are easy to fake. So would a reviewer with reviews going back two years be considered illicit? Yes, if he has no reviews for significant time and then suddenly shows a spurt of reviews (including the suspect review) all clustered at or around the time when the suspect review has been posted. Essentially, we have to try and put on the mind-set of these unethical persons (both the Seller and Buyer involved in the fake review). So, usually, we can only point at a fake review as being suspect and probable, unless we have definitive proof that a review is fake (which has been true of a substantial number of Theos/Chummie/Bhatia’s reviews). We also recognize that when a fake review is posted on Amazon, there is a possibility that it may have been posted by some party other than the Seller. It may also penalize an honest poor opinion by a true customer, as these people often do not post anything on Amazon reviews unless they think very poorly of a product and want to express their opinion. However we do include such reviews in our list of fake reviews. We also recognize that for some Sellers (Theos/Chummie/Bhatia, for example) investing in a longer-time approach and paying months in advance for such shenanigans may be worthwhile for their angst and dread of factual competition. Again, the prime intent is to make it relatively difficult for a fake reviewer and an unethical seller to post a review on Amazon. But all of this would be moot if Amazon would seriously crack down on deceitful Sellers. 

Possible Reasons for Continuing Chummie's Fake Reviews:

So we shall list the suspect fake reviews. We are sequencing them by how recently they appeared on Amazon when we are writing this article. This list relates to Chummie Premium Bedwetting Enuresis Alarm on Amazon.com. Furthermore, we are considering all reviews for this product going back till August 1, 2015. This is because Theos/Chummie/Bhatia signed a Federal Judge’s Order/Consent Decree agreeing to undo its mischief of posting false reviews on Amazon for a period ten (10) months and not post further fake reviews on Amazon.com . The date of this acceptance in Federal Court was July 12, 2015. So we look at a time period when fake reviews should not get posted on Amazon Reviews. We doubt that Theos/Chummie/Bhatia has observed this order by the Federal Judge, which they consented to. And that should not surprise anyone who has been following the misadventures of Theos/Chummie/Bhatia logged here in this blog. We keep a copy of such likely fake reviews for the record.

Of course, Theos/Chummie/Bhatia can easily retort that it was not responsible for these abundant fake reviews. We could question why anyone unrelated to Theos/Chummie/Bhatia would place so many probably fake 5-stars reviews in Chummie's favor. We have also pointed out that Theos/Chummie/Bhatia have not fulfilled the Court’s condition that it must remove all reviews by non-verified purchasers of their products on Amazon by August 6, 2015 (approximately), else it must legally ask Amazon to promptly remove such reviews for the period June 1, 2014 through March 31, 2015. This puts Amazon in a quandary, as Amazon has a contractual obligation to sell considerable quantities of an antiquated product from Chummie. We think that Amazon probably has sufficient cause to break Chummie’s contract. But we are not legal experts, and Amazon’s behavior towards Theos/Chummie/Bhatia and the reasons underlying them are debatable. Between the possibilities of Theos/Chummie/Bhatia and Amazon dragging their feet in this matter, all we can do is point out (as we have earlier) that Theos/Chummie/Bhatia may have adopted a strategy of delaying matters as much as possible and not seek the sudden erasure of hundreds of superlative 5-star reviews that it purchased over this period, so that a sharp drop in their total reviews and review averages would not occur. Theos/Chummie/Bhatia would only cancel as many as seemed appropriate for the new 5-stars reviews that it received for this product. Not being able to postpone this matter very extensively would be a strong temptation for Theos/Chummie/Bhatia to purchase paid reviews, something that it has indulged in in the past. And let us not forget Theos/Chummie/Bhatia's strong established inclination towards deceitful practices, confirmed by a lawsuit in a Federal Court.

Can Chummie be Moral & Ethical?

We admit that the misbehavior of Theos/Chummie/Bhatia may not subside, either on Amazon or off Amazon, even if Amazon concluded that Theos/Chummie/Bhatia was behaving in a totally unacceptable way and banished it and its Chummie products. Theos/Chummie/Bhatia has been especially spiteful to certain parties (also mentioned in this blog) and we doubt if its basic mentality and value system would ever let it accept that it is in the wrong and should put this kind of misbehavior aside for ever, and concentrate on being a truly good citizen. There is a significant probability that Theos/Chummie/Bhatia is on the radar of Local, State and/or Federal authorities. We wonder if even a severe punishment by such authorities would cause it to completely reform. And such action is always a possibility if you note the variety of legal transgressions that we know about and have pointed out in this blog. It is a reasonable assumption that, for every transgression mentioned in this blog, there are others that may not have been mentioned by us or that we are not aware of as yet. Might this posting cause Theos/Chummie/Bhatia to become even more spiteful and negatively aggressive than they currently are? We hope not, because only total reform by Theos/Chummie/Bhatia can take this stigma away from it. Is Theos/Chummie/Bhatia willing to accept this challenge and honestly fulfill it by truly reforming completely and staying reformed? 

Suspect Fake Amazon Reviews for Chummie Premium Bedwetting Alarm since August 1, 2015:

(58% of Total) 

Jennifer K                           

Melissa                                                
Amazon Customer
Dr. LB                                   
Bandele                              
Michele               
Kristi
Joe Jeppson                      
Johny and Tisha’s mommy
F.T.R.    
Liz                          
Eunice  
Jennifer Jennings
Aldajani                                                                                                               
Tia From Washington
Teju      
Ayesha                
Igor Portnoy(iggy)          
Vincent Roggero                                             
Kenneth Elliott 
Jeff J                     
Annie   
Jessie Thomas  
Jeff Crone                          
Mrs. L. Hennessy            
Jodie from Chicago                         
Mark Venturini
Ana                                       
Stacey McKinley                              
KP                                          
JB                                                           
Heather O'Neil