What’s the Deal With Linden Labs and GBH Communications?
GBH Communications has a web page on their domain which makes what appears to be every effort to look as if it is an official Linden Lab Second Life Product Store page. On this page which has the official Second Life logo. (See picture below)
If you can’t read the text in the picture above, it states: (emphasis mine)
Special Offers for Second Life Residents
To support the availability of voice in Second Life, Linden Lab is proud to offer selected headsets at a DISCOUNT through GBH Communications, Inc.These products were pre-qualified and selected by Linden Lab as ideal for use in Second Life, but purchase, shipping and support is provided by GBH, not by Linden Lab.
If you have questions regarding products, services or orders please contact Sandra Stapleton at sstapleton@gbh.com.
Notice: I emphasized the word discount… we will get to that a little later.
When I first saw this page I thought it was a Linden Lab Second Life Product Store page, sinceI didn’t see the standard disclaimer we all have to use; Second Life® and Linden Lab® are trademarks or registered trademarks of Linden Research, Inc. All rights reserved. No infringement is intended. This made me look closer at the url and saw that the page was on GBH’s domain, leaving me wondering how much Linden Lab actually has to do with this page or the discount it claimed to offer Second Life residents.
Lets get to the headset they were featuring so prominently on their product store page.
Plantronics Audio 550 Binaural USB Headset with DSP
The PLTX-AUDIO-550DSP is a Binaural USB headset using DSP technology.
Price: $80.37
I didn’t know what kind of discount this would be, so I decided to do a little search and see what price I might buy this headset for on other sites. I went to PriceGrabber.com, which allows you to do some comparison shopping all on a single page, and found the Plantronics Audio 550 Binaural USB headset with DSP in the price ranges: $51.91 - $87.76 from 29 Sellers. 27 out of the 29 websites would ship this headset to my home for less than $80.37. So that is a really nice screwing discount being offered by GBH.
Watching the pennies, the best price I could find shipped to my door was at Computers All Services who offers to ship to my zipcode for $58.76.
I have already used Google’s checkout gift of 10 dollars credit on a purchase for new people who use Google checkout to purchase something off the web, but if I hadn’t this headset could have been delivered to my door for $54.95 from Sector 29.com (then click the checkout options)
I am not familiar with either of those two sites and decided to check Amazon.com, and found this same headset for $60.79 & this item ships for FREE with Super Saver Shipping.
Needless to say, I am not impressed with this discount being offered Second Life Residents by GBH, and am wondering if Linden Lab has anything to do with GBH. I will say that GBH does not have the standard disclaimer which is required for the rest of us to use the registered trademarks.
Thanks Cat Cotton for the post on Second Citizen which sent me to the site in the first place to check out the Linden Lab product store.
Do you think Linden Lab has arranged some deal with GBH? I would like to hear your thoughts.
Edited 27 may 2007 to add:
I do not spend a lot of time reading what I feel is an almost useless Official Second Life Blog, but this morning I decided to spend a few minutes there. I had my question answered about LL arranging some deal with GBH. Jeska Linden posted on 24 May 2007 “The Plan For Voice” in which she states:
Need a Headset?
Looking for an affordable headset so you can check out the new Voice feature? We know that headsets can be expensive, so we’ve made an effort to help you keep costs down by creating a special partnership offering new headsets at a deep discount. We’ve made arrangements with GBH, an audio/video product supplier, to supply a range of high-quality, pre-tested headset options that work well with Second Life Voice. Please visit our partner site for more information on these headphones.
This sure leave me with a bitter taste in my mouth over Linden Labs apparently rather seeing a profit by allowing residents to get screwed ripped off than getting a good deal. I want to know where is that discount supposed to be?
May 26th, 2007 • 
Weirdharold • 
pingback | May 26, 2007 at 20:35 | individual pingback-link
[...] post by Weirdharold Share and Enjoy: These icons link to social bookmarking sites where readers can share and [...]
pingback | May 26, 2007 at 21:42 | individual pingback-link
[...] noted on VTOR, it’s easy to get these headsets delivered to you, a good $15 to $20 US Dollars cheaper than [...]
comment | June 12, 2007 at 12:15 | individual comment-link
I am seeing the same thing and to be honest Linden Labs has to be tied to GBH somehow and thats why. But they sure are taking a huge advantage of their own residents who pay well enough money to Linden Labs. And why cant you not use your own set of headphones or separate Microphone and Speakers. That to me is being programmed on purpose so you will have to buy their product. And your protection thing here on the website below is so very hard to read to be able to post this too BTW
comment | October 26, 2007 at 08:25 | individual comment-link
The prices on the site have actually dropped since all of these earlier comments, the users do get a good price along with support, quick shipping, and a company that will be around in 30-40 days if you have any questions, all of the headsets on the site were specifically tested and deemed to work best with the second life voice offering. Any site can discount anything if they don’t stock or support it, you just have to wait a lot longer to get it and hope nothing goes wrong after you have it.
Linden labs does not profit from this and hoped to have all of the discount go directly to their community.