Valleyschwag – thoughts
20:31 Thursday 8 Jun 06
Walking the dog is a great way of pondering things. I’m sure that walking Winston has changed my blogging in some way because of that but today it was the ’schwag’.
My initial impression was that the package was not close to the hype. That still stands. Doing the maths for a year, it means that I send £11.00 a month which is a total of £132 for the 12 months. And from that £132 I hope I get something decent. The fact that the ‘package’ is more like £7 means nothing, my outlay does. Now someone could say that what I have is decent – each to their own. (I’m avoiding doing the maths for Valleyschwag of 1500 subscribers at a minimum of $14.95 a go. $22000+ can’t go far for freebies) but it comes down to me paying a lot of money for what is a random grab-bag. I could get a really good t-shirt or something else similar I deem worthy. Or I could not.
Let’s go back to that maths. $22,425 That’s a lot of money. It’s even more when you look at the pictures of what I – and many others – got.
Is it worth it? No. YMMV.
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now I have fired off an e-mail on how to cancel. I have been charged for the the second month already so we will see how they handle that. P.S. It seems that I am not the only one that was disappointed – Valleyschwag Review The ValleySchwag came…Valleyschwag – thoughts P.P.S. – It really did not take long to find the posts above. There are more out there, I just wanted to have a good reference. Technorati : Internet Startup, Schwag, Silicone Valley, Valleyschwag
16:32 Wednesday 21 Jun 06
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I don’t get it at all. You pay £11 a month for “schwag” from tech companies? Did I miss the bit where carrying around an item with a company logo on it is cool?
Seriously they say that a band t-shirt costs you way more, well guess what guys I have well over a hundred t-shirts from bands I like(sometimes more than one for each band, rarer cases a lot more than one, damn you Foo Fighters and Raging Speedhorn) but at least those t-shirts say something about me other than “I’m a corporate shill”.
Also your scwag looks cack, a pencil? WTF? That’s really new and innovative.
09:31 Friday 9 Jun 06
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[...] Valleyschwag – thoughts [...]
19:59 Monday 12 Jun 06
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It’s difficult to please everyone–especially with a grab bag!
All we’ve ever promised was at least one t-shirt per package, plus random goodies like stickers and pens. Sometimes packages contain more–we get small amounts of high-end promo-gear sometimes, but these are EXTRAS. We’re rotating through our subscribers to make sure everyone gets extras over time.
This is a fun, silly schwag club, not meant to be taken very seriously. We treat our subscribers as peers, and fully understand if it’s not your bag. But we’ve never advertised it as something that it’s not!
02:15 Monday 17 Jul 06
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As a subscriber I would like to add my two cents…I have to agree with Thor, it is a random grab bag and everyone cannot be expected to receive a bag full of stuff they love, but that is the point of a grab bag…if you want to be guaranteed things you love perhaps shelling out more than 15 bucks could buy you that.
In my experience they have been working very hard to make the subscribers happy…which i imagine is a tough task given the fact that the subscription list multiplied so fast.
I am currently a subscriber and have no complaints, the only thing that they promised is a tshirt a month and that to me justifies my investment.
Perhaps because i don’t see the subscription as a lottery ticket it makes it more fun…no one can put a guarantee that you’ll love everything in what is clearly a random grab bag…It is fun and they are definitely working and succeeding in putting a fun, personal and novel touch to the whole thing.
12:39 Monday 24 Jul 06