Didn't understand how reddit worked and that comments have permalinks which can be filtered by account

Had been using sock puppet accounts to astroturf and accidentally made three shill posts under his personal account

Forgot that he had made the first three comments with the account (June 27th and 28th) before deciding to answer questions as the founder on August 9th.

Even disregarding his claim that it "hits harder than my (v tower)", I still cannot believe that a convection vape that small doesn't get hot to the touch. Anyone who has used Thermovape's products knows what I mean. Either Zenpen has developed the most advanced insulation known to man, or they're full of it. And 3-6 hour battery life? Thermovape batteries were only good for 1 bowl IMO. That is some fantastic advancement in battery technology (proprietary, of course) to go along with the amazing insulation. Pretty impressive for a couple guys with limited capital and no experience building vaporizers.



3-6 hour battery life, cool to the touch, pure convection, performance comparable with desktop vapes, etc... To quote Carl Sagan, "Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence." I have yet to see this evidence. Click to expand...

PlanetVape said: We have been watching the developments on the ZenPen, now the Grasshopper since its inception. Indiegogo goal has already been surpassed as well as the first stretch goal. Unfortunately you can see not a single retailer has jumped on board.... why would retailers pass on such a great idea for a vape? The answer is $$. First you are risking a minimum $2310.00 USD for a product that could potentially never come to market. Second the retail price is only $99.00 so our cost of $2310.00 for 25 Grasshoppers = 93.00 each then add to that a 6% exchange rate, 3% PayPal fee, duties, brokerage fees and import taxes = a landed cost of about 108.77 each for us, not including any labor yet to process, package, ship etc. Every Grasshopper we sell would lose us at least $26.00+ each. At the current structure it is just not a feasible product to inventory, support, market and sell.



Any product that sounds too good to be true has to be approached with caution. We have a lot of questions about the Grasshopper that don't add up for us, maybe someone with more knowledge can chime in.

- A 30 watt heater using a 5.00 retail battery, looks like no bigger than a 14650 that can provide 3 hours of use, must be a new battery from another galaxy or Grasshopper has changed the laws of physics?

- 410 degrees Fahrenheit heater 1 inch from your lips, if somehow insulated to keep the pen shell from getting so hot, that heat has to go somewhere. Biomass will only absorb so much?

- Microprocessor communication through the body without wires, is this possible, are there any other products of any kind able to do this?

- Is $100,000 really enough to fund this type of advanced micro tech? For contrast we heard the PAX took 3 million in R&D to develop. Click to expand...

not

After having been contacted by some concerned fc members I felt obligated to share this information with the community.To start off there's little doubt that trevorvapor on reddit is Trevor Vita , r founde of the Zenpen vaporizer project, now renamed to Grasshopper. The argument could be made that his first three comments there ( bottom of the page) are written as if coming from a random reddit user interested in the product. In the most questionable of the three he asks " Are those the final colors ? " in response to a conceptual video of the product. After that he switches gears and starts answering questions as a founder of the project.Why would someone in that position create a reddit account, do a little astroturfing and then shift into founder mode using the same account?one was to play devil's advocate they might say that he:On August 19th, a new member on fc with the username SpaceCow made two back-to-back posts (now merged) expressing enthusiastic interest in the product. As an intrepid member of our staff would later find, these posts were made from the same IP used by Zenpen I had heard some positive comments about the people behind the project from a friend in the know, so I gave Zenpen the benefit of the doubt and asked him about this collusion. I was told that it was his little brother who must have made an account and commented. It seemed unlikely to me, but again I gave him the benefit of the doubt. It turns out that I had foolishly mistaken the Zenpen for another conceptual vaporizer seeking crowdfunding, which meant that the endorsement from my friend was misplaced.On November 16th, there were allegations of more astroturfing There have been a lot of questions surrounding the Zenpen/Grasshopper.As a relatively astute, but entirely average looking fc staff member put it:Their business model has also been called into question:Am I posting this to hurt their project? Absolutely not. As a long time vapor enthusiast I revel in the emergence of innovative new vaporizers. However, over the years, the enthusiast community has seen more than a few new vaporizer companies promising the world and failing to deliver. We've also seen far too many companies deceiving the public with astroturfing campaigns and shill posters.An important distinction here is that the people behind the Grasshopper have taken $176,452 (and counting) from excited vaporists without having demonstrated a convincing proof of concept. My allegiance lies with the consumer and I'm posting this with their best interests in mind. I sincerely hope that these are indeed misunderstandings, and not opportunistic entrepreneurs aiming to cash and run on a ripe new market. I hope that these newcomers truly have broken incredible new ground in portable vaporizer technology. But, as always, buyer beware.--I'm going to leave this thread unlocked so that any discussion doesn't derail the Grasshopper thread. Let's be clear that this isa place to bash the product or company. If you don't have something constructive to add in a civil manner, please don't reply. Please do not make accusations unless you have evidence beyond what was just posted.