You Can Run

But ya can’t hide anymore…

I get regularly approached by companies wanting to “do a deal”. They’ll provide me with “content” and in return, all they want is a link from my site or from my newsletter. Sometimes, as in the most recent email, they also offer to pay me for any business I send them.

Here’s the policy. I write it all. The only newspaper column I didn’t write was the one when my son was in grade 8 and got to do a “work with Dad” day. Given working with dad in the nursery where he had to work anyway on weekends wasn’t such a big thrill, I gave him the day off and told him to write my column for me. It was a great column.

And I don’t refer you to something unless I think it has merit. You will see some ads here and there on some posts- those are from one of the automated systems many bloggers use. The websites have ads to pay the freight there. I now also have a policy of telling you if I get paid anything from the referral – I believe in disclosure off affiliate links.

But I *always* check out these offers just for the fun of it.

I run a search on something like “review x” or “x review” where x is the name or website of the company. I note that Dave’s Garden also has a huge database of company reviews

And therein lies the fun of this. If you’re an online mail-order nursery company, you can run but you can no longer hide from dissatisfied customers. The Net is now full of both positive and negative reviews of darn near every nursery out there.

And yes, just about every company has some dissatisfied customers (it seems ya just can’t please everyone and the complainers among us will bitch about anything) – but you have to look for the trend. And the nature of the complaints in that trend.

This last company had a trend of 1) small plants that were not as advertised 2) high death rates 3) no refunds 4) surly customer service. I won’t give you the url because I don’t want to send business there but the company deals in fast growing trees and shrubs. Am I saying this company is poor? No – I have no experience with it. I am saying the online trend in information paints a big picture showing the above trends and that information was provided by former customers.

But I would never have known this from the glowing email I got from the contact person.

Back 10 years ago (or so), I wrote an article in a trade magazine saying that because of the Internet, the customer was now king. Get over it nursery people because your life was about to change in more ways than you could imagine.

This company is living proof that repeat business has to be earned one shipment at a time. One plant at a time.

You can run – but you can’t hide.

Image Credit

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