Check out THIS recent 2Peas thread. Interesting, huh?
So this scrapper enters a blog contest, she wins, and then never receives the prize. Seems to be a common occurrence in the scrappy blog world these days. When I read about Connie’s plight with FLOWER SOFT, I wasn’t sure what to think. As I’ve gotten older (ahem…), one thing I’ve realized is that I should try to give people the benefit of the doubt more often. Instead of jumping right to the conclusion that these blog-prize-failing companies are super lame and suck big lemons, let’s back up and see if it wasn’t just a misunderstanding, a miscommunication, or something like that.
Luckily, this incident did have a happy ending, a contrite company who accepted full responsibility and fault, and a scrapper who got an even bigger prize than she originally won. Score!
As someone who has given blog RAKs away myself, I also have to be more understanding because I’ve been known to lag for quite some time before getting prizes in the mail to their deserving recipient. My excuse is that I get just plain get busy and either forget or honest-to-God don’t have the time. In the grand scheme of my life (3 jobs, mom, wife, scrapbook consultant, puppy owner, etc.), sometimes buying a prize and something to mail it in, and getting myself to the post office during their business hours ~ which happen to be the same as my work hours, darn it ~ isn’t higher on the priority list than working for pay, feeding my kids, and hassling my husband…erm, I mean…making life for my husband heaven on earth (good save, good save…right?).
Anyhoo, I do see a difference between me, lowly mom blogger who makes no money for this blog, and a company who is selling their product and therefore their image, customer service, and reputation. They have a VERY vested interest in keeping their prize winner (and all her scrappy friends) happy. If I piss you off, what’re you gonna’ do, quit reading my blog? NO NO NO! Don’t leave, Pissy Miss. I’m just sayin’. It’s apples and oranges.
But I do understand that life sometimes gets in the way. Sometimes mistakes are made. Now, sometimes people are buh-twipes too, you just never know. The point is ~ and I DO have a point ~ that if you’re a scrapbooking company, you DO NOT want to piss off a scrapbooker if you care to stay in business past this coming Friday. On the 2peas board, they call it the “Power of the Peas.” What that means is that 2peas is a FEE-YOU-JUS message board community and if a scrapper posts on there that they were somehow cheated or mistreated, the Peas (once they verify the story and that this isn’t some troll) are going to Back a Sister Up.
They will hunt you down and … well, okay, not really … but they will use the power of the internet to spread the word about your lousy company and you will rue the day ~ yes, I said RUE! ~ that you messed with a Pea. The best example I can give is the DONNA DOWNEY boycott. That happened 8 months ago and “we” are STILL boycotting everything she has a part in. I’ll just bet Donna is full of rue, don’t you think?
So just some ‘food for thought’ for you scrapbook company owners, bloggers, etc. out there in Scrap Land. If you promise a prize and you don’t deliver, we will patiently wait and politely pursue you. But if you ignore us or lie to us (don’t bother, we know how to take screen shots), we will take you down. Yes, we will take you down to China Town. (Oh, chill! I’m not being un-PC, I’m just quoting DeNiro in Meet the Parents…sheesh).
Or like my Italians say: “You messa with me, I messa with you. Capice?”
Capisco. Loud and clear, Vindictive Scrappy Girl, loud and clear…
