Pet Peeve and the self entitled customer

Pet peeve: people who come to woksprint.com to dictate prices. There are a lot of them. Some are nice, some are not. I will explain now, because not everyone who says something fits this description.

I keep prices as low as possible. I just took a whole week to comb the store and edit each and every single item to reflect lower price changes. I’m not quite done yet. My eyes are melting out of my head.

I’m always looking for ways to lower shipping costs. I recently added a “free shipping” option on some items that actually enabled me to lower some item costs even more because math is weird. (And on the items that I would have had to raise prices by too much, well, they are not free shipping.)

I even used to waste my time to spread the word. I once went to the discord filk channel to tell people that, hey, eBay forces me to raise prices there. That was a waste of time but I tried. The troll. OMG the damn troll who just didn’t want to say thank you and be done, but had to nitpick. Phuck. I hate negative channels.

I break even usually. I wish I could pay my bills with this, but I don’t. (I will not complain if I ever do.)

I don’t always get prices correct, and I do appreciate input but I’m not a piece of dirt to be talked down to about the matter. Just help me update things, tell me when something isn’t rare (because I might mark an item rare if I can find no information about it), and let me handle things. I am the person who sometimes spends 12 hours a day working on this website. You are the person who made the CD and has a little information I could use, but you are not the person paying the bandwidth.

Also in some cases I have a reason for the prices I choose. The way CDs were hawked by people who immediately took them to EBay to sell them at double and even triple price is burned in my mind.

Furthermore, I may donate part of the proceeds to charity but I am most decidedly NOT a charity. I’m not necessarily paying my bills with this, but you honestly can’t expect me to take resources from my house over this.

I’m glad to know the information, but that doesn’t mean I’m willing to just dump it from my catalog and see it gone because you object to how I’m handling my business. I don’t even take forever out of print stuff from the catalog. It’s a record of sorts.

Don’t come at me all shocked I managed to get your CD when you didn’t sell it to me directly. Instead be thrilled that it’s in circulation enough that it landed fortuitously in my lap. Also, before you do come at me all shocked, make sure an email from me didn’t land in your spam folder. I can’t count the times I’ve been approached by people over this and that, and I’d messaged them to compliment their cover or some other issue a year before.

I have added music that had content I wasn’t comfortable with. I have added music I loved. I try to be fair here. Don’t fuss at me because you have decided so-and-so is the bad guy of the week. I don’t care.

Last but not least. If I have your CD in the store, but no link to your webpage in the listing, please provide. (Just don’t overwhelm me or I’ll never be able to get to it.) Once in a while I find the time to add that information so that people can find you online. I also link articles from time to time. This is a store, yes, but one of it’s aims is to promote you guys. Which means if I ask for that information and get no answer I’m going to pass your stuff over and eventually stop asking or responding.

Sometimes when googling information about filk music, Woksprint is the third or even first result for me. It wasn’t by design, but we’re up there sometimes when searching for certain items. This is good for you. Please don’t kick me in the face for my hard work.

Just, in a nutshell and to stop being Southern polite here, coming at me with expected entitlement is not appreciated. Thank you.