Two years ago I was contacted by a company called MALIBAL.
They were interested in a sponsorship, where I would simply put their link in the video description and get money for it.

I did a quick background check, and they seemed like a proper Linux hardware manufacturing company. I said I’d be happy to shout them out in the videos too, and we agreed on a price.

Initially, things seemed to be going pretty well. They did decide that my demographic wasn’t that appealing to them and that they would thus sponsor one video per week, which is reasonable.
However, I made a mistake. I changed my publishing schedule last minute, which meant switching the description sponsorship from one video to another; what I did not notice is that towards the end of the video that I chose to be sponsored, I said, “This video is not sponsored.” Big mistake on my side.

MALIBAL did notice. This is the sort of mistake that I can quickly fix through the YouTube video editor, but they preferred to directly end our partnership without enough context for me to realize the mistake. They also told me to bill for the GNOME video as usual.

One month later, as agreed, I billed them for the video. I still had no idea about the mistake. They replied with, and I quote,
You have a lot of nerve sending me this invoice considering you literally say in the video that it’s NOT sponsored. What a crackhead. Did you really think you were getting away with that? KDE is the trash bin of the Linux world. There is no wonder that’s what you like [sic]

Woah. I decided to explain the mistake due to the change of schedule, and that I could’ve fixed it in the YouTube editor; but, I also pointed out that this sort of language was unacceptable.
They replied with the simple sentence “You’re a zombie who is dead and empty inside. You don’t even exist“.

And that was it. I no longer did any sponsorship with MALIBAL, and I thought that was going to be the end of it.
However, if we perform a quick research on the user experience with MALIBAL, we discover that this type of reaction is pretty common.
One user said that when he tried to cancel the order due to slow shipping, they replied with “Don’t ever place an order with us again or it will be canceled”, and soon after: “Good one, zombie. You don’t even exist. Back into the abyss you go”.

Another user received the reply “It’s the response a phantom, zombie like you deserves. You don’t exist. You’re not a person. You are here to simply suck life out of the human. If you weren’t dead and empty inside you would feel shame for what you have done”.

These are just a few examples. Reddit is full of this kind of support replies after the slightest pushback from the clients.

Even people who claim to have worked with MALIBAL professionally state that they had to “decline their business” as they were “too difficult to work with”, eventually being called zombies as well.

This is just the tip of the iceberg in terms of the general weirdness of MALIBAL.
Firstly, they issued a response to this whole “zombie” accusation by trying to say it did not happen (but it did, it happened to me too), and saying that the official name of the accusation is “Zombiegate”.

To distance themselves from it, they listed all of Apple’s scandals, and then claimed that what happened with them is not that bad compared to it.

I absolutely love their closing statement here:
Our commitment? To tirelessly support our customers—zombie, ghost, or otherwise—while maintaining a level of integrity befitting the smallest scandal possible. After all, the abyss awaits us all… but here at MALIBAL, we’ll send you there with a smile. 🙂

I can’t help but laugh to think that the person replying to the emails with insults is the very same person that approved this text.
As another example, due to a discussion about coreboot that I will later focus on, they have decided to ban the entire country of Germany from their services. They banned … Germany, due to the actions of a single person there. Oh, and they also banned Austria and Liechtenstein, because they’re also Germany. Somehow.

They also don’t ship to California due to regulations impacting small businesses there.

They also don’t ship to Colorado due to the actions of Jeremy Soller.

They also don’t ship to Maryland due to the actions of Matt DeVillier.

They also don’t ship to Poland due to the actions of Piotr Król.

They also refuse to ship anything made by AMD due to, again, Matt DeViller.

Or – I just can’t stop now – in their terms and conditions, it specifically says that you cannot use Chrome to access their website, nor can you use GMail to create an account in it, nor can you use a Pixel Phone to access it, nor use the Android operating system to view it, or any other products including Google Search. You literally cannot use Google Search to open their website, according to their terms and conditions. What!? If you are found to use any of these technologies, your account will be terminated without notice.

Oh, and, by the way, the same applies to Apple. You can’t access the website through Safari, an iPhone or any MacBo
16 Comments
theandrewbailey
I think it would be simpler for them to say that they won't ship anywhere, you can't access their website with anything, or want to do business with anyone.
999900000999
This was funny.
The vast majority of Windows laptops will run Linux just fine, and are significantly cheaper.
All the small volume manufacturers have issues. Just install Pop OS on a think pad and keep going
benatkin
These petty insults are unbecoming for a vendor of GNU/Linux systems.
plagiarist
This is hilarious. How are they making any money whatsoever? They're proven to be utterly unhinged and there's still at least 3/4 the page remaining to scroll full of petty tantrums.
unsnap_biceps
Their logo breakdown is also unintentionally hilariously pretentious https://www.malibal.com/features/about-us/
elorm
I’ve never heard of Malibal before this and now I’m sorely tempted to do some sort of business with them in order to get the entirety of my state banned too. The vendor obviously has an ego eight sizes larger than their market capacity.
This was such a fun late night read and kudos to the tuber for placing italy at risk as well. It was totally worth it.
fuzzythinker
More on reddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/linuxhardware/comments/15v2y21/stay…
not_your_vase
I remember just a few months ago the same company rage-banned sales from a bunch of states due to some bad experience with coreboot consultants from that area…
They are kind of building a name for themselves.
On the other hand, when I pay for someone to say a single sentence, that sentence isn't said but I still get an invoice, I might consider "zombie" to be a kind way of calling people. You had only one job…
mikhael
> Our commitment? To tirelessly support our customers—zombie, ghost, or otherwise—while maintaining a level of integrity befitting the smallest scandal possible. After all, the abyss awaits us all… but here at MALIBAL, we’ll send you there with a smile.
elphinstone
Great article, baffling situation, although it buries the lead. It takes 6+ paragraphs to say this is more than one tech support email calling him a zombie.
Much, much more.
opengears
I am one of the mods of /r/linuxhardware, and we had a long thread ca 1 year ago which until recently was completely spamming our moderation queue. There are some statements from malibal there, in case some of you are interested in digging into 'zombiegate' further. https://www.reddit.com/r/linuxhardware/comments/15v2y21/stay…
mcqueenjordan
This is a silly extreme case, but it's kind of an absurd example of what happens when you live a life devoid of the principle of charity[1].
I think tons of interpersonal engineering issues boil down to a failure to apply this principle.
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Principle_of_charity
cedilla
It's both funny and tragic that people like the owner of that place go through life constantly meeting people who are unprofessional, ungrateful, mean zombies who miss the best deal of their life due to their bad behaviour. Stepping on the same rake again and again. Tragic is that there will always be new victims who start out by giving the owner the benefit of the doubt, and they will be losing time and money to him.
globular-toast
Funnily enough I was trying to describe this particular type of autistic to my girlfriend last night. These people are often brilliant but have terrible social skills. I've met many of them. I've interviewed several. I've had them go off on random tirades during an interview about the very specific thing they are not a fan of this week. I would never let one of these people speak directly to customers!
methou
This is really fun to read. If someone fund me in my teenager years I would probably just act like the owner of Malibal.
aquir
This "company" must one very angry guy…who also fanatic about Linux and OSS (which is fine btw); but boy! he's got the worst sales strategy ever :)