Sometime ago I got on an email list for the Regenerative Leadership Institute, a permacultre site. I was googling around looking for a Free Online PDC, legally not trying to redistribute someones work, and I came across theirs. I signed up for the course and started taking it. I want to say I didn’t get very far. Like maybe not even past the first module. The video seemed like it was shot on a VHS camcorder tweenty year ago. There might have been VHS lines on the screen. Instead of instilling me with a sense of nostalgia I could not get into it. Which is a shame it was permculturist Larry Korn, translator of The One Straw Revolution, teaching it. Skipping ahead to now and I get an email from them with an offer for a FREE DVD. I should have known better and I’ll share with you why.
Free Comes With A High Cost
Usually nothing is ever free. I like to joke as a blogger I get a ton of free things but that’s not exactly true. In the case of this DVD it was litterly not free. In the email as soon as I saw the word FREE in all cap’s multiple times I knew it would have a shipping cost for one. That was true it had it said a $12.95 shipping cost. But things don’t end there. When I clicked the buy link in the email it took me to a marketing page to sale a $60 a month membership for additional videos on demand. The page was long and it would seem that the $12 offer didn’t exist, I have seen this kind of marketing too many times before though and knew I had t0 scroll for a long time to get to the cheap price. All of this should have set off my Spider sense but I will buy almost anything for 12 bucks. Eventually I got the order placed and received an email fro their DVD drop ship company saying it was on the way and that Regenerative leadership didn’t have the tracking into to contact them if I need it. Ugh.
So I finally get it in the mail, in a cheap envelope, and rip it open. The DVD is in a cd sleeve and only one. The marketing on this was that it was a $129.95 plus shipping DVD. I for soe reason thought it would be more than one DVD. Maybe just because I could not fathom how a single DVD could be worth that much. I also thought It was an entire PDC. It is only 3 chapters from the 14 chapter Permaculture Designers Manual. Anyway, Whatever, let’s just watch this thing.
Let’s Watch
I toss it in still thinking it is a whole PDC and not about a fifth of one. I saw that it went straight to three menus, old school DVD style, and nothing else. I started with the first chapter and quickly got angry. I noticed that the video was pretty bad quality. Like shot badly by composition, sound, and video quality. Every few seconds the top of the screen would get scrambled and it would loose audio and skip ahead. This was at times mildly annoying to full on infuriating. So based on the video quality this thing was already making me regret even the $12 spent.
Red Flags
Early on in the video another red flag went up. Permaculture is based around 3 ethics:
- Care Of the People
- Care of the Earth
- Return of Surplus
When the lady teaching in this video gets to the third ethic, the one most misconstrued, she had it all wrong. She said that the third ethic was Redistribution of Surplus/ Fair Share. Why must people always change that one. Return of Surplus is not fair share. Fair share is really theft and unsustainable whereas return of surplus is sustainable. It took me a bit to stop being angry over that to get back to listening to her. When I calmed down I heard some good things. She did talk about some good techniques and principles. When the video was not skipping that is.
Even though this DVD did contain some good info I would not recommend it. I feel bad enough I talked a friend into buying it. I feel you could get just as much watching free YouTube videos. Without the skipping video. Also I’ll be removed from that list. It’s a shame you have to be so careful of people like this on the internet selling piss poor merchandise.
Have you got suckered on the internet? Let me know in the comments
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