Robert Allen and His Henchmen Disgust Me
Round 1: A while ago (maybe a year or more) I made the mistake of attending a real estate workshop put on by Robert Allen’s minions. The main presenter was pumped up by lesser disciples and then proceeded to bully the weaker members of the audience into buying into the delusion that they had to act immediately and pay a bunch of money to sign up for some other workshop or risk forever missing the once in a lifetime opportunity to gain access to shady loan sources and pre-foreclosure listings in addition to secret lessons on how to harass desperate homeowners about to be foreclosed on!!!
Round 2: I was then slammed with a horrific amount of junk mail and really misleading phone messages. Messages included such statements as, “Hi, this is so-and-so from the workshop…I guess you’re really not serious enough to invest in yourself…time’s running out, there’s only 1 slot left…” and so on. Ironically, the deal never did seem to go away because the calls only stopped when I moved and changed numbers.
Round 3: They did manage to get my current address and have sent me this spam gem pictured above. This was delivered in a blank envelope with my address hand-written and with no return address. Obviously made to look like a newspaper clipping and personal note reading, “Bryan, You’ve got to see this!” from a mysterious person named “L”. I feel dirty just for having opened this. How can these jerks sleep at night?
Moral: DO NOT attend - don’t even sign up for - any seminars/workshops/mailing lists/contact in any way with any organization or person related to Robert Allen (whoever that is).
Amazon Associates (oh, we didn't mean your associates!)
Doh! Well, after hooking up an Amazon Associates account (partially just to try out, but also to wrangle some discounts/referral moolah) I was hopefully awaiting to be paid for some orders placed through my aStore. Alas! Getting my girlfriend to place orders apparently does not qualify for referral payouts. Indeed, Amazon has some kind of proprietary algorithm to determine if your buyers are associated with you some way or another, and disqualifies those orders.
Here’s some of the email response I got after inquiring about the lack of compensation for my orders clearly shown in my report:
We operate a referral program, rather than a discount program. Our goal is to have our members refer new customers to us, and we then pay you for this effort, rather than simply offer discounts for shopping at Amazon.com
Here’s how our Operating Agreement explains it: “You may not purchase products during sessions initiated through the links on your site for your own use, for resale or commercial use of any kind. This includes orders for customers or on behalf of customers or orders for products to be used by you or your friends, relatives, or associates in any manner. Such purchases may result (in our sole discretion) in the withholding of referral fees and/or the termination of this Agreement.”
Given the relatively slim retail margins on our products and our strong discount pricing, the referral fees we offer to our Associates can only be sustained by meeting new customers through our Associates. These customers may return to us in the future for items unrelated to the topics served by the Associate web site, and this future business helps to offset the referral fees we pay. If an Associate orders for their own use, even if they plan to sell the items to customers who cannot order online, it can’t lead to this kind of future business. This is why we can’t afford to offer referral fees on such orders, as we want to keep the program viable for the long term.
Due to the proprietary nature of the process, we will not share with you the criteria by which we detect personal orders placed by an Associate. Please know that we are able to determine when an order has been placed by an Associate via their Associates links.
Ah well, it was worth a shot. Have you found any ways to take advantage of Amazon’s services?
Eddie Izzard <3 Mr. and Mrs. Wikipedia
I caught Eddie Izzard at the Kodak theater last night. I confess I’ve seen every Izzard video and every episode of The Riches, so I’m pre-wired to like this guy (why does the British accent make everything funnier?!). He didn’t disappoint and was as delightfully irreverent as ever and a couple of his “scenes”, as he calls them, hit close to home. Notably, a bit about sopranos (see my girlfriend’s site at http://kateconklin.com) getting hit by shoes and a great description of opera that went something like, “rich people watching big people shaken by little people!”
Izzard was unabashedly advocating for Mac products (I would send this transvestite a MacBook Air if I were in PR at Apple!) and trashing PCs and Blackberrys (picture Izzard turning a crank to start the things up). At one point Izzard whipped out his iPhone to show the audience the pinball app. I have to admit I thought he was going to turn it into a joke about how the iPhone renders many a user socially inept by investing every spare moment of attention playing with our beloved toy and thus foregoing any meaningful HUMAN interaction, but, alas, he was just indulging his “inner child” and illustrating how far we’ve come in technology.
Throughout all his anti-creationist, pro-Obama, God parody ranting (all of which I enjoyed thoroughly!), his overall message about human potential was positive and motivating. And on the tech front, he got me thinking about how in the future we probably will look back on typing on a keyboard as crude and primitive. “You mean you actually had to physically type in every single letter one by one?!” our children (or children’s children) will say.
Eddie was sans-cross-dress last evening…what does it mean if I missed the heels and shiny dress?
