Some time after an online ammunition seller picked up Alphecca's "People of the Gun" website -- and good on 'em for the effort -- I discovered they'd reverted to an older link for me, one that goes to an out-of-date MySpace page.
I don't know why, it had been changed long before at the original page. But there it was. Mentioned it the last time they gigged me about my link to their PotG page, which actually points at the old site and gets redirected. Last time I checked prior to yesterday, it hadn't been changed.
Yesterday, I received another letter from their hard-working marketing type[1] requesting I fix the link, kind of paraphrasing my morning's post, blithely ignoring that they do not link to my present blog. I checked to see if they'd fixed their link to me, nope, and snarked back, proposing if they'd fix their link, I'd fix mine.
Haven't heard a word. As of this morning, the link is still wrong.
The offer stands, but looky here, I generally do not link to products I neither use nor long for. I don't know if the online ammunition retailers are good or not, 'cos I usually buy in bulk at gun shows from known-reliable low-overhead outfits and if I run low between times, I hit Gander Mountain in person or a local gun store. So these guys are using my face, figure and Star BKS barbeque gun[2] to promote a product and service I know nothing about, doing it without an actual link to my actual blog and then bugging me to clean up my link to them.
I have not heard any complaint about the product; their website is well laid-out and the prices look good. They did good when they kept PotG online and I don't begrudge 'em banner ads on that page to pay for it. I've let the whole thing just pass without comment because of that -- until yesterday's friendly reminder.
Okay, because We Are Such Pals, since you read this blog you don't link to, I'll make you a new offer: Fix the link or lose it. Fair?
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1. In fairness, I should point out that salesmen generally affect me like a red flag does a bull. The "sales engineers" I often deal with are to blame, as most of them are useless as engineers and completely unable to grasp that the kind of hardware and software I deal with is readily evaluated on a price/performance basis, not by shininess, buttons and lights or how charming the sales engineer might be. It is endlessly frustrating. Alas, my learned reaction does a disservice to the rare few who are genuinely friendly and knowledgeable,
On the Web, we are very often trading intangibles for intangibles, eyeballs-on-ads for eyeballs-on-a-blog or selling for pennies on the mouse-click and that's fine as long as everyone involved is okay with the swap. I'm not okay trading ammo ads for a dead MySpace page.
2. More of a formal-events gun, as it isn't engraved but has a lovely pearl-gray anodized frame and shiny, chrome-plated slide and small parts.
11 comments:
Sounds fair to me.
"Sales Engineer"? Boy, things sure have changed since I left the Industry. How the Frack did they pull off the blending of Oil and Water? We used to call them "Sales Reps", and you don't know how much Grief they used to cause us (well, YOU probably do) when they'd come out to the Shop Floor Screaming for their Products to be Shipped out the Door in the next 10 seconds, when they weren't even hitting the Production Schedule for another 2 Months! If I ever hear "BUT I PROMISED THE CUSTOMER!" again...
Bubblehead: Oh, god, the worms, THE WORMS!
Sorry, nightmare fuel. I got it back under control now.
"BUT I PROMISED THE CUSTOMER!"
"Maybe you should have checked with the engineering department for an overview of our ACTUAL PRODUCT."
(Working, at the time, for an e-commerce package site. Salesdrone decided to sign a big contract for... a website building tool. For a 2 week delivery schedule. For about half of what the company ended up spending to fill that order, 4 months late. Yeah, they aren't in business anymore. But I got a lovely ulcer and a strong aversion to working salary out of the deal!)
From the time you open your eyes, until the time you close them, everything you see, feel, taste, smell, has been through the hands of salesmen. Every Thing. A lot of them are pains in the ass. A powerful lot of them are Willy Loman, just trudging through life eking out a living.
I've had my speriecnes with ad "Execs"- in fact, in my all too brief tenure as a DJ and on-air personality at the local station, I was told I had a perfect voice for sales, by the station manager. Which is a lot like a TV news anchor being told he has a perfect face for radio.
Sorry you're having to deal with the strange. Hope it gets resolved without too much foofaraw.
In a perfect world, trained government allotment technicians would tell you what you need and we could put all those useless salesweasels on their knees and put bullets in their medulla oblongatas.
;)
They're not usless -- but professionally, I buy steak, not sizzle. I'm well-paid to tell the difference and I do not appreciate folks I need to rely on for information pushin' sizzle instead of steak -- or ground beef, the way the economy is going.
My pet theory on shiny buttons is that sales people try all kinds of different tacks to sell things and the "look at all the shiny buttons" spiel actually works, at least some of the time.
My other theory is that nobody knows why anybody buys that product, but the "look at the shiny buttons" is fun to say.
Looks like they have it working now!
I just went to Tams, clicked the non-obscured peeps-o-teh-gun, scrolled to your photo, and wound up right back here.
Always be closing.
I'm glad we finally got the link fixed, and sorry for all the trouble getting it to that point!
Take care, and keep up the good work on an excellent blog.
Sam, all's well that ends well --I've certainly had my battles with recalcitrant web-page edits software. Thank you!
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