Two scammers landed in my Junk Mail folder this week. Their atrocious English – inferior even to that typical of today’s youth – gives them away instantly. They urgently need a large quantity of “product” to be shipped immediately by an overnight service or by a courier pickup. Will I please tell them what products I sell and what credit cards I take? Yeah, right. I wonder if my Malaysian thief put my email address on a list of easy victims.
Another order from Malaysia came in via PayPal. Apart from being Malaysian, it didn’t raise any alarms. The person at that email address confirmed placing the order, and the PayPal account looks legitimate. If it’s another thief or a credit card laundering scheme, I can’t see how it works. And so I filled the order despite my misgivings. I can’t write off an entire country based on one bad experience. If I really am too stupid to see how I’m being played for a fool, I’ll be out another $67.57. If that happens I’ll blacklist Malaysia forever and I might discontinue international shipping entirely. It’s not worth the grief.
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Mothers Day shoppers must have propelled the nice sales bump of the past few weeks; that's over now. Every year it dawns on me, too late, that I should have exploited all of those mother-lovers out there. And then every year I forget about them again.
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Some months ago I added a “How did you find us?” list to my checkout page. I tally the answers because I am compulsive. Reporting them here will create the illusion of purpose and break my compulsion.
Between one-third and one-half of my customers deign to answer. Here’s what they said:
• Searching for something on Google: 117
• Searching for something on Yahoo: 17
• Searching for something on Bing or Other: 8
• Referred by a friend: 8
• I don’t know, I just woke up and here I was: 7
• I shop here all the time: 5
• Saw you in a print article or ad: 3
• Typed your address into my browser: 2
There. I’ve purged it, and I can throw my list away. I’m free!
Welcome to Curious Business
Every Friday, I post a small insight into running Curio City and/or Blue Hills Editorial Services. My most recent posts are directly below. You can also start with the first post, or use the subject labels to the right to home in on particular topics. Feel free to comment on anything that interests you.
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