Have you ever heard, “the pen is mightier than the sword”? Well, this blog(pen) is going to be my sword, tonight. I am not a happy camper. There is an online shop in which I just tried to do business with that, not only ignored my requests for my ‘paid for’ product, but, turned around a blamed the designer for their lack of responding to my e-mails. Yeah! I haven’t heard of any problem like this with any of the shops around the web. I visit quite a few and have never ran into any problems, much less, having one of them show a complete lack of responsibility. In fact, it borders almost on theft, as they collected the money and never responded to my e-mails when I could not download it.

On Wednesday, I learned of a half-price sale at Digital Designer’s Den on Karen Stimson’s Cutwork Embroidery Action. I have been wanting this one. If you have ever used one of Karen’s actions, they are the finest there are out there. You get her quality craftsmanship, which is always tested for perfection, then, first rate customer ‘service’, if you should have questions. She is very personable in that way.

So, I Z-O-O-M-E-D over to DDD to buy this action. LOL The order was processed and went through my PayPal account and was cleared. Upon returning back to my DDD account, I couldn’t find the download. I searched everywhere. I thought maybe it was one that they would e-mail to me, so, I waited for several hours. When I didn’t find the download, I contacted the store through their “Contact” feature on the site. I asked that they let me know how to go about downloading this action.

The next day, I still hadn’t heard anything from this store. I returned to look, just in case the download had been made available. Not! So, I sent another contact e-mail. I was still polite, at this point. Late that night, it occurred to me that Karen might know how to contact the store owner since she sells in that store. I sent her an e-mail, letting her know what had happened and that I needed to get in touch with the store owner.

Dear, sweet, Karen. She sent me the action, right away, then promised to look in to the situation at the store, herself. She found things in quite a bit of disarray, shall we say. Karen was surprised and rather alarmed, to say the least. But, when she finally heard from the store owner, it was the final straw. They blamed her for the problem, including them not responding to my e-mails. I still can’t believe this is happening! If, for the sake of argument, the store owner didn’t get my e-mails, they would have learned of it from Karen and could have contacted me, then. But, they haven’t. What ever happened to giving a person what they paid for, people? What were they going to do? Just keep my money and blow me off? I don’t know and I can’t say because they haven’t the time, I guess, to contact me. This is pitiful! I finally sent an e-mail for them to remove my account from their records. No need keeping something that will never be used again, eh?

I don’t normally sound off, publicly, like this. It’s just that my few dollars that I spent over at this store was a big deal to me. I have built up my designer resources a little at a time, picking up an action here, a brush, or two, there, some backgrounds over there, all on an extremely limited budget. It isn’t right to not give a person what they have paid for. But, it is inexcusable to not respond to a customer’s reasonable requests! Karen did a good thing, trying to help me and get to the bottom of it. They did her wrong! ‘You live, you learn’, as Karen put it to me earlier. Bless her heart!

There’s one more bit of bull that I feel I should address here. If you use RapidShare, be aware that the folks who download from you are penalized by 2 minutes. This is the message that I get – repeatedly.

We regret that currently we have no available slots for free users. Unfortunately you will have to wait 2 minutes, this will allow us to continue to provide our service to our Premium users. Afterwards it will be checked again if you can access the file. If you do not want to wait that long, become Premium member

Maybe it’s the rebel in me, but, I WILL NOT BE COERCED IN THIS MANNER. I won’t stick around. I did that a few times, earlier today, and I have yet to download the file. I keep getting this message. I just want to forewarn anyone who uses RapidShare for their scrapbooking downloads, I will not wait around for naught. I don’t know about other folks, but, I don’t have the leisure of time. You might want to contact RapidShare, yourself, or use another file service. I totally understand the Premium membership being their priority. It is just that these people are the only ones doing this. Why should I pay for their service when I may only use it once every couple of weeks? There are too many other sites available. I don’t know if any one else is having this problem, yet, but, it is rather dumb, in my opinion. They’re spiting themselves.

Now, for some REALLY BIG news!

I have some really good news to tell about. I have joined up with the girls at Poser4U, Michelle and Linda, to help promote scrapbooking kits with Posers included. They make the cutest little beauties, from imps to sirens. Now, with the Posers in the scrapbooking kit, the kit is suitable for a lot more, like tags, greetings cards, whatever you may wish. It gives them more personality, too! LOL

Here is a brand new kit, “Raspberry Lemonade”. Click on the image to go to the download (“Scrap Kits” link is at the bottom-left.) .

Aren’t they pretty? They go so well with the design of this kit. (Shhh… There are more Posers included.)

Go check out Poser4U. Scroll down to the bottom on the left-hand side to go to the page where they have the kits with the download links. They are downloaded from 4Shared. Some of the kits are new to this blog; some are the very same, only, now featuring the addition of the Posers. I had made some stuff before I started blogging it, so, there is some ‘new’ material, along with the Poser adds. I sure hope you will have a look. When you do, please take a minute to sign the ‘Guest Book’ over there. I would appreciate that and I know Michelle and Linda would, too. As of this posting, there are seven(7) kits up for downloading.

Soon, we will be putting up a Halloween kit for you. Be sure to watch for it.

Thank you for your time and interest.

Su