When I clicked on the link up popped a spreadsheet full of information. As I reviewed this spreadsheet I started to slowly realize what it was. I had read about it on this post over on another blog.
There on it was listed names of sex blogs, email addresses for the bloggers who wrote them, notes of what they were reviewing or would review next. What you would consider typical marketing notes. What I then saw gave me quite a shock. Along with the bloggers links and email addresses there were there actual names and home addresses. I realized this when I saw Tess's name and address on it. I was furious and tried to figure out how this link ended up in my blog stats. I then thought about the email I had received earlier that day from the new marketing/PR person at Eden Fantasys.
The other thing people know about me is that I don't hesitate to speak my mind when I feel the need to. However I have kept quiet about some things that have occurred with Eden Fantasys because I did not want to take away from something else I felt was more important.
I debated if I should just ignore this email or if I should respond back to him explaining the reasons why I had no desire to be associated with Eden Fantasies. I finally decided it would be better for this new marketing/pr person to understand some of the feelings in this CommUNITY regarding EF and the reasons why. This was my response to him,
It was awesome we were in Time Out New York. Along with Fleshbot a few times and even Nerve.com. Check out the press page on our blog. www.sexbloggercalendar.wordpress.com
Are you aware that Eden was to be our main sponsor and have the calendar printed for us but backed out? The last email I saw from Fred was an offer for $500 sponsorship which we declined.
My overall experience with Eden, especially after all the sponsors I have been dealing with on the NYC 2009 Sex Blogger Calendar is not positive. I am not alone in those feelings either. I am going to assume you have looked at my blog before you emailed me. Did you happen to see where I spoke of Eden backing out of their agreement to match donations to The Butterfly Temptress cancer fund? I donated on your site when Eden first posted that only to later find out that agreement was not honored.
I can honestly say that I don't see myself ever recommending your company or buying anything from you after my experience with how it is operated. I can buy sex toys and lube from a million different places online. I choose to do business with companies I respect and working with all the sponsors on this calendar has shown me how much Eden is lacking as a member of this sex positive community.
All of that doesn't even touch on my feelings with how Eden ended their business relationship with AAG. She was the one with the respect of the community and gave you guys more PR than anyone. To squabble over such a small amount of money is one of the stupidest business decisions I have ever seen.
Personally my impression of Fred is that he never realized that although we might be "sex bloggers" we are not just a "group of horny women" writing about sex. We have brains and we have careers outside of our blogs. Careers in the business world that helped us see Eden was not a company we wanted to do business with.
Sorry if this is harsh or a shock to you but as the new marketing/PR person you should be aware what your customers think or feel about your company.
Within a short time I received a response back from him. I would like to say that this new marketing person seems very nice and I feel bad for what they are up against trying to repair the reputation of this company. This is part of what they wrote to me,
I appreciate your words and I know there is "bad blood" between our two communities and I have been given some information about that. I do not think your message was harsh and I really do appreciate your candor and honesty. I am now in charge of PR and Marketing and would love to help heal old wounds. If you could take some time and consider this I would appreciate that as well.
I once again thought if I wanted to bother responding to this email and once again I decided to explain my feelings to this person. This was my response,
I am glad I didn't offend you with my honest opinion. I personally do not think of this as "bad blood" between our two communities because for me this is all one community. When we came up with the idea of creating our calendar we reached out to everyone in our community for support. That included not only bloggers to help us spread the word but sex positive companies within this community. Eden along with myself are both part of what I like to think of as a sex positive community.
I spent the past three months working directly on producing this calendar which gave me an inside view of the sex positive companies in our community. We couldn't have accomplished what we did in such a short time without them. When Eden backed out of printing for us Njoy stepped in. They were already on board as a sponsor but they covered not only our printing but the cost to express ship these calendars halfway around the world so we would have them in time for our launch party last Friday.
Then you have Eden who is squabbling over such a small dollar amount with one of the most well loved bloggers out there. Sorry but I will once again say I have never seen a company do something as stupid as this. Fred is shooting himself in the foot with this fight. I am also hearing that some bloggers are not getting their commission checks. I have personally heard that from at least two bloggers I know and with what I have seen Fred do these past few months I am going to believe what these bloggers are telling me. This doesn't even touch on the issue of what happened to the funds Fred was going to match for Butterfly. This is a women who could possibly die of cancer and I would like to know how a company promotes they will match all donations until a date in November and then backs out of that. How do you explain something like that to us?
I think what I am trying to say to you is that until Fred changes the way he runs his company and pays the people who did business with him in good faith I along with many others will not change our thoughts about both doing business and recommending Eden. Maybe that should be the first thing you concentrate on. You can't change how any of us feel about Eden until Eden changes the way they treat the people they do business with.
