Another week of layout is finished, and I’m relaxing, glad to be able to work on freelance writings and my books. Late this evening, Phoenix told me that one of the advertisers was complaining about his/her ad. My time for relaxing was apparently over.
P2 copied me on the e-mail, and I was shocked. This person, Eren Padar, accused the M2 of showing favoritism to some other Elven group, among other things, and was just downright nasty. Read for yourself:
Phoenix, I just checked out our ad in the Metaverse Messengers. To be plain, I am very disappointed.
I followed MM instructions specifically, and sent a high-rez JPG ad as per instructions– to exact measurements. I just checked the ad copy I sent you, and it is pristine. Why then, does the ad look out of focus and blurry in your magazine?
I also notice that in the same issue, an Elf Circle sim wins “sim of the week”, plus a lengthy article, and I am once again struck by the same thing that has hit me in the past: Metaverse Messenger is obviously not the place for Elf Clan to advertise.
I’m the Market Manager for Elf Clan Fantasy Market. We had planned a significant set of ads over the next year. In addition I had planned personal advertising for my company Dragon Forge. All such plans are cancelled. In the future, we will take our advertising business to other SL magazines.
Phoenix wrote replied with a very nice response. I was and am very proud of him. It has to be frustrating to deal with someone who appears to be completely unreasonable. His reply:
Eren, I’m not sure what to tell you. You seem to be accusing us of some sort of favoritism toward Elf Circle, which is bunk. Sim of the Week is selected by a dedicated staff and neither Katt nor I have anything to do with that process.
As far as the ad is concerned, there is always some degradation of images when saving to a PDF, unless you are willing to accept a gargantuan (and I’m talking 50 MB +) final PDF file, so yes, your ad will not always look quite as crisp as it does initially. We process everyone’s ads in an identical fashion.
Sorry you feel the way you do, but I also feel your anger is misdirected.
I wish you the best in everything that Elf Clan does.
P2
Eren again replied, but apparently, accusing us of favoritism wasn’t enough. He/she had to add to that by saying that we altered the ad.
Well,sorry but I’m looking through an entire issue of ads and they all look fine, and I get to ours and it’s JPEG reduced blotchy. Only one I saw in the entire zine that looked fuzzy and bad. Since I sent you a to-the-pixel measured ad in perfect condition, “pdf format” doesn’t explain the mess.’
If there’s no favoritism for Elf Circle… glad to hear it. Not sure the evidence supports the claim, but whatever. The only evidence I’m really concerned with is the quality of our advertisement… and I’ve been professionally involved in advertisement in RL for too many years to believe that’s just how it came out. Sorry. That ad was poorly produced and its resolution and quality altered. It reflects poorly on our group and makes it look bad in the presence of other ads which look far better. That’s not what we paid for.
P2 surely has the patience of a saint. He again replied nicely, and even threw in a week of free ad space. I don’t agree with that, however. If the problem with the ad was our fault, then yes, we should do whatever we can do correct that. However, we can’t give free ads to everyone who is less than satisfied with how the ad comes out. Many people would use such a policy to gain free advertising on a regular basis.
P2’s reply:
We don’t change a thing about ads that are submitted with the following exceptions:
a) If an ad is at a resolution other than 300 dpi, I will resample it (this should only have a positive effect, and wouldn’t have produced what we’re talking about here, and I don’t recall whether that was necessary with your ad or not)
b) I will sometimes adjust brightness and/or contrast if it appears that an ad will be too dark (this was definitely not the case with yours).
I will be happy to add a week to your ad run and see if we can’t resolve this issue for you, but I assure you that nothing about your ad was altered.
P2
I don’t like it when advertising clients are unhappy. I eagerly make changes when they are requested, from ad placements, to page placements, etc. I will try my best to accommodate clients. Why? Well, not only do I want them to continue to purchase ad space, I want them to be successful. I want those who advertise with the M2 to have flourishing businesses.
But if someone is going to write nasty e-mails to defame us professionally, I am not so willing to assist. In my opinion, the kiddie gloves should have come off when Eren said we altered the ad. Oh em gee! *insert sarcasm* Those of us at the M2 are immersed in a conspiracy against the Elf Clan! How wicked of us…
Why on earth would we alter an ad? I have no professional or personal ties to anyone in the Elven community and neither does P2.
So my response was not as nice as P2’s:
I compared the ad that ran in the M2 versus the ad you sent. Yes, there is a remarkable difference. I then compared the Farhaven (on the same page as yours) original ad versus what ran in the paper. There too was a remarkable difference.
I’m sorry you are dissatisfied. If you had come to us politely with these issues, we would have bent over backwards to assist you in discovering the problem and fixing it. But accusing us of favoritism (how is that possible when the Eledwhen column writes about the Elf Clan frequently?) and then going so far as to say we altered the quality of the ad only means we won’t be working with you anymore.
