UPDATE Nov 20th:
Was this whole thing fraud?
One of our users, John, left this comment:
Which made us do a little more research, looks like that a company actually was outright buying up lots of product and reselling it with another name.
From GLocalMe’s Press Page: “August 14, 2015 Update: We are currently investigating more details about this company and the KickStarter campaign. At this time we would not recommend backing the GlocalMe G2.”
Looks like there is some re-branding happening now though, a company by the name of Besteker has appeared and the G2 has been pulled off the shelves.
A few weeks ago we posted about GLocalMe & Ucloudlink, Is glocalme/ucloudlink a fake company that’s tricking consumers and kickstarter?.
GlocalMe/Ucloudlink reached out to me with the following explanation.
The GlocalMe team is structured by the team of experts in following three key fields: hardware (G1,G1S, and G2), software (the app, G2’s operating system and interface), and network service (cloud SIM and the global network integration). Those three segments are equally important to our core product value.
Nevertheless, uCloudlink is mainly focused on the network service as an Internet Solution Provider. In terms of the network service, GlocalMe has been receiving support and resources uCloudlink, while GlocalMe does not have resources to develop Cloud SIM technology and maintain such global network infrastructure. People who work for uCloudlink, such as Kevin and Nikolina, are supporters of the GlocalMe product, it’s future development and overall business establishment. As you are aware, startups require a lot of business skills, hard work and support prior to the development of well- established international business and therefore our team members are subjected to high level of effort and multi-tasking. It will take more time and resources till GlocalMe gets established as a Company. Currently, GlocalMe is rather to be considered as an international team with a dozen of international members who work full time on a cooperative project and do their best to make a dream in which they believe and which has high potential to come alive. We didn’t list all of the names on the campaign page though.
There might not be much information if you Google Kevin and Jeff, while most of the Asian people who communicate internationally use English name in order to avoid mispronunciation and make themselves more culturally approachable. It’s a common practice in some areas of HK, Taiwan, Singapore, EU, USA etc. There are many Kickstarter project creators ( “AQUA” or “PIECE” project) who have adopted English name. Kevin is our Founder’s English name. I guess that’s the reason why you couldn’t have find much information about him when Googling “Kevin” as opposed you would if you have been searching by his original name.
In addition, the 5-star comments shown on Kickstarter truly are from our buyers, and we have never forged these for the campaign. We hold eligible proofs upon those.
Our team members are from all over the world- HK, UK, China, USA, Taiwan etc. Some of us work at the HK headquarter, while others work in UK and USA. Our factory and supply chain are located in China. We are proud of our race diversity and international team members set-up. We doubt that highlighting our origin from a particular country would give us any additional advantage, while we have equal respect for each country, race and our team member’s origins.
The reason why our Kickstarter project is based in the USA is cause Kickstarter requires creator’s eligibility in certain countries. Ucloudlink has an affiliated company registered in the USA, and we also have our small logistics warehouse there. Some of the team members work from USA in order to support future business establishment as explained previously.
When asked more about the interesting connection between the two companies they sent the following reply.
As mentioned within my previous e-mail, uCloudlink is primarily focused on the network service as an Internet Solution Provider. That means that Ucloudlink can support a lot of businesses besides the GlocalMe, and that’s Ucloudlink’s orientation and the core business. Nevertheless, without the Ucloudlink’s platform and the support, we would not be able to create, develop, test and establish GlocalMe G2 product and the business.
Basically, Ucloudlink helped us to develop GlocalMe G2 (which differs a lot from all other previous products and finally represents our product and the business objective).
I’ll let you interpret that how you’d like based on my past research and findings, but I felt it fair to post their reply and they did avoid replying about the 5 star reviews on Amazon, the mentioned kickstarter instead so it may have just been an accidental typing of a different shop name. My overall issue was that the original kickstarter campaign made it appear that they were a small company, not apart of a medium to large one.
There’s still a lot of buyer beware in my opinion, and would encourage everyone to do their research, and just buy a local sim in each country, it’s much cheaper.