And so I closed my store on Bonanza.com. It was a difficult decision to make, but I decided to cut my losses rather than to sell my soul. But that is old news.
About a week ago Bonanza.com CEO Bill Harding started an open group on facebook. A self-proclaimed funny guy, with a known penchant for sarcastic-humor, he named his social drinking and think-tank group with the acronym CHUBS. Now, I know what that means in young-hip-guy-slang but in case you do not, you can look it up here in the urban dictionary. I'll let you decide which definition you want to use. Then you can read the core values of the association.
Unpredictability is an understatement. I just never know when this company is going to come back up on my radar screen. It's like a bad penny so to speak.
Anyway, start-up types are invited to booze with Bill and discuss just how unpredictable they're going to be. Bill states he most often ends up free and thirsty on Mondays, but his boozing can also be unpredictable. So if you are still selling on Bonanza I imagine you can expect enhancements like the condescending shipping notifications to your customers:
"Your order has shipped! Huzzah!
Slip on your celebratin’ shoes and dust off your dancin’ pants — someone’s about to get a big, fat pack of awesome!"
or this trust-inspiring message on the help blog:
"Please do not send payments for merchandise to this address. If you would like to buy an item from a seller, please contact that seller directly. If you send us money, we will take it and use it to buy candy and toys and your item will never arrive."
"Please do not send payments for merchandise to this address. If you would like to buy an item from a seller, please contact that seller directly. If you send us money, we will take it and use it to buy candy and toys and your item will never arrive."
...on Tuesdays.
I'm not sure if I got the unicorn treatment on a Tuesday or not. Bizzy might have been conceived on a thirsty Monday but then she took some programming and made her debut on Wednesday, April 1 2009. She probably seemed like a great idea at the local watering hole. Note to developers: leave your laptop in its case after your third drink.
No matter. Bill is no longer the CEO directing the trajectory of my company, nor representing it in public. He can booze Monday thru Friday for all I care, and I wish him deep hydration and a lifetime supply of alka-seltzer to help him along. Bless you and your chub chuggin' chums. May you be served free nachos, dudes.
See, hip and professional CAN go hand-in-hand. I was told that early on.
But... I now have a real concern.
A track record of unaccountability to customers, a lack of professional ethics, core values of unpredictability and boozing, and a club name that essentially means "manparts out-of-order" is juvenile and socially akward at best. Maybe even a bit creepy when all else is taken into consideration.
But more unsettling, and for me scarier than being redrawn as a unicorn, is not being able to change my personal information that they keep. Meeting these guys in this light (their chubs club), for the first time, would I give them access to all my financial information? No.
But they have it.
This stands now as public record on this date. Game over.
