Wow, maybe it is because it is so early, but I am shocked (in a good way) at the support you guys are giving. Thanks so much. Like all of you, we are STILL waiting on David to respond, but he has not at this time.
One thing I want to put out there, whether I need to or not, is that I see many people saying they are thinking about NOT using his service because of this issue. One thing I do NOT do is play the 3rd grade games of "if you like him you can't be my friend" sort of mentality. The savings with his services are pretty good, and, as my friend Gina said to me in an email over this, that is tough to pass up in today's economy where shipping is making business tough for us breeders. I just want it known that I am in no way asking anyone to boycott his services, and will have no grudges towards anyone that does make the decision to continue to use his services. I am not sure WHY I feel the need to say that, but I just do.
I do have a few things to address directly, and one problem with me right now is I am fighting the flu, have been up most of the night with my sick and fussy baby, so I am not cheery. I ask for forgiveness for anything that sounds rude, but this morning, it's time for blunt, and there is a big difference between rude and blunt. I get tired of sugar coating things sometimes myself...
Kelly, I started my show in a different way.You will learn alot about people in the reptile show business. Sorry you did not care for my comments,you were asking for opinions early in this thread.I got slammed and insulted for those ,oh well that is the way it goes.
Terry, I am not sure how you started your show, but I can only assume that you took over another established show in some fashion. Well, that is a completely different story than starting from scratch, making phone calls to everywhere possible to find a venue (state laws, county laws, township or borough laws all come into play where we are, as well as space, and even finding somewhere that will allow feeder rodents and such was a BLAST, let me tell you!), having to go out and recruit vendors in every way possible (phone calls, emails, taking 6 hours at one show alone to talk to just about EVERY SINGLE VENDOR at Hamburg with the permission of the show promoter there, more phone calls, more emails, back to the shows to talk to vendors, let's not forget building the website and doing all the forum postings I have done, talking to all kinds of advertising people from about every form of advertising, taking phone calls and answering emails day and night at all hours from vendors, customers, and just about anyone you can imagine, plotting out floor plans and figuring out how to make a generally good family show), figuring out where the money is coming from to even DO the show once we found out how much this dream really was going to cost us (I am lucky enough to be a stay at home mom to 5 children, but my husband is not rich), and then the promotion of the show. Then how about finding out that the original venue was not going to work after ONE SHOW for several reasons, and having to find a whole new venue in a matter of 3 or 4 days just so you can continue going forward with this dream? Have you been there? Can you even imagine being there? Well that is where we are, and to say, as a show promoter, that Mr. Young had the right to change his mind after an agreement was made is preposterous. How about if your vendors "change their mind" after setting up at your shows and suddenly feel the table prices are so high. But they don't tell you until the end of the day after making a good bit of money? How we run our shows may be different, but the fact is, we should be working together as show promoters to have good shows, and supporting each other when things go bad - I am not your competition, I am a fellow business person trying to do something the right way. And as far as learning a lot about people in the show business, you have NO idea the things I have learned, but you are right, not everyone has the same mindset that I do on how things should be, and that is fine. I guess I just thought that show promoters would at LEAST support each other when things go bad like this, no matter if they agree on the price or not. Actually, you are the only other show promoter I have talked to that has defended him in this situation, and I have talked to many of the area promoters that my show would almost be direct competition to. I find that interesting, but maybe that is just me.
Joel, this is to respond to your post. I am not sure how the new quoting thing works, so I can't physically quote you. But I hope your bathroom looks nice for you. Glad you got that worked out.
You say that I got uptight in my last response to you. I was not uptight, I was simply stating how I see things, just as you have done - apparently our styles are different and things can be read out of context. I am not even uptight this morning, I am tired and cranky and really sick, big difference. I have no issue with someone disagreeing with me, it happens all the time (I have 5 children), but I guess my issue comes from the fact that you are defending Mr. Young because nothing was in writing "officially" outside of emails. Yes, as Chuck stated, he AGREED he owed the money. The email he sent was after an email to him stating the facts as I saw them, spelling out EVERYTHING we had spoken about, as well as the attachment with the emails that you all saw posted. SO even up until 9/3, he was agreeing to the sponsorship. If he had an issue, he could have stepped back from his "FedEx accounting nightmares" for 30 seconds and left me an email with "sorry, I decided against sponsorship" in the beginning, not months into the advertising he wanted done for his site. Wait, that's right, he NEVER said he didn't want to sponsor the show. He was certainly wanting me to still advertise for him over a month after our first conversation when he sent me his logo to put on my website, right?
You say you were not mean-spirited in your responses. Maybe I, as a PUSHY PHONE SOLICITOR, felt that you were going way out of context on some of your posts. But, since I just keep emailing and emailing and don't take a hint to back off, or in this case responding and responding to you when you say you are leaving the thread, I will leave you to your thing, and I will go about my way as far as you are concerned.
Well, the baby is waking up again, so it's off to try to sooth a teething 8 month old who has a double ear infection and a URI. And my two 8 year olds are home sick today too, so that should be fun. Plus there's dishes to do, and I think I need to vacuum again this morning, and I have several loads of laundry that need done. And I have 52 reptiles that need feeding and cages cleaned, including 1 rescue beardie who must be force fed several times a day so she doesn't die. And, as some might imagine, I have show stuff to do since it is only just over 3 weeks away. Oh, Catherine, thanks for reminding me about the banner, I have to go redo all of those as well. Plus I have forums to go post on so that the sponsorship can be announced as canceled, and depending on the site, why it was canceled (I wonder if Mr. Young will make the time to remove my post on his site in the midst of all his other time constraints). Plus I have emails to respond to, phone calls to make (I wonder how funny I sound being so sick), and some other show business to take care of. And it's only now 8am...at least I got 3 hours of sleep last night and the flu isn't knocking me out or anything. And it's a real good thing that this medicine I am on doesn't make me want to throw up every 5 minutes. Today will be a piece of cake!
David, step up and at least respond. I MAKE the time during all of my nightmares and being swamped and sick (see above for just today), I just don't get your excuse anymore...want to trade a day in the life?
Kelly Kordek
