This is my reply to said whiny US-based participant, for the record. ---------- Forwarded message ---------- Date: Fri, 22 Oct 2004 07:29:14 -0700 (PDT) From: Erik Olson <erik@thekrib.com> To: Chris420529@aol.com Subject: Re: Aquascaping Contest: LAST chance. REALLY. Look, I'm sorry this ticks you off, but the deadline *was* September 15th.I said it's ok if we get everything "a bit later", but this was meant to encourage all the people entering from places like Singapore on the 14th, where they needed to either send their forms via expensive overnight mail, or withdraw from the contest. Hence, the reminder e-mails that I've been sending every couple of weeks. And I am pretty sure that I have been encouraging people to reply with their status in the various e-mails.
Now, you've never replied to any of the e-mails, so I had no idea, until today, whether you intended on actually sending in that measly 10 bucks. But meanwhile, I'll say that two of those measly ten bucks went to printing copies of your aquascape to send to Japan to be judged, and another two just went to printing 8x10's to be shown at the convention. Bam! We've already SPENT 40% of your entry fee, and we don't even know if we're going to actually get it.
So then I thought, maybe you had a throwaway aol account to use for entering the contest, and all the e-mails were going nowhere. So I asked Carlos Sanchez and other people helping with the planning if they could locate you and the one other person hasn't replied to any e-mails ("Omer", not "Gomer"). He's in Turkey. It wasn't a group e-mail, it was just to the two of you. I'm not sure I understand the complaint there either -- I often send mail in groups of two or three to people as their forms come in.
So I'm sorry this bugs you. At least you finally e-mailed back, so I know what's going on. The guy in Turkey won't be so lucky. He probably IS using a throwaway account. OK, so you misunderstood the intent of extending the deadline. Next year we will try to make things more clear.
- Erik On Fri, 22 Oct 2004 Chris420529@aol.com wrote:
Ok. I'm going to say this. I've been really aggrivated with your organization lately. The purpose of a deadline is that you can send in the stuff at any time before the deadline. It is still before the deadline. Theoretically, all forms/money recieved before the deadline are equal. I won't be made to feel bad because I have followed the schedule set for me. I didn't NEED to have it in yet. It will be there. It's already in the mail. I didn't realize I had to notify you about when I go to the post office. I've had a member with connections to the AGA constantly asking me aboutsending my stuff in. I recieved a PM saying URGENT and that "the aga is lookingfor you." That, to me, is borderline harrassment. If you wanted the stuff inright away - it is your fault (please realize this is the general 'you' and notyou specifically) for not setting the deadline earlier. You cannot getaggrivated for people adhering to the deadline you set. I would have been perfectly okay with having to pay that day, or to send the forms in before being allowedto upload my pictures. This is 10 measely dollars we are talking about - a fee which some people dont' even have to pay because it "inconveniences" them. I don't need thecollection agency constantly asking me - especially before the due date has evenpassed! I've already told tsunami carlos about this and if you' d like to know more of how I feel, feel free to ask him. Further, I don't know how it appropriate it is to specificy names in a group email. IE, I did not need to know that gomer hasn't paid yet. That's his personal business. He didn't need to know that I hadn't. That's my business. ~K.Duguay PS. I'm a really nice person and don't usually come off so rude and hotheaded, but I've really had it with this. I am sorry.
-- Erik Olson erik at thekrib dot com _______________________________________________ AGA-Contest mailing list AGA-Contest@thekrib.com http://lists.thekrib.com/mailman/listinfo/aga-contest