Keep in mind that the M2 has 35,000 readers, far more than any other publication in SL. With the very popular Eledwhen Wonders column, a large segment of that readership is the population YOU are trying to reach out to.
One last thing, I assure you that I have absolutely no reservations in telling the entire SL community what a disdainful, disparaging, mean, hateful and rude person you are.
She heatedly replied, under the impression that I was threatening her (wtfbbq?). She also seemed to be rather clueless as to who owns the Metaverse Messenger. *scratches head at that one before adding Eren’s email to this blog post*
LOL Kristen, since I now have a copy of your email… and the unprofessional attitude shown there, there are only three things I have further to say to you:
1. As an advertiser, I have a right to contact your staff with misgivings about the professionalism (or lack thereof) of your staff.
2. Threatening an advertiser with with “I have absolutely no reservations in telling the entire SL community what a disdainful, disparaging, mean, hateful and rude person you are” is about as vile and unprofesional as a person can get, an only serves to cement and verify my prior opinion of your staff.
3. Your drama queen attitude and threatening manner gives my ne reason to believe that my initial impression regarding your zine was incorrect.
4. I will be forwarding a copy of your email to other members of the Metaverse Messenger for review.
Be advised that if you should decide to take this private business matter public… my response will be put publicly publish a copy of your email. If that is how you wish to run your business… you will find there are repercussions of such attitudes.
Had you responded in a professional, business manner, we could have resolved this issue. As it is, I will contact Phoenix and inform him there shall be no further business involved between our agents. I have nothing to be ashamed of in my initial missive. I am nothing more than a dissatisfied customer with reason to question paper policies. Welcome to the business world. Your attitude madam, is shameful.
Oi! I’m laughing… “…had you responded in a professional, business manner…” Perhaps she/he means I should have behaved like him/her?
*sighs* I will climb to the top of the highest building to shout out the fact that I don’t know everything there is to know about business. But I do know that if you have an issue you want someone to fix, the surest way to sabotage yourself is by being ugly to whoever it is you are dealing with.
Eren should have, could have wrote, “Hi Phoenix. I was not happy with the way the Elf Clan ad came out. Would you please work with me in improving the appearance of the ad? Also, I noted that another Elven community was SOTW. How does that work? How can I encourage the M2 to cover Elf Clan more?”
We would have jumped at the opportunity to assist someone who addressed in that manner. We don’t expect anyone to bend down and kiss our feet because of what we do. But we DO work very hard and producing a paper every week.
So remember, a bit of “nice” in your business dealings can go a long, long way.
Regards,
Katt
Posted by Withheld on July 10, 2008 at 6:55 am
I’m withholding since I honestly believe that Eren Padar will harass anyone who criticizes him if he gets the chance however the email address I have given is real (since it isn’t made public) if you want to email me I’ll give you my rl (secondlife) name privately.
I have avoided direct confrontation with Eren Padar mainly because I have been on the sidelines during most of my stunts but he is essentially a griefer. He’ll go to any public venue including at least a few 3rd party websites and defame, argue, and grief for his own ends and for no real reason. I can only guess that he has some issue that causes him to have the urge to act this way however not being a shrink it’s not my place to say that definitively.
Sorry to rant but I figured that had to be said and will hopefully make people aware from the get go that interacting with this guy is a waste at time at best and harmful to your mental well being at worst.
Posted by Wayfinder Wishbringer on July 10, 2008 at 7:15 am
While I seriously doubt this will be published, might as well give it the good ol’ college try.
You have broken the first rule of journalism: never take personal issues to the press.
An advertiser was dissatisfied with how an ad was handled with your paper and contacted your company with his honest impression, his misgivings, and his decision to pull further advertising. That is the right of an advertiser… any advertiser… over any issue.
Your paper’s response was to say the least, extremely insulting and included threats. I note that such response was not included in the above blog.
That you staff should be so unprofessional as to feel a need to “get back” at someone because they hurt your feelings is far less than merely unprofessional. I cannot imagine what made you feel it necessary to post this issue in your blog. But you did so, and so be it. If you wish to present public evidence that your paper deals with its advertisers in a trite, vengeful manner… that is your decision. Our decision is that our initial impression of your company– and subsequent decision to not do further business with you– was well justified. You threatened us with a public rant, you followed through on that threat, and all I can do is shake my head in wonder and disgust at such blatantly juvenile behavior.
We’re a group and entitled to our opinions of your zine. We have the right to decide to do business with you… or not do business with you. If the advertiser chooses to send you a private email telling you why such is the case, you can accept that as feedback or discard it as worthless. Or you can do as you have done… and go drama-queen postal.
