Friday, April 16, 2010

Bloggers Who Don't Follow Through

Before everyone jumps down my throat on this one.. YES, I KNOW there are lots of wonderful bloggers who DO follow through. I am happily building lasting relationships with them on a daily basis :) but this post isn't about them. Its about the ones that don't.

  It is a situation that irks me.  A month ago or so I was sent a giveaway by a friend of mine for COACH purses!  3 handbags to be exact.  Two Coach and one Guess.  Sweet giveaway we thought. 

  We entered.  Believe me, this was no small task.  To enter you had to jump through a bazillion hoops (yes.. I am exaggerating for effect.. but seriously.. there were a lot of things to do).  You had to follow the blog.  Follow on twitter.  Tweet.  Write a 100 word blog post linking to all things she wanted you to and a few other things ( I would have all the exact details but the blogger has since removed said giveaway post).  These were not extra entry options.  These were MANDATORY.  Yes, you had to do all of them.  It was a lot of work.  The prizes were good and the entries were down around the 50 entry mark.. so we entered.

  The giveaway end date comes and goes and no winner is announced.  A week passes and we check the blog faithfully as the blogger had been adamant about NOT emailing the winner (Really people? Really? You require our email address but you won't contact us if we win.. and on top of that you will only give us 24 hours to find our win and contact you before we are DQ'd.. is it necessary to be that way? Really? .. but I digress...).  Eventually the blogger posts a message stating something along the lines of.. I'm sorry.. been busy... will announce the winner this weekend.  No biggie, I understand that bloggers are people, with lives, families, pets, husbands, other jobs and just plain old "me time" to deal with.  Sometimes picking a winner just isn't top priority.  I get it.  I have those obligations too.  So I wait.  Everyone waits.  All 80 people or so that worked hard putting together entries for this giveaway wait.  The weekend comes and goes.  The blog has no new posts.  A few more days pass.  Then a couple more.  Till one day .. just when I am thinking I should pop a polite " Hi there, just wondering if you have drawn a winner?" email.. I pop onto the blog to see this .. and I quote "
Goodbye




Monday, March 15, 2010


I no longer have time to blog so goodbye blog world :( i really loved my followers and my blog idk maybe ill do it again you can still follow my twitter if you would like


for the last time


xoxo
Yup, she up and left us. No winner.  No nothing.  Just stiffed everyone on the giveaway.  People wished her luck and happiness and politely asked if the giveaway winner would be announced.  Nothing.  My friend sent her an email.  Nothing.  I tweeted her. Nothing.  The only response we saw was her come back to the blog and delete the giveaway post.  Oh, and she managed to come back once more and write a one line post about chicken nuggets.  Ya, chicken freakin nuggets.. sheesh.  I wanted to hunt this girl down and slap her silly with coach bags whilst throwing chicken nuggets at her and screaming "WHY??!!!" .. but again.. I digress...

Apparently I needed to get all this off my chest. :) Its been eating me inside. 

The thing is (and I know its a few bad apples spoiling the bunch here) this isn't the only time I have seen this.  I am currently waiting on a winner announcement in a contest where there are 4 prizes and 4 winners.  Obviously I won (and so did the others) but there has been no winners announcements and no emails and yet the blogger still has time to come in and post three times a week about everything else under the sun.  It has been 2 weeks since that one ended.  In the course of my tour around the blogosphere this past year I have seen bloggers who don't answer emails, don't ship prizes, don't announce winners and generally just don't care enough to follow through.  It is horrible.  It is frustrating.  It is unnecessary.  I'm tired of it.

LOVE, LOVE, LOVE the good bloggers.  UN- love the crappy ones.  Anyone else have similar experiences, thoughts, gripes.. or just plain old want to disagree with me??


9 comments:

  1. I'm totally with you on this subject. Though I named names in my post a month ago. Sure I lost followers for it, but my aim was to bring awareness that some, not all, bloggers are shifty.

    I hate shifty!

    Keep your end of the bargain up, I don't give two hoots if its a freebie or not. If you post, then you keep your end.

    If a winner is chosen, I believe it is their duty to follow through and make sure the winner receives a prize.

    A little off topic but not really. That was the problem I had. To me its the same thing. Hold up your end of the deal.

    Funny, after I posted, lost followers and got berated, that particular blogger I had a problem with tried adding me as a friend on Goodreads. Yeah, like that would ever happen... lol


    Have a good weekend Fokxxy!

