Sunday, July 27, 2008

Caught with Pants Down: The Chippindale Affair Heats Up (Update)

Things turn more and more hilarious in the Chippindale(s) realm (or sad, depending on your view). Let me remind you where we left off in the past: J.Chippindale was accused by one-eyed-Jack of posting comments to his own reviews under a sock-puppet account "SpellingBee". Now, just to whet you appetite, a brief quote:
Initial post: 27 Jun 2008 22:45 BST
SpellingBee says:
Yep, these are great little books

J. Chippindale says:
Yes they are very good value for money and packed with information

one-eyed Jack says:
J Chippindale and Spellingbee are one and the same person. The sadness reaches new depths.

SpellingBee says:
This man is so conceited he even has the temerity to tell me who I am. Now that is creepy. Maybe I had better check with my mum. In fact he hasn't even got the gender correct, how wrong can one person be, but hey why let the truth stand in the way of one of OEJ's famous statements. Mind you if he stays true to form he will probably hedge his bets by saying that someone else has told him, or he has it on good authority, safety in numbers and all that. He may even say that someone high on the management ladder at Amazon has told him in confidence, but that would not be wise as they would certainly have to check their facts first and realise that it was not true. You see whereas OEJ says he knows who I am, strange as it may seem, I am the one person who actually does know.

one-eyed Jack says:
SpellingBee's real name is Jonathan Chippindale. And that's a FACT.

Misfit says:
He'll probably delete the review to remove the comments but there's alway the google cache. From Spelling bee's wish list,

Wish List BUY A GIFT CERTIFICATE
This list is for: JONATHAN CHIPPINDALE

Interesting reading and how the Bridal Registry (AKA wish list) done her in, http://dearauthor.com/wordpress/2008/07/08/top-ten-things-authors-should-not-do-at-amazon/
And indeed, if you visit SpellingBee's profile page, you'll see that the SpellingBee's actual name name is Jonathan Chippindale ! I was reading this thing yesterday laughing my ass off; highly recommended. Not only this particular review, but all of the latest ones (linked to at the top of this message).

PS. One thing I'd like to tell anyone visiting there: PULEESE do not click Chipplidale's notes unhelpful. They deserve to be proudly shown and also it's a pain in the butt to have to open them all the time. As the poet said, don't touch this. In fact, give the already closed ones a few helpfuls so as to open them.

PPS. Btw, this is something our friend 1eJack might want to know: Mr Chippindale now claims that at least some of his reviews have been written not by him, but by someone else (members of his family, as he claims for now, but who knows what whill happen in the future, perhaps someone else will be helping him soon?).

This is the same error that John Matlock "Gunny" made in the past. There seems to be some sort of Amazon policy that if more than one person posts reviews under the same account, this reviewer cannot be rated. Iow, it's OK to post results of a collective reviewing effort under a single name, but this name cannot then be a Top Reviewer (and rated at all). One of such reviewers is "Midwest Book Review": they openly state that it's a team and they are not rated. They post over a hundred one-paragraph reviews daily, all five stars, but they're not a Top Reviewer. How come Mr Chippindale uses literary help from his grandson and daughter, yet remains a Top Reviewer (No.18)? If Amazon finds out, he'll lose his rank !

6 comments:

Unknown said...

SpellingBee is the grandson of J Chippindale, it has emerged. Uses an account with a billing name JONATHAN CHIPPINDALE but I am led to believe that this man is the SON of the original J Chippindale.

If you're confused, so am I...

Sea Foam said...

I have difficulty buying that crap it is the grandson or son or someone else. For starters, the supposed daughter first came on and said she had no clue WHO Jonathan even was, then suddenly was all apologetic that she forgot about the grandson. Is anyone expected to believe such nonsense?

There are just too many things going on here with all these people supposedly using this guy's account, writing his reviews, pretending to be a slew of other people, and so on. Let's not forget the good job the Cleaner is doing researching and posting where this guy is copying his reviews from.

ALL of this, if report correctly to Amazon, would have his profile marked as unrankable ("0") like others who were caught in similar situations like gunner. It's all just stupid. Once it gets out that more than one person may be manipulating an account, then the account is no longer trusted at Amazon; they aren't into guessing who is using an account.

I also find it amazing how the "daughter" is taking it upon herself to start deleting "suspicious" reviews. She couldn't even remember having this relative and now she knows what reviews he wrote?

Hey, I was born at night, but not last night.

Sea Foam said...

Wow, Someone has really been cleaning house on Chip's reviews. MANY are deleted AND have been reposted to eliminate the comments (even the confessions of the profile being used by multiple people). I hope someone did some copying and/or screen shots!

Nope, no one is trying to cover anything up at all . . . it's all a coincidence just like the fact that SpellingBee's account suddenly seems to be missing. I'm sure that is yet another coincidence.

Unknown said...

AFAIK SpellingBee's account is still visible:-

http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/pdp/profile/A1ITTU1PQTS8EW/ref=cm_cr_rev_detpdp

And the Wish List is still there too:-

http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/registry/registry.html/ref=cm_pdp_profile_reg?ie=UTF8&type=wishlist&id=3A0DROE1RKPFR

which famously shows the once high-denial SpellingBee to be J Chippindale of course. Interesting that SpellingBee claimed they she was female, whereas Dr Helen Chippindale stated very clearly that SpellingBee was male and was the son of her brother Jonathan. There remains a whiff of BS in the air; maybe there are no grandchildren at all and the only two people involved are J (John) Chippindale and his daughter Helen.

This is developing into a kind of soap opera, isn't it!

Anyway the old boy is in Hong Kong at the moment apparently, and his daughter has said that he will take steps to shut his reviewing account down soon after he returns to the UK. We'll see. If he doesn't, I think The Cleaner will do it for him, having amassed considerable evidence of plagiarism against the man.

Malleus said...

Yeah, I myself am very sceptical about this supposed family irruption into the Chippindale realm. I think it's himself, faisant bonne mine à mauvais jeu, as it were. Gunny did the same, btw, and I don't think it was true that he had a team working under him. More likely that was a copout, that, unfortunately for him, resulted in his loss of his topreviewership. I suspect it's the same here. One doesn't know for sure, of course. At any rate, so far the proceedings have been rather entertaining, I've enjoyed the show very much.

Sea Foam said...

Yes, OEJ, you are right. I think I tried to find him while I was still on the USA Amazon site. I may have made that mistake with his reviews as well. As we American say when in error, "My bad!"

I do still stand by my disbelief that this is the grandson, son, or even Dr. Helen Chippindale at all. No way to prove that, of course, but to have so many people having access to his account in unbelievable. Every member of my household has their own account on Amazon. There is just no need to have everyone know everyone else's password and such.

I just find NO credibility with all the defenses being made for JC. I sure do hope that The Cleaner has done a great job contacting Amazon about this in BOTH the UK and the USA since the reviews are duplicated there (they just don't have any comments on them like in the UK).