More on TrustyPig
I know, I know – I’m already sick of talking about TrustyPig myself. But today, we received word that the TrustyPig admin (“Costy”?) has responded to our claims that the SmartyPig website design was stolen.
Rather than post the response on their own blog (which any transparent company would do), TrustyPig opts instead to work through an affiliate at Money News Online. The response is actually two-fold: first coming from a poorly-constructed, grammatically-challenged response from the Money News Online editor; followed by a fairly articulate and seemingly authentic reply from the admin of TrustyPig. I’ll cull the details and highlight the interesting parts from the full post for you right here (because I’m just that nice).
First, the MNO editor doesn’t think too highly of our friend Andy:
I will not name this blog or give a link to it as I think that the admin of this blog only needs to bask into spotlight of an already popular TrustyPig and get attention to his junk blog.
Really, MNO? You’re going there? Well, fine. According to Compete data, TrustyPig doesn’t even register, while Andy’s blog is generating a modest, but existing, traffic flow. I don’t know how much traffic connecting himself to TrustyPig will gain him, but I doubt it will be enough to make everything he’s done worth the effort. Rather, he’s doing it to help SmartyPig.
This is so called “call to action” probably came from the competitors of TrustyPig who failed to destroy the program by sending constant DDoS-attacks to the site at first.
Nope, sorry, MNO. As much as you would probably like to believe that TrustyPig has legions of enemies willing to go to the ends of the Earth in order to destroy the immense power of their service, we Iowans didn’t even know TrustyPig existed until yesterday. A quick Twitter search (our primary communication and organization platform) shows we started talking about this yesterday. Apparently this DDOS attack they suffered was sometime last week. We don’t support direct attacks like that. In fact, I doubt any of us even know how to do something like that.
Now, a response allegedly coming from TrustyPig.
I got several comments on the blog regarding this issue last night and I must confess that I was shocked to find out about this. I initially hired to developers to build the site, a programmer from Romania and a freelance designer from China. You have to trust me that I wasn’t aware of this problem, I never heard about smartypig.com and moreover I obviously didn’t want to copy their visual identity. I ordered the designer to make me a project related to my domain name and in a web 2.0 style. Now that I think about it I was surprised that he had ready the design in 2 days
Yeah, I would be concerned if a developer returned such an amazing site design in just two days.
I already contacted a designer here in Romania and he’s on the job. Shortly we’ll have a makeover of the design. I do realize that I cannot totally change the layout because it would affect the site generally and it would require to much time that would be better invested in developing the program rather than this. But we’ll sure change the site in such a way that it will not resemble smartypig anymore.
Which they have already done, and we applaud their timely redesign.
As soon as I get the designed changed I’ll give an official communicate and offer my official appologies to the smartypig people.
We look forward to hearing from SmartyPig that this has actually been done.
It’s true that the main guilty person here is me because I’m responsible with the site
One-hundred percent true. I won’t deny that at all.
I’m sorry that the people from smartypig didn’t contact me immediately and explain the situation, they would have surely find an understanding attitude from me. They prefered to go on the blogs and now I got hundreds of tickets and messages about this situation.
I would have loved — even preferred — to have contacted TrustyPig directly, but their website expressly prohibits this activity. The site is completely and utterly devoid of any sort of contact information. No email, no feedback form, nothing. The contact page is a link to a help desk form which requires you to create an account in order to utilize — something I was not willing to do given the shady nature of TrustyPig’s operation. Our only recourse was to leave comments on the blog, which were apparently deleted before they ever got posted. At the very least, he knew we were trying to contact him, but since he never responded, we had no idea anyone was actually listening.
Since TrustyPig seemed particularly uninterested in being contacted, and no one was talking back, we opted for blogging the hell out of the situation. Obviously the noise we made caught their ears. If they had only had the foresight to have an email address on their contact page, maybe this entire situation could have been completely avoided. Now, their brand has likely been irreparably damaged.
As far as I’m concerned, I’m done wasting time with all of this. I was prepared to find out more about TrustyPig and unravel some shady history, but actually I think this guy was just the victim of a cheap, pathetic web developer. TrustyPig still deserves the bulk of the blame for not being transparent about the situation, and also not looking into the credentials of the web developer responsible for building their site. But now that the situation has been (essentially) resolved, it simply doesn’t deserve any more attention.
So, yeah – I’m pretty much done talking about TrustyPig now. Everyone can go back to sleep.
I live in the sheltered land of the midwest, born and raised in a small farming town in the center of Iowa. I am passionate about my family, writing science fiction, playing video games, and exploring the internet. Most of my daily thoughts and minutiae are posted either on my 
According to Compete data, TrustyPig doesn’t even register, while Andy’s blog is generating a modest, but existing, traffic flow.
What is “Complete data”? Never heard of them, and I was involved in e-commerce before graphic web browsers were invented.
According to Alexa,com, (an Amazon company), the default 6-month charts on traffic show SmartyPig getting a reach of 0.0005 while TrustyPig gets a reach of twice that – 0.0010.
That much traffic isn’t likely to gag a horse. In fact, it’s not likely to gag a gnat. Both sites get more traffic than this site, admittedly, and more than the new blog I set up in February but less than my old blog, which was on a site I sold in, uh, February, what a coincidence.
I haven’t spent a whole lot of effort trying to figure out whether these sites are in competition with each other, but the whole situation reminds me of a guy in Indiana who opened a restaurant, asking his lawyer to make sure that the name wasn’t in use anywhere in the US.
Six months later, he finds it’s in use in New Jersey, so he throws away all the paper goods he has, pays for new signage, spends something like $20,000 rebranding his restaurant with a new name.
Another six months and he’s out of business. Turns out his great concept wasn’t all that popular with customers.
If TrustyPig was stealing SmartyPig’s customers, that was pretty stupid. They’d have been better off stealing something worth the effort.
Compete, not “complete”. Compete.com has generally had more accurate and reliable traffic data details than Alexa.
The problem here isn’t that TrustyPig is attempting to steal existing customers away from SmartyPig. What we’re talking about is brand association, not customer loyalty. The idea behind TrustyPig’s similar design and name is to attempt to confuse potential SmartyPig customers into thinking they’ve joined up with a legitimate company. They hear the positive flow of news that SmartyPig generates in Google searches, and hope to associate their own service with that brand recognition.
I would like to here a business case from Costy at TrustyPig to explain the reasoning he chose that name. If his story is true, he would have a explanation. Smartypig is obvious. They serve as a savings resource and they’re drawing a comparison to a piggybank – and promoting smart decisions with money.
Trustypig doesn’t. It has to do with traffic online and ad packs. Trusty in the name makes a little sense, because they want site viewers to believe they’re not a scam – but where does the pig come in?
Great Post Nathaniel…
I have the urge to take this argument to the next level, but I am going to let it die with these last comments – cuz I really don’t have time to get in a bitch fest.
@TrustyPig “admin” – you were wrong. You admitted your guilt and have corrected the situation. Kudos.
@MoneyNewsDouche – you’re accusations are ridiculous. I don’t get why you are expending so much effort to defend your affiliate. Your defense isn’t even ranking you in search results – so what’s the point?
@Harl Compete is the de-facto when comparing site analytics… Alexa is worthless as a user has to have their “toolbar” in order for it to register traffic. If you are what you claim to be you would know this.
@Tony you are spot on. It’s explicit brand ripoff.