I never had problems with the products, the very few times I had problems with an order the issues were swiftly and smoothly corrected, and the one time I emailed about the sudden change to the customer rewards program I received a fairly gracious response. I was less a fan of some of the ways the owner conducted certain aspects of the business, the way a small percentage of her remarks seemed to be more something you'd share with your friends and compatriots (or possibly the audience of a “Real Housewives of…” series) than with the internet at large…especially when you've got a higher-than-average public profile. But even quite a few people who stopped buying from Aromaleigh because they didn't care for the owner's comportment, have said that Aromaleigh did have quality products. And so now everyone's lost that particular resource. That is my primary cause of upset: knowing that not only will I have to resume the search for good color correctors, but that all those women who only started enjoying the products are now losing access to those products. Whether one loathed the owner's behavior, didn't really care about it (or didn't pay attention to it), or were a diehard Aromaleigh evangelist, the loss of such a varied and good-quality product line is a very unhappy event. (I've been seeing the word “Aromabot” pop up around the web, used by some anti-AL people to refer to the most vocal defenders of the company/the owner. It makes me giggle, hear Nancy Sinatra, and envision an army of women wearing rich vivid eyeshadows and bullet-throwing bustiers. I want weaponized lingerie!! But anyhoo, on to the somewhat sane content.)

With this in mind, I'd like to offer some advice. Because a blog is also big ol' soapbox, and if you can't drive your Miata with the top down and the wind blowing through your hair, what's the use of having a head?

To those of us who buy products: Advertising is the fine art of persuading you to buy something - often something you don't need. The techniques used in advertising have morphed and changed over the years, but the best method is the personal-touch technique. After all, if you're going to buy something, you might as well buy it from someone who you know. Who you trust. Who you like. Who's your friend. The thing is…with social marketing, people who have a product or a service to sell can really make use of the basic human desire to like and be liked. By acting like your friend, they may persuade you to choose to buy their product - or may choose you to buy their product over another, possibly equally worthwhile product. These owners and advertisers may or may not be friendly people, but unless you knew them for years before they had a product or a service to sell, chances are not high that the indie MMU company owner, the Etsy-shop jewelry designer, the Ebay clothing seller, et cetera is actually your friend. Your acquaintance? Sure. A good and worthwhile human being? Quite possibly. Someone with whom you may trade jokes, swap stories, exchange Christmas cards? Yes, it's possible. But these people are first and foremost running a business, and you are first and foremost their customer. They do not have the obligation to give you preferential treatment just because the two of you have sent each other pictures of cute kittens, or shared bits of personal information. It's very easy to fall into the trap of believing that because someone is nice to you, that you can expect special things from them. But ask yourself: why should you expect this? At the core of your relationship is an exchange of goods and services. Money arguments have derailed plenty of existing friendships and even marriages. It's no surprise that commercial-exchange-based relationships can start to get bumpy if one or both parties tries to suddenly change or outright ignore the guides of conduct.

I'm not saying that you shouldn't ever be sociably nice (as opposed to just civilly nice) to celebrities, small-business owners, brand ambassadors, et cetera. I'm not saying that there isn't a slight chance that you can develop real, honest, enduring friendships with such people…because first and foremost, they are people. I am saying…be aware of what you're saying and what you're doing, and why you're doing it. It's one thing to send someone a note that says “happy birthday” or “congratulations on the new project” or “I'm sorry you lost someone important to you”. It's another to expect that you and they will sit and braid each other's hair and gossip about American Idol. If you expect that, you're setting yourself up for hurt ranging from mild feelings of snubbery to intense white-hot rage of betrayal….and the feelings of hurt and betrayal will be all of your own making. There are better ways to expend your life energy than by taking things personally when they are manifestly not personal.

When you experience poor service - you don't receive what you thought you were purchasing, whatever you purchase causes harm that was not hinted at by the manufacturer, when the product is somehow defective or flawed - it's your right to question that service, and ask for the problem to be fixed. Don't beg, don't demand, simply claim as fact: “I paid for XYZ, I got ABC, I would like the product replaced or my money refunded.” Amping up the drama only causes more upset than needs to be present over a simple commercial transaction. Act as if you're appearing before a judge who just oversaw a murder trial, and will next be hearing a vicious domestic-violence case. They have bigger issues at stake than your disppointment with what you've purchased, they don't want to hear how you feel about this, they want to know what needs to be done to get this case off of their docket. Lay your facts out clearly, make them plain and simple, say what you feel is wrong and what would make you happy with the situation. If you want your money refunded, say that. If you want a replacement product, say that. Keep it reasonable: don't expect a refund if the merchant's policies state no refund, don't expect an exact replacement if the product is a sold-out limited-edition item. But if you clearly state what was wrong, and why, and state what will make you satisfied with the outcome of the transaction, you're making it easier for the business owner to decide how to make it right. If you go off on a tear, mention how you were having a bad day and then -=this=- happened, are vague about the exact nature of the problem, and then just stop talking and expect the judge/business owner to read your mind, you risk your problem not being addressed (or not being addressed to your satisfaction.)

