Ron at Bay of Fundie narrowly missed getting fleeced by a Christian business. Fortunately, they gave the game away by attempting to proselytize. While searching for a replacement hard drive for his iPod, he discovered a page on one seller’s site that announced its mission to bring people to Jesus. That told Ron to look elsewhere:

I decided to look around a bit more, just to make sure that iFixit really was the best place to get the drive.

Ultimately, I ended up buying a drive on eBay. There’s an eBay shop that was selling a new 30 GB drive for less than iFixit was selling a used one. I guess they shouldn’t have tried to sell me Jesus. They ended up not selling me anything.

I’ll argue that from the point of view of the business, that’s undoubtedly true: they shouldn’t have tried to sell Jesus because of the subsequent loss of a sale. But from a consumer’s point of view, they absolutely should try to sell Jesus. It warns the rest of us to be on the lookout for scams.

A person who will lie to you and tell you that everything in the Bible is true isn’t even going to blink at selling you shoddy goods, and charging you more than you’d pay for a better product elsewhere.

Self-proclaimed Christian companies are just as moral as the self-proclaimed Religious Right: i.e., not moral at all. I’ve noticed a pattern over the years: if a company is busy trying to tell you they’re a wonderful Christian business you can feel good dealing with, once you’ve scratched the surface, you’ll find a raving bunch of shysters under that pretty gold paper. Take Servicemaster’s slogan: “To honor God in all we do.” It was a company based heavily on Christian values. This translated to breaking federal labor and environmental laws, lying to employees, lying to customers, and milking every customer for every last penny possible, especially when the customer was being charged for an error the company had made.

This has not been an isolated instance. Remember: I’ve been dealing with small and mid-sized businesses for a decade now, and the pattern has held true. The more the company tries to convert its customers, the more likely it is they’re needing to create a pool of guillable victims. Even if they’re genuinely motivated by a desire to save your soul from damnation, there’s still a strange pattern of fundamentalist Christian businesses providing worse service and goods at higher prices.

That being so, I hope they continue to advertise as good, honest Christian companies. It makes it so much easier to avoid scams.