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just signed upto be the local stockist and wondered if any of the collective had used em....
we've had a bit of interest so far.
No, of course they don't.
Snake oil for gullible muppets.
If you wear two at once, do the magical powers cancel each other out?
NOOOO! dont do it!
Did you know that they've removed the word "gullible" from the latest edition of the OED?
of course they don't.
don't be a muppet.
[url= http://www.ratbags.com/rsoles/comment/powerbalance.htm ]powerband debunking[/url]
Do they work?
It's a hologram on a plastic bracelet. Of course they don't work.
I suppose if you're based near Glastonbury this could be a nice little earner, and have a handy little mobile caravan so when the next generation of nuclear power stations are built you can go and sell to the protestors.
For me, nope, don't do wristbands and couldn't see the point of this one inparticular.
I can't believe the question is even being asked.
The problem with all these things is that if you believe they'll make you a better rider then they will.
Even if, objectively, you're no better than you were before you started using them.
So, as a retailer, should you be selling something that will make no discernable difference to how someone rides but make them feel better about riding anyway?
I guess if that criteria were applied to all products there'd be a lot less stock in shops but I think you need to be very careful about how you sell them and to whom - wacking a bracelet on and heading for the nearest balck run on a supermarket special is probably going to end in tears for a lot of people.
i thought a major rule of retailing was "sell what your customers want
if thats turns out to be a rare baked bean id sell it....
If you sell them I'll respect you a whole lot less. It's a placebo dressed up with deliberately fraudulent demonstration techniques. It isn't based on selling to an existing belief system - it's a marketing campaign designed to deliberately trick the customer into becoming a believer. Whether they benefit the gullible or not to sell them knowing they are nothing but a placebo for purely commercial gain is immoral.
I think you have to balance that against;
"Be honest about what you sell."
though?
I've saved money by just sticking the hologram off a disney DVD to my forehead.
Steve Peat has nothing on me now.
[i]just signed upto be the local stockist and wondered if any of the collective had used em....
we've had a bit of interest so far.[/i]
That's great news!
You clearly have a strong customer base of retards that you should be able to foist all sorts of mindless tat that even a drunken gibbon which has only just mastered the art of using a stick to pick up ants would still instantly realise was pretty bent product.
Let the good times roll! 🙂
i thought a major rule of retailing was "sell what your customers want
Tempered also with a 'do i feel like a douche selling this or not' mentality though.
If answer is a:: Yes, then stop immediately,
If answer is b:: No then play on.
(hint : answer is always A)
I have to agree with Grumpy Mark on this issue ( 🙂 ).
If you're selling something, then you're in the position to offer advice on the product if the customer asks. I can't stand all the bullshit that surrounds marketing, and when I worked in retail I was always honest about stuff, even if it did mean the odd lost sale. I considered my integrity to be more important than my employer's profit margins. I regularly had people thanking me for my honesty, and felt I gained more respect from others that way.
Funny; you bike shop bods are often on here moaning about customers not showing you respect and stuff, yet here's someone seemingly willing to lie to people in order to make money. 🙄
Granted, a lot of retail is about embellishing the truth, selling myths etc, but something like this is akin to deceit, imo.
Yup Elfinsafety,
If I went into a shop and saw them selling power-bands I'd assume that either the owner is an idiot, or he thinks his customers are idiots.
Neither of which would give me much incentive to buy anything.
If you wear two at once, do the magical powers cancel each other out?
Nah, it's like crossing the streams in Ghostbusters.
If I was a shop owner and customers kept asking me for Powerbands and I kept telling them I thought they didn't work and were just a placebo and the customers STILL wanted them, THEN I might consider selling them. Just as in the past I often sold customers much more expensive bikes, kit, etc than I reckoned they'd ever need/benefit from but told them so and they still insisted (yes, I realise it's not quite the same but near enough to make sense to me). Otherwise, it's just being dishonest.
If I stopped shopping at places that sold these I'd have to abandon CRC which seems a step too far, tbh.
My physio's sent an email around saying they were selling them - I probably won't use them again now.
Placebo
I have recently seen one on the wrist of a race-winning employee in my local enormo-brand bike superstore.
I can't believe he would wear one just to sell them in the shop. And he really honestly is a great and fast rider. So they must work, non? 😆
If they made one small enough for my dinkle i would buy one mind. AWESOME POWER HOLOGRAM MEGA DINKLE!
Lots of pro riders are using them, dissapointingly.
Saw Craig Bellamy with a pink one on the other day too 🙄
The placebo effect shouldn't be under rated, neither should the power of thinking you are going to win (not in itself, but measured against the effect of thinking you have no chance of winning).
Many sports people are very superstitious, lucky pants and all that - surely this is the same thing ??