    ReplyDelete
  2. The blogger in this case was Beauty Bow. She has since removed almost all posts on her blog. Since she is not around anymore I at least have the comforting fact that she can't jerk around anyone else.

    The blogosphere can be cliquey and even though the other person may be in the wrong .. they can have a world of digital support behind them that will attack you to no end. It is wrong.

    The good news is there are plenty of amazing bloggers that outweigh the bad ones :)

    Glad to hear I am not the one who has experienced issues like this (although.. not happy to hear you had to go through it too)

    Have a great weekend too!!

    ReplyDelete
  3. I started entering blog giveaways about six months ago. During that time I have won about 80 of them. I received all but five of the prizes promptly with good-to-great communication from the blogger.

    One of the no-shows was from a blogger who shut down her site but did write a nice post explaining why and did finish out her giveaways. I probably could have notified her that I didn't receive my prize but didn't want to bother her with it, since it sounded like she was having personal issues that were pretty stressful.

    Another sponsor claimed she had mailed my prize and, even though I never did receive it, I decided to give her the benefit of the doubt and forget about it. At least she did send me an email explanation.

    One of the no-shows is a Macy's gift card that I won on February 2 (!!) After repeated emails to the blogger I did receive a response saying she's working on it. Guess time will tell what happens with that one.

    Probably the most frustrating is a piece of jewelry I won on January 21--yes 3 months ago!--and still haven't received. I have emailed this blogger at least 3 times with absolutely no response from her at all. And yet she continues to post giveaways on her site. I think the least she could do would be to write back and let me know she did receive my emails, even if she doesn't intend to pursue the missing prize.

    So all in all, I would say my experience (with these exceptions) with blog giveaways has been very positive. I know hosting giveaways is a lot of work, which I certainly appreciate, and by far the majority of my interactions with these bloggers has been very positive.

    ReplyDelete
  4. Ugh, I cant beleive she did that! I totally know where you're coming from on this subject though.

    Thanks for participating in my giveaway, good luck!

    ReplyDelete
  5. I hear you, I hate that too! And yes your right as bloggers we all have lives too but if you've committed to having a giveaway atleast follow thru. Thanks for visiting my blog:)

    ReplyDelete
  6. Tres lame! That stinks - I can't believe she's leave you high and dry.

    I'll say one thing that is tough about giveaways - when you DO email winners and await their addresses and hold up getting prizes out to the others so as not to hound the PR folks with your follow-up. That's annoying.

    I've actually decided to start sending the addresses as they come in - I waited for over a week once and it didn't work out well - it made ME look bad - and I didn't like that. So now, I just send the addresses along as I receive them. As a PR pro, I know this can be annoying but I also get WHY bloggers (including myself) do it.

    It stinks when things like this happen...but it did make for funny blog fodder! (i.e. "I wanted to slap her silly with Coach bags while throwing chicken nuggets at her..." LOL!)

    :)
    XOXO Rachael
    @PineappleBabble

    ReplyDelete
  7. Hi Everyone, Fokxxy here.. This comment was left by Rachael . I published it but it never showed. so here it is:

    Rachael has left a new comment on your post "Bloggers Who Don't Follow Through":

    Tres lame! That stinks - I can't believe she's leave you high and dry.

    I'll say one thing that is tough about giveaways - when you DO email winners and await their addresses and hold up getting prizes out to the others so as not to hound the PR folks with your follow-up. That's annoying.

    I've actually decided to start sending the addresses as they come in - I waited for over a week once and it didn't work out well - it made ME look bad - and I didn't like that. So now, I just send the addresses along as I receive them. As a PR pro, I know this can be annoying but I also get WHY bloggers (including myself) do it.

    It stinks when things like this happen...but it did make for funny blog fodder! (i.e. "I wanted to slap her silly with Coach bags while throwing chicken nuggets at her..." LOL!)

    :)
    XOXO Rachael
    @PineappleBabble

    ReplyDelete
  8. Lol. Glad you liked my blog fodder Rachael (and cute term!! )

    I agree it would be frustrating to wait for addresses too. I personally am a social media whore and check my gmail WAY too often to miss any emails lol.

    :)

    ReplyDelete
  9. I entered that giveaway for the coach bags too !
    I never made a blog post though , didn't know that was mandatory.It is frustrating , but I guess I am lucky I have received everything I have won so far.
    There was one that I emailed about a month after winning to find out , and then I got it in the mail a few days later - with the shipping date as the day I emailed to find out so maybe I would have never got that one if I hadn't emailed.

    ReplyDelete

Come on.. you know you wanna say something!!