Brainstorm more ways moxie might be fraud:
- company didn’t give enough warning for shutting down, only a few weeks?
- company mislead customers about their financial stability
- they may have intended to try and get big quickly, and didn’t acknowledge that was risky
- they might have intended to pump the value of company up and sell it
- they weren’t in it for the long haul
- they didn’t have a backup plan for if the company went bust that ensuresd the moxies were still usable
- the product might not have actually been helpful for kids
assumptions
- that any fraud/adversarial behaviour here would have to do with the fact that they suddenly ceased operations and couldn’t continue supporting the moxie
okay, where else might they be adversarial?
- misleading people about whether moxie is intelligent
- using tech buzz-words knowing that most people wont understand
okay, stuck on the brainstorm. I’ll move on to:
Here is the closing FAQ Closing FAQs – Moxie Robot
The closing FAQ doesn’t have info about this.
from Startup set to brick $800 kids robot is trying to open source it first - Ars Technica
Following customer backlash, Embodied is trying to create a way for the robots to live an open sourced second life.
Interesting. Didn’t know that. In that article there was a link to a linkedin post by Embodied’s founder:
Almost all comments are positive (I can only see like 10 comments without signing up for Linkedin though). Others are technical questions.
Something in the pdf in the owners announcement struck me as strange:
While our cloud services may become unavailable, a group of former technical team members from Embodied is working on a potential solution to allow Moxie to operate locally—without the need for ongoing cloud connectivity
They may become unavailable? They imply elsewhere that this is definitely going to happen.
Also, why are we told that it’s a group of former technical team members from Embodied? Why not just say “We have a team currently working on a solution?”. Sure maybe they don’t officially work for Embodied anymore? But still why bother mentioning it? Maybe they are former employees doing it for free because they think that’s the right thing to do and they want to help.
Speculation:
What if Embodied isn’t actually going under for the reasons they say (evidence: they’re keeping some technical team members working together) they’re just closing down Embodied for some other reason, like they want to stop servicing the Moxie robot (and maybe start working on another thing?) So maybe: They’re lying about having to discontinue Moxie, they’re actually deciding to. I think that’d be really bad. This is an interesting speculation I think.
What if they had this open software solution prepared in advance, waited for people to get upset that they were discontinuing moxie, and then came in and kind of saved the say with an alternative open solution?
Timing is interesting. They announced they were closing right the end of year. People are busy at the end of the year with Christmas and stuff. I wonder if less people would pay attention to the news they were shutting down because of the timing. Also I wonder people would buy them in the lead up to Xmas more.
I find it strange that they’re announcing they’re shutting down and that the service will be unavailable in a matter of days, and that they don’t know when it’ll be going offline. I don’t know how quickly businesses shut down though.
Questions I have:
- when do companies usually shut down after running out of money?
- what other companies is the founder involved in?
Some news articles pointed to this one: https://www.axios.com/2024/12/10/moxie-kids-robot-shuts-down
In it they say:
- Company representatives did not respond to requests for more information.
I wonder what they asked and why they didn’t get a response. I suppose Embodied have have probably got a lot of people trying to get in touch with them.
This comment was from 2 days ago via reddit:
Yes I spent 800.00 on moxie for an Christmas present for my disabled grandson in November. I found out it doesn’t work so they basically ripped my off. That’s fraud… I’m disabled myself with MS and live on a very fixed income… I’m so mad at them for doing this to me and my grandson… Signed very mad grandma…
Apparently, they were selling Moxies right up until recently? That sucks. I think they would be obliged to refund purchases within at least the warranty period. This person bought one in November, as a gift, which wasn’t given until xmas, which was after they announced they were stopping support. They call it fraud. I think they’re clearly entitled a refund there. Afaik, the company is offering no refunds at all.
actually Embodied’s closing FAQ says:
Due to Embodied’s financial situation and impending dissolution, we regret that we are unable to offer refunds for Moxie purchases.
However, we understand that some of you may have recently purchased Moxie, including as a holiday gift. While we cannot make any guarantees, if the company or its assets are sold, we will do our best to prioritize refunds for purchases made within the last 30 days. We know this situation is especially difficult for families, and we deeply regret any inconvenience or disappointment this may cause.
Well, hopefully that actually happens, but even then, what about people that bought them 60 days ago? That sucks.
so, more to add to the brainstorm:
- company might be lying about losing funding, and be shutting the company down to discontinue moxie
- they were selling moxies up until very recently, and some people will have bought them for xmas in the last few months, and waited to gift them till xmas. So these people have gotten zero use from them.