They don't work because of some hocus magnet hologram rubbish, but because people think they are going to work, and it is their perception that counts.
Hence they work.
P.S thebikechain - "small enough" Really ??
People don't sell lucky pants claiming that the cotton has been infused with PowerSchlurm which is proven to increase speed, concentration and power by 110% and then demonstrate this by using tricks...
I strap one of theses:
[img] 
[/img]
to my chest, it gives me the following:
better balance
awesome skillz
the ability to walk through walls
a sense of smugness over the non-believers who obviously are too narrow minded to try it
its a bit like crystal therapy, or angel therapy, or tarot cards
Jamie - Member
Nah, it's like crossing the streams in Ghostbusters.
total protonic reversal 😯
One of my world domination plans involves selling lucky pants.
I think Wayne Rooney wears one. They must be good!
The powerband on my old RD 350 LC used to work fine!
I found that trying to extend the power band on my old B18c4 was a costly ut ultimately worthwhile venture. Not only did it offer better tractability but when I went VTEC YO! I could cause tectonic shuffling within a 35mile radius!
Clubber +1
The difference between this placebo and other placebos is that the marketing policy of the company is to deliberately trick you into believing in it with fake demonstrations of the power of the bands in the shop.
http://www.randi.org/site/index.php/swift-blog/1102-unbalancing-the-power.html
If you still sell them after reading and watching those two links then you sir are a scoundrel! So there!
I'd watch that last bit, Mark considering some of your advertisers...
I feel rather strongly about this actually. I know they are sold widely. I like to think that making people aware of the trickery and underhand techniques employed in selling them may make some retailers think twice about continuing to stock them.
Well said Mark. I feel really disappointed at some of the big retailers selling this garbage.
In fairness though Mark, as much as deceit and dishonesty should be frowned upon; [b]a fool and his money[/b]...?
I just wish I'd thought up something like this. I'd imagine whoever's behind it is laughing as they watch their bank balance grow....
Fair play to you Mark - I was disapointed to see cycle retailers starting to sell them with no real critical assessment of them.
I'd prefer this:
[url= http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/51ANCwQnIjL._SX300_SY390_CR,0,0,300,390_.jp g" target="_blank">
Actual proven benefits...
[/url]The women knew from the wolves on my shirt that I, like a wolf, am a mysterious loner who knows how to 'howl at the moon' from time to time (if you catch my drift!). The women that approached me wanted to know if I would be their boyfriend and/or give them money for something they called mehth. I told them no, because they didn't have enough teeth, and frankly a man with a wolf-shirt shouldn't settle for the first thing that comes to him.
Don't worry Elf, the market for homeopathic* energy drinks, that also rid you body of toxins naturally, is a huge market yet to be fully exploited.
*Spell check suggested homoerotic energy drinks, which is also another brand for consideration.
glad i asked.....order cancelled despite around ten chaps wanting them.sold by a pretty reputable accessory supplier..
nearly every golfer,hamilton,shaq'o neil,wiggins all seemed to have been duped...i was pretty sceptical but i did have a big enough demand to get em in or at least look at them...
what sort of margin were they offering you?
nearly every golfer,hamilton,shaq'o neil,wiggins all seemed to have been duped...
duped or paid?...
not an awful margin and dont seem to be discounted anywhere either...
best out of em i'd say
I think the pros seen wearing them will be getting them free, and if they're free and everyone else is trying them, they've got nothing to lose.
Elf, how did you find that Amazon link. It's the funniest thing I've read for ages
You should get some of these in instead
http://skepticbros.com/2010/10/06/placebo-band/
[img] 
[/img]
At the end of the day shops offer a service and sell what the customer wants to buy.
No one is forcing you to buy a power balance band so if someone wants to buy one it is entirely up to them.
I have tried one briefly and it seemed to do absolutely nothing for me as expected but there will always be people who believe in it.
It's just mind tricks working in exactly the same way as people like Derren Brown can get people to do things and pick things with out them even knowing they are doing it.
I tried one on today while out for dinner with a friend. She wore an extra small though, so it cut off the circulation to my hand after a minute or so. It didn't give me extraordinary chopstick skills, and did little to prevent my swaying after a fair few bottles of Asahi 😉
I like the idea of those Placebo bands!
apparently if you put one on your nob (extra small of course) it feels like your w***ing someone else
Chipps was told to put one against his glass of wine for 8 seconds.. It would apparently 'open up' the wine and is especially effective with young wines.
FFS!
At the end of the day shops offer a service and sell what the customer wants to buy.No one is forcing you to buy a power balance band so if someone wants to buy one it is entirely up to them.
And that is absolutely fine so long as there are no fraudulent tricks plied on the customer to TRICK them into believing in the product. If Derren Brown applied his tricks on innocent people in the street as he does for entertainment but instead of just walking away managed to make them believe enough for them to part with £30 then it would be a whole different situation.