Communicating is something we'd all like to think we do very well; but we all have our better days, and our less-than-optimal days. You may need to exchange multiple phone calls, letters, emails, or trips to a customer service counter to get some issues fixed. That doesn't mean that you're stupid and can't communicate; that doesn't mean that the merchant is a moneygrasping jackaninny who deserves to have their livelihood taken from them and given to someone who might do a better job. That just means that either someone didn't communicate clearly enough, someone didn't understand clearly enough, the situation isn't a simple one, or a combination of all three. If you are unhappy with the way something is resolved, go back to the customer service contact and reiterate your case. Asking for something doesn't guarantee that you'll get it; but not asking for something, or not bringing a problem to a merchant's attention, guarantees that the matter won't be resolved without ugliness, drama, and possibly legal fees on both sides. Speaking negatively about an issue in a public venue (blogs, forums, newsgroups, meetings, et cetera) is something you do after you've resolved the issue, or tried in good faith to resolve the issue but been unsuccessful.

However.

However.

If you continue to talk about a bad customer service interaction over and over and over, if you ever find yourself in the mental mindset of “I want to hurt that person as much as they hurt me”, if you feel that a company (even a microbusiness or indie company) has left a “gaping personal hurt” in your life…step back. Step way back. Okay: they hurt you? And how is it that they hurt you? Because they didn't act like your friend? Let's go back to that whole “it's a commercial transaction” bit again. Read it, memorize it, laugh, cry, fall down, make it a part of you. You have moved into expending way too much of your personal energy - which is precious, and not easily replaceable - on a commercial transaction. Why keep pouring good energy after bad? It's one thing if you are blatantly defrauded - and since fraud is illegal, I hope you take all legal steps to reverse the effects of that fraud, and report the incident to the relevant agencies so that the fraudster cannot do further harm. It's another to descend to personal vendetta. If you're using the phrase “personal” to refer to your feelings about a commercial relationship, that should be a great big red flag that you're letting this issue take up more headspace than it has a right to.

To those who sell products or services: When you are in any way shape or form visible to a large and rather anonymous group of people (maintaining a blog, posting a lot on forums, running a business, active in your community, a celebrity of kind) you will hear of people second-guessing your decisions, armchair-quarterbacking your actions, even engaging in some pretty uncivil behavior and speculating - usually negatively - on your personal life. It's part and parcel of being in the world, and when you've got a higher profile, you'll be visible to more people and see more of their reactions. Just like kids dealing with schoolyard bullies or cubicle-drones dealing with office politics, (or really, any human dealing with any other human) you have several options for how you can react to negative comments. you can wonder aloud “why are people mean?”; you can try to fight them back using their own weapons; you can retaliate if they cross a legal line into defamation, slander, or bullying; you can ignore them. The first option is a bit like pushing on a rope. There will always be people who don't like what you do. Asking “why are people mean” is a bit like standing in a crowd and asking people, “Why are we here?” The Greeks have been working on the answer to that question for thousands of years, and they haven't come to a conclusion…so there's likely not going to be a concrete answer to “why are people mean”, either. The second option has a lot of potential to backfire…spectacularly. Unless you are five years old or a professional fighter, hitting someone back when they hit you is not socially acceptable behavior. Likewise, calling people names, speculating on their personal life (even if they post everything to world + dog), or using belittling language to try and call attention to their inferior behavior expends your energy, makes you look bad, and can threaten your business by leading people to decide not to purchase things from you. An eye for an eye makes the whole world blind…and an insult for an insult just bores the hell out of onlookers. (Unless you're able to come up with some Shakespearean-level insults. That might just amuse and educate people…but could still backfire.) Option 3 involves costs (chiefly financial ones, but mental and emotional costs are there as well,) and there's no guarantee that you'll win the case. Simply threatening legal action can backfire, because so many entities have done it so much that people are becoming more jaundiced when they receive even a C&D: did it come from a real law firm, or merely a ligitagion-troll? Is the suit based in real tangible monetary-value-assessable wrongdoing, or is the suit just another hush-weapon? Threatening legal action is a bit like a seven-year-old hollering, “I'll tell!!” Unless the person definitely knows that they did something wrong, they're not likely to be fazed by such a threat. The fourth and final option - taking a deep breath, putting the other person out of your mind, getting on with your life - is not the easiest thing to do (to put it mildly.) In fact, if someone hits your adrenaline-reflexes just right, you can get locked into a fight-or-flight reaction for days, which saps your energy like nothing else. But if you've truly acted in good faith and the other party simply is not satisfied, disengaging can often be the best thing for your mental and physical health. (There's also the fact that it will piss them off like nobody's business. But since you've put it out of your mind, you're not going to be taking note of their pissoffedness.)