To point your sage advice right back at you: If you took offense at anything sent to you, all you had to do was say so and deal with such in the professional manner with which you began. Insteady, your editor chose to level personal threats against our Market Manager and to add insult to injury, you decided to take a private business matter public. In the newspaper industry, that crime falls right in line with making up your own stories to sell papers.
Posted by Eren Padar on July 10, 2008 at 7:23 am
To “name withheld”. Since you have chosen to withhold your identity because you are so afraid of me (yup, I’m a dwagon… fierce for sure)… perhaps you can post some URLs of those “third party websites” or “public venues” you’ve mentioned, or provide other proof of supposed harassment and “griefing”. Oh wait, never mind. Considering the honesty you’ve shown thus far, I’m fairly sure you can manage to rig up some bogus nonsense.
I think if the people who know me heard your claim that I’m a griefer, they would find such hilarious (or more likely be outraged at such bald-faced BS).
Liars and drama queens abound on SL and oddly, they never choose to use their SL names. It’s so easy to sit behind your computer screen and post a cowardly slanderous post using a fake name. Typical mode of operation for such people.
Slander and smear campaigns abound people. I’m a little saddened to see such coming from the direction of the Metaverse Messenger, but not all that surprised.
Posted by secondnature on July 10, 2008 at 7:28 am
Oh, of course it’s going to be published. I’m not going to hide things from people who read this blog, or try to present things in such a way as to make myself look good. I will let readers decide who is right and who is wrong. Perhaps they will decide that all parties involved are wrong, and that’s fine.
You said, “You have broken the first rule of journalism: never take personal issues to the press.”
That’s bull. That is not the first rule of journalism. The first rule is “never give in to the threats of asshats.” I should know, as I have several degrees and many years of experience in journalism.
What threat do you write about? The one were I said I had no problem letting the SL community know what kind of person you are? I included that e-mail in this blog post. As I said, I won’t hide.
You have all the rights you mentioned. But you/Eren do not have the right to attack our ethics by saying that we showed favoritism to another group and altered an ad that was sent to us.
We have been publishing for almost THREE years now, and we have never been accused of altering any ads. Explain to me why we would ever do that. It’s simply ridiculous.
Phoenix responded to Eren with courteous professionalism, and Eren got became more and more insulting. I will not stand for anyone treating someone on my staff like that.
“You decided to take a private business matter public. In the newspaper industry, that crime falls right in line with making up your own stories to sell papers.”
Are you on crack?
Posted by Eren Padar on July 10, 2008 at 7:44 am
Ah and now you choose to reveal a PRIVATE email address on your public blog Katt?
It was decided to use that common junk-email address to deal with problems like this. Why? Because of people like you.
That’s why this issue is here… and why it arose in the first place. Unprofessional conduct breeds consequences Katt. You can edit and skew email posts all you like, and present biased information, but the bottom line is, you have no decency nor respect for others. Your posts and responses here prove that.
No matter how much you rant and rave here, you’ve lost a customer. And as much as you may scream and hollar… you are the one responsible.
Posted by Eren Padar on July 10, 2008 at 7:56 am
Katt.. if you’re so honest and open with your readers… how come you withheld your absive emails to me? Sure seems like slanted journalism to me. I think you are not nearly as honest and open as you claim to be.
Like you said, Phoenix dealt with professionalism and already had the problem solved. It was your abusive manner that destroyed his efforts, not mine. All I did was state to him what I felt. When he explained to me that was not the case and offered a solution, I accepted his generousity with thanks. I at no time threatened him nor did I become abusive.
You ruined the whole deal with your insulting, abusive and threatening response. I would quote your messages here, but frankly, I’m not going to stoop to such levels.
You have taken a personal business matter public in some sort of imagined-vindictive rant, you’ve published private emails and a private email address… and I’m supposed to accept your claims that your paper would certainly not be biased or doctor advertising to favor their favorite people? Perhaps my initial impression was wrong, but if you wanted to convince otherwise, you sure went about it the wrong way. All you have done was prove to me you have no ethical boundaries.
I do not intend to respond further to this hysteria. Rant all you like. This is beneath dignity and certainly is not the way to run a business. If I had never advertised with you and wa considering doing so, after reading such a post as this and seeing how you’ve handled another advertiser, I’d run as far and as fast as I could.
And you ask me if I’m on crack? I’m a person. You’re a business. (Shakes head in amazement).
Posted by Eren Padar on July 10, 2008 at 8:13 am
(would add this as a PS, but no edit of course… so quoting):
Mail (will not be published) (required)
You chose to publish a private email account that was entrusted to you. That’s not only unethical Katt, it’s crosses the boundaries of legality.
I think that about says it all about your claims of honor and ethics and outrage at my challenging such. I call ‘em as I see ‘em.