Cycleworlduk.... Good to hear you won't be selling them. I hear the margins are very good.. In fact that's what one supplier said to me when he tried to flog some to us. I said, 'What's so good about them?'.. he said,'The margins are bloody fantastic!'
Anyway... contact me directly and if you like you can have a month's worth of advertising in the Classified slot in the right hand column over there -> for free 🙂
well done cycleworlduk - hopefully you can convince these customers that mad skillz are really best acquired through purchase of XTR 😉
.....well done OP. It's not as if there is not a million and one ways to deprive a MTB'er and their cash via the subtle art of shaving a gram off and anodising it.
Australian Choice Magazine Shonky awards 2010
http://www.choice.com.au/reviews-and-tests/money/shopping-and-legal/shopping/the-2010-shonky-awards/page/the-shonkiest-products.aspx
Its a plastic band and they are selling them for thirty quid, im not surprised the margins are good.
They must cost about tuppence to make.
Now that they have (in several independent studies) been shown to be a placebo at best can those that still think they work step up and continue to argue their case please?
I think it's good that we can all now agree that if you feel any benefit it's all in your head. Fair enough?
Now it could be argued 'so what?' if you gain a benefit from one. But for me the fact there's a company hiding 'behind the bushes' looking and pointing at you while giggling and counting your money is what really boils my piss.
look guys, how are they going to sell these stupid things to the idiots who are stupid enough to buy them now?
All they have to do is Google it and read this thread.
Company profits - down.
I've ordered a couple of the placebo bands (link on first page of this thread) to wear as a control group/statement, in the distant hope that I will have a giggle when someone wearing a 'real' one greets me as a fellow power-band buddy. If this could happen at a race in the middle of a long climb, from someone riding in expert/elite, that would also be extra funny please.
By the way, the skepticbros shop is selling them at 2 australian dollars (about £1.22) each on a not-for-profit basis. If that is what the powerband factory also charge wholesale for a couple of holograms in a silicon band, who gets what share of the other £28.77? 👿
i bought one and i would say no
You must be an unbelievably spectacular braindead muppet to even consider buying one. I cannot even comprehend how retarded someone must be for making such a purchase.
I suppose it might be a good "marker" for normal people to spot the special needs folk amongst us? 😉
I suppose it might be a good "marker" for normal people to spot the special needs folk amongst us?
You mean like an england flag thingy on your car window?
I'm going to buy 2 dozen of them and enter the Tour de France.
toys19 - Member
You mean like an england flag thingy on your car window?
What's wrong with an Englishman being proud of his country? The other parts of the UK are proud of their countries.
Cubemeup probably got scammed and bought one of the fake ones that don't work.
[url] http://www.powerbalanceuk.com/counterfeit-power-balance.html [/url]
What's wrong with an Englishman being proud of his country? The other parts of the UK are proud of their countries.
Oh look it works! 😆
My mate had a powerband on his RD350LC and that flaming well worked I can tell you!
My mate had a powerband on his RD350LC and that flaming well worked I can tell you!
Hard to get replacement powerbands for 350lc's nowadays though, wonder if these ones would work?
My mate had a powerband on his RD350LC and that flaming well worked I can tell you!
Those powerbands worked OK but were a bit narrow for my taste.
yay for ethical retailers. Well done CycleWorldUK
toys19 - Member
'What's wrong with an Englishman being proud of his country? The other parts of the UK are proud of their countries.'
Oh look it works!
Nah, haven't got them yet for those special effects.
Just puzzled as to why an Englishman shouldn't be proud of his country. (As a Scot, I know lots of reasons why they shouldn't be proud 🙂 )
FFS!
Swear filter evasion? Naughty naughty... 😉
Well played to Cycleworld for not stocking them. Any other retailers; take note.
I'd quite happy to see these shysters put out of business really. But then, more fool people who buy them. £30??? Cheeze... 🙄
There is no reason, it was a joke on my part, possibly not a very good one.
Might just be my shonky laptop, but on a search for 'power balance' on CRC, no ratings stars show up on the results page:
[url= http://www.chainreactioncycles.com/Brands.aspx?BrandID=1212 ]http://www.chainreactioncycles.com/Brands.aspx?BrandID=1212[/url]
Struggling to believe that nobody's left a review on any one of these 14 products...
By the way, if you have bought a PowerBand, I have some mine detection gear going at a bargain price.
Im going to buy ten of them and put them on one arm, and ten placebo ones and put them on the other arm. If they work I should look like i've had a stroke 😀
nar i bought a proper one from my golf shop cost me £30!!
Bradley Wiggins
2009 no powerbands, 4th in the tour de france
2010 black powerbands 28th in the tour de france