Some people are mean, for a variety of reasons (which include “not thinking”.) More people are just not happy with a particular thing, have a problem that needs to be solved, and if you're the provider of goods/serivces, it may be your responsibility to fix the problem. Do your best to fix the problem, and then…step back. Move on. Go about your life. If the person(s) are not happy with your fix to the problem, that is now their issue to deal with. Unless you truly are a Vulcan (in which case, I'm both impressed and mildly freaked out because, hey, we're not alone after all), you can't read minds. You should not have to try and guess what will make an unhappy customer, perfectly happy. By no means should you ignore any complaint, even if it's not very clearly phrased; but nor should you be expected to wave your fingers and turn their clouds of unhappiness into rainbows and unicorns and pixiedust.

To everybody: If you honestly believe that you've been treated unfairly in a commercial transaction, and don't believe that the other party is going to rectify the situation, you have a few choices. You can tell some people about it, tell everyone about it, sit in silence and stew, or just decide to stop letting this situation control your life. Is this something that can cause serious harm to other people (unsafe substances, misrepresented products)? Then you should tell other people, in as clear, factual, and dispassionate a way as you can, and let them decide what to do from there. I have seen quite a few beauty aficionados post their bad experiences with this or that company, and then not say anything against people who choose to continue shopping with the company - so I know that there are adults among us. Is this something that won't cause harm, but you find personally or philosophically undesirable (rude customer service, support for an organization whose ideals you truly despise, badly tilted cost-to-value ratio)? Then you can speak up - again, clear concise and dispassionate. “Just the facts, ma'am.”

Being active online requires a change in thinking. Previously (as in, as early as when I was a teenager) if you said something mean about person A in confidence to a group of your friends, the likelihood of person A finding out about this remark was somewhat slim. These days, even if you've got a supposedly password-protected forum, or are in what you believe is a secure chatroom, there may be a security flaw that lets others see what you're saying - and spread screenshots to everyone. Did you see the movie Cruel Intentions? There's that final scene at the boy's funeral, when the dead boy's diary is photocopied and redistributed to all the students…including the news about his sister's cocaine addiction, her selfishness and cruelty…and she's left standing alone in front of her peers, all staring at her hostilely? If you've got a strong yen to re-enact that scene and step into Sarah Michelle Gellar's shoes, go right ahead and post conjectures about someone's personal life, their home address, rumors or speculation about their personal mental state, gossip about their finances and friends…sure, go right ahead. While you might get away with this kind of behavior for a while, eventually it will turn around and bite you in the ass. It only takes one little security flaw, or even one person in the “in group” who suddenly decides that they can't stomach your behavior, and your uglier side will be showcased and preserved in the Internet archives and cached in search engines and spread far and wide. And even if you legally threaten everyone who reposts those images, even if you contact every web host with a C&D takedown, even if you find out about it fast and delete the whole forum…the damage is done. And there's no way to fix things. Even if you use a pseudonym and change IP addresses or use proxies to mask your IP address, you'd have to essentially create an “online witness protection program” and disappear so completely, change your routines so thoroughly…or have that baggage chained to you for the remainder of your life. A good litmus test for behavior that goes beyond the Golden Rule: think of someone whom you greatly admire and respect, who knows you, whose good opinion you have (so for the most part, that lets celebrities right out.) How would this person react if they heard about your behavior? What would they think of you?

Now…no matter which side of the business-client equation you're on, no matter what the perceived provocation: do you really want to deal with the consequences of whatever you're contemplating? Do you really want to use your energy in that way?

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