All of us as bloggers go to great lengths to protect our actual identities because of the consequences that could happen too many of us if we were discovered. We put our trust in these sex positive companies we deal with to take the same precautions with our personal information that we do. This is the second company now that I have seen inadvertently release a bloggers personal information on the internet.
If anyone reading this post has reviewed for Eden Fantasies in the past your personal information could have been seen by anyone who had a hit on their blog from that spreadsheet. EF created an open Google document that anyone, even I, can see and edit. And they used it to click around the web thereby making all of our PRIVATE info public.
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11 comments:
There no longer any personal information for any of the bloggers on that spreadsheet. If you have any questions about this I suggest you email the owner Fred Petrenko.
Fred.Petrenko@webmerchantsinc.com
Thank you for bringing this to our attention. EF has let so many of us down in the past, but this clearly violates privacy agreements that customers enter into with merchants when they give their information to purchase merchandise. I've sent them my letter, and I am officially done with them. This is beyond ridiculous.
I'm furious about this. When I give my name and address to a company I expect them to keep it private. To use something as easily to access as a google spreadsheet, for a BUSINESS, is insane. MY privacy is more important than their ease in communication.
I've also not yet received an email back from anyone who I contacted at the company. I expect businesses to respond quickly when the fuck up like this.
I'm also livid at their conduct - this is the latest in a string of douchebaggery. I'm at the point where I'm ready to take their ads down, ask for my last bit of commission, send back the toys to review that are on the way, and tell everyone I know who might buy from them to not do so.
We have the ability to discourage sales for them, and at this point, I think we've all had enough.
i could lose clients over this. i can't be having my ACTUAL name associated with my sex blog, there's a REASON it's anonymous.
what troubles me is that i found out about this from a post and NOT FROM THEM!
why do i have to hear about it on the internet???? as usual they are not considerate. shocking really.
diva: way too little, way too late
Diva, thank you for clarifying that there is no longer any personal information on there - but I am still in the process of having a heart attack, and very pissed off with EF about this!
I had already made the decision to stop reviewing for them ... this just makes me more glad I made that choice, and leaves me wondering how I can remove all of my details and reviews from them, if possible ...
xx Dee
You rock for posting this.
Unbelievably amateur behaviour on the side of EF. If anyone had been outted, I would love to see a lawsuit slapped on their malpracticing asses.
omg!
I can't believe that an error like that was made. I have seen some really odd behavior on the parts of toy companies, but this is inexcusable!
Thank you for calling our attention to this. It saddens me that "bad blood" could lead to serious privacy violations. It worries me more for my friends than myself, but it's the principle of the matter. (Does no one have principles, morals, or ethics anymore?)
Just one of the many reasons I am feeling more than a little disheartened.
Wow - I've been following this drama, but I honestly never thought it would actually get worse! Yes, we are a competitor of theirs, and you might think I'm gloating, but really I'm just confused.
What the hell could these people possibly be thinking? If you're trying to work with bloggers to get the word out about your company, it's simply counterproductive to put those same bloggers in a situation where they have bad things to say.
Companies need to wake up to the fact that bloggers are NOT using their personal blogs to write for big advertising companies. They are, for the most part, fiercely independent and make a point of calling it like they see it.
Eden's might be able to swagger into the board room of a traditional PR firm and badmouth the whole room, but as long as the check clears they'll get a glowing writeup. It simply boggles my mind that they thought they could do the same thing to bloggers in exchange for a few sex toys. Unbelievable.
When Diva first showed me the odd hit she found with statcounter, I clicked it believing I would be hit with a "you don't have permission" screen. I was shocked to find that I could not only view but edit a document which listed blogs, blogger names and their corresponding real names and addresses.
I can't say enough about how poorly this reflects on Eden. I have been done with them for a while but still never expected such an egregious breach of trust and security from them. Never.
Trying to work out how this happened led to some experimenting with google documents. After much testing back and forth, it seems the only way for this to have happened was for someone to have used the "share with the world" option. Scary enough but think about the consequences had someone mistakenly used the option beneath "share with the world" - PUBLISH AS A WEBPAGE.
The moral of this story is be very careful about to who and where you reveal identity if you value your privacy. And be very careful when using an application that lets you share documents. It's really just a click from private to exposed.
It's just so shocking to me how a big company like Eden can act so childish and irresponsibly.
What, they didn't think we talk to one-another? They didn't think word would spread about their poor treatment of members in our comUNITY?
Thanks a lot for posting this.How can he behave so amaturely!! How can they make such a silly mistake? That means there is no privacy at all for us!Thank you for calling our attention to this.
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