Why You Must Obtain Specific and Written
Permission to Ship Materials/Media to us:
by www.FakeNewspapers.com
We used to post our shipping address with the caveat, boldly presented, that unsolicited materials would be discarded, unopened. Of course we never actually did that -- what if the materials shipped to us were someone's prized photos, or irreplaceable book manuscript that they worked 17 years to craft? We posted that warning merely in the hope that people would stop sending us weird things. It didn't work. People continued to send us odd, strange items like framed artwork. Why? We've no clue. We don't have the capabilities of scanning a 36 by 48 inch painting, we never have, and we never will. It's not a part of what we do -- and besides, we're not in the business of dismantling, then reconstructing the painting's priceless frame anyhow! Yet people continued to ship things like this to us, despite our express warning that such things would be literally thrown in the trash. People send us baby clothes. Why? No babies here! Why would we want that stuff? People sent us prints of images they'd photoshopped and asked us to tell them if their work showed promise (and by the way, please send it back at your (our!) expense, insured, of course, and carefully packaged). Well......No! We're not in the business of reviewing your Photoshop expertise (or lack thereof), and we're not going to open a whole shipping center dedicated to shipping back your unsolicited submissions at our expense! Still, as clear as we've tried to make that over the years, people continue to send us oddball crap. Someone even sent us a box of Channelbind covers, and directed us to modify them so they worked, and ship them back so they could go into the business of offering book binding to THEIR customers -- in direct competition with US! Sorry -- we can't take any more of this. The proverbial camel was pretty-well laden before the following incident, but this was the straw that broke the poor camel's back, and we have now removed our shipping address from public view. It is apparently the only way to stop these shipments, since the shipping centers are successful in catching and refusing only a percentage of unsolicited deliveries.
A woman recently shipped to us a large carton. It was accidentally accepted by the shipping center, and so by default we became "responsible" for it. We opened it, and found it to contain hundreds of personal photos along with probably as many hand-scribbled notes. Obviously this was someone's cache of irreplaceable pictures and scrapbook items. An included note commanded us to use this material to make something -- a newspaper, or a magazine cover, whatever. No payment was enclosed. The project had not been discussed with us in any way at any time. And to make something out of a box of pictures is not a service we even remotely offer, nor have we ever, nor will we ever. It would be about like someone cleaning out their cupboards of food, placing it all in a great big box, then driving to the local steak restaurant and commanding the cook to "make something for us to eat". The cook, of course, would simply throw them out. But what if the offender left all their food on the floor of the restaurant when they departed? The restaurant would have no choice but to clean it up and demand that the owner come back and get it. But what if the owner refused to do that? And what if the restaurant owner, trying to be polite and not wishing to throw all this valuable food away, spent weeks working with this nut-job, finally getting all the food returned to them -- all for no compensation. And what if, then, the person who pulled this stunt got smart-mouth with the restaurant? And what if, then, the restaurant finally had enough, and told this idiot to simply shove it? And what if, in response to that, this whacko filed a complaint with the Better Business Bureau for the restaurant's rudeness?
Wonder no more: Here's the exact scenario (albeit not with food), played out in real life, by one Lisa Hulac (address pending). Ms. Hulac complained to the Better Business Bureau that our employee, who was rude to her, should be fired. This is our response, and this is why we no longer post a shipping address on this website:
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BBB
POB 1000
Dupont, WA. 98327
Registered receipt: 21038555749025xxxxxx
Response to your case #22084526 ; Lisa Hulac
This complaint comes from a woman who has conducted no business with us, and who was blocked from attempting to conduct business with us.
Our website contains only one page which displays our contact information. That page requires that the prospective customer read a line which states that (1) no unsolicited materials may be sent to us (just as with most companies which require an RMA or similar authorization before they will accept an incoming package). And, (2), if such material is shipped to us anyway, it will be discarded. Lisa Hulac read this. Instead of heeding this warning, this woman sent us a large box of personal pictures and scraps of paper and simply commanded us to make a newspaper or magazine cover out of it. This is not a service we offer, have ever offered, or will ever offer. We offer no service even remotely close to this. We state clearly and explicitly all through our website that we will not consider or undertake custom work. Even regarding the fake newspapers we do produce, the customer is allowed to include a maximum total of 2 pictures, not 400, and those are to be submitted electronically through the personalization forms, never by mail. Were we supposed to manually scan in 400 images and then do…..what? Create 200 different newspapers to hold them all? The cost would be in the tens of thousands – and cost is another issue beyond this woman as she included not one dollar with this mountain of material! Preposterous doesn’t even begin to describe this. This would be like someone parking their car in front of the BBB office and commanding you to detail and paint it while they went next door and had lunch. It would be akin to someone going to a grocery store and commanding the checkout clerk to babysit their children while they went to the bar down the street. It’s ridiculous. It’s ludicrous. Frankly, it demonstrates to us a peculiar mental handicap. We hope she gets help.
In any case, rather than throw the material out, which we now deeply regret not doing, we elected to be “nice” and contacted Ms. Hulac and advised that her box had been resealed and would be awaiting pickup at the UPS drop station she had shipped it to. She need only make one phone call and have UPS pick it up. It was excruciatingly simple. Unfortunately, this task was beyond Ms. Hulac, and over the course of the next weeks we ended up carting this thing back and forth to the shipping center several times on her behalf, because as simple as we made our instructions, she would not, would NOT follow them. The shipping center became disgusted and eventually refused to allow it in their shop one more time. Still, Hulac could not get it together to simply have the box picked up. We finally prevailed upon the shipping center to take it one last time, but they did so grudgingly and put a time limit on getting the thing shipped out. Still, STILL, instead of just having UPS pick up the existing, sealed, prepared box, Hulac then shipped a completely new box. Again we were forced to trek to the drop center and re-open this amazing woman’s carton, repack it into the new (labeled) carton, and then convince the shipping center to once again wait for it to be picked up. Finally it was, and that was that. Except that we STILL kept receiving emails from Hulac! We had over an hour invested in this; our shop rate is $55/hr.
Instead of thanking us for this colossal waste of time and energy, Hulac became mouthy. At that point we’d had enough, and we told her, in an extremely watered-down version, what we thought of her. She then went into a tirade about how she would not be ordering the 1000 magazine covers she had previously planned to order from us – and we thanked her. Indeed, we don’t sell magazine covers, never have, and never will.
In our view this woman is mentally unbalanced. This is a free country and she’s perfectly welcome to her insanity, as long as she doesn’t inflict it upon others. We deeply regret that we didn’t follow our posted formal policy of discarding unsolicited materials. We will do so next time.
Hulac was notified, in writing, to cease and desist contacting us. She has acknowledged receipt of that demand, and has chosen to ignore it. This is now a law enforcement case, and has been turned over to SPD. We will not tolerate harassment.
We have conducted no business with this woman. We will never conduct business with this woman. She is not allowed to shop [here] or buy from us. The employee who interacted with Hulac has been commended for her restraint.
We don’t believe it is appropriate for the BBB to be processing a complaint against a business which has conducted no business with the complainant. Why would you even process this?
If you receive anything further from this woman, please forward it to Seattle Police, and reference our company name. Do not contact us again in this capacity. If a customer who actually does business with us ever has a legitimate complaint, we’ll bend over backwards to accommodate them. But we haven’t the time or patience to respond to people of this caliber.
This case has been posted publicly. Give it a month and Google it.
TrixiePixGraphics.com
8-15-06
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