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Vampire Tools, a Skyline Capital Management company that primarily sells pliers and tools made by Engineer Inc, sent out an email newsletter, saying they “Just Ranked World’s Best!!!”
They have not responded to our emails asking for clarification.
Shown at the top of this page is a screenshot of the pop-up message users are shown when visiting Vampire Tools’ website. They have been making similar claims on social media, that Vampliers were “rated best pliers in the US.”
In their announcements and posts, Vampire Tools says:
The results are in!!! The entire Vampire Tools’ Team is humbled and thrilled that our VAMPLIERS® were rated as the BEST PLIERS in the US!
Here’s what their social media post looks like, with similar claims about Vampliers being “rated best in the US.”
Vampire Tools’ Vampliers can be found on Amazon, with “Vampliers World’s Best Pliers” advertised in the product titles.
Vampire Tools advertised their pliers with similar “Vampliers World’s Best Pliers” marketing language for at least several years now. Shown here is an image from their 2018 SEMA newsletter.
Here’s a screenshot of the “review” site’s “ranking,” which Vampire Tools points to as the source of their “just ranked world’s best” announcement and “rated best in the US” claims.
From this, I would say that the “Just Ranked World’s Best” claim is unfounded, and that the “ranking” website simply copied Vampire Tools’ own marketing claims from their Amazon listings.
That website says their “rankings are cleverly generated from the algorithmic analysis of thousands of customer reviews.”
Their “rankings” look to be auto-generated lists of Amazon products, with no added content or opinions, expert or otherwise. I’m sure you’ve encountered websites like that anytime you research products or services via Google or other search engines.
It’s likely that the “rankings” website considered “Vampliers World’s Best Pliers” as the brand name.
Even if we ignore the low authority of the source and their “algorithmic analysis” rankings, and that the “World’s Best Pliers” phrasing referenced in the rankings seem to stem directly from Vampire Tools’ own product marketing language, the “ranking” site exclusively features Vampire Tools’ Vampliers products in their list of “10 Best Vampliers Worlds Best Pliers in the US.”
From all this, it seems that Vampliers are “rated as best pliers in the US,” only in the context of Vampliers pliers.
Basically, according to the “rankings,” Vampliers pliers seem to be rated as the best Vampliers pliers. That’s very different from what is conveyed by the statement “rated best in the US.”
If we give Vampire Tools the benefit of the doubt, they should have looked more closely at the source material to see that i) the “rankings” are algorithmically generated rather than an expert rating, ii) the rankings where Vampliers “just ranked world’s best” simply used Vampire Tools’ “Vampliers World’s Best Pliers” marketing language exactly, and iii) the rankings they based their “rated best pliers in the US” claims on is a list of 10 Vampliers products exclusively.
In my opinion, “World’s Best Pliers,” is acceptable hyperbole, whereas a claim of “rated best pliers in the US” should be substantiated or put into accurate context. “Vampliers rated best pliers in the US” is a very different statement from “Vampliers rated best pliers in the US in a list of Vampliers pliers.”
I first shared my confusion and concern with Vampire Tools 2 weeks ago, and they have not yet responded to requests for clarification.
