Integrity and Money in Business

Our weekends around here are pretty busy. nbsp;We try to catch up on all the errands we couldn’t get to during the week while shuttling our athletes from game to game. nbsp;This weekend was no exception. nbsp;After all the craziness, I like to climb in bed with a good sbook/s blog. nbsp;I take my phone and catch up on all the blogs I missed throughout the week. nbsp;Yesterday, I read a blog post from a href=”http://thesavedquarter.com/”The Saved Quarter/anbsp;about a company whonbsp;renegednbsp;on giving store credits to its customers. nbsp;You can read the whole story a href=”http://thesavedquarter.com/2011/03/franklin-goose-you-suck/”HERE/a.br /br /Here is the general idea of what is going on:br /br /iA company named Franklin Goose offered a $5 credit for every honest review it received during a certain time period. nbsp;Mommy bloggers started blogging about this great opportunity to their readers by using all forms of social media. nbsp;Thenbsp;opportunitynbsp;went viral and this company found itself with thousands of reviews, free word-of-mouth advertising, and backlinks galore {backlinks are very important in improving your Google ranking}. I’m sure they were stunned and excited. nbsp;Once that calmed down, I bet they were thinking, “Oh, crap now what do we do.” nbsp;{Years ago there was a commercial where a small business put their store online and then within minutes had thousands of orders with no manpower tonbsp;fulfillnbsp;them? nbsp;I’m guessing this is a similarnbsp;scenario.} nbsp;/ibr /ibr //ibr /iI’m guessing this company realized they had to go through each review to make sure they were honest and then give $5 credit for each review. nbsp;Thousands of reviews times $5 can add up to a LOT of free merchandise they were going to have to give away./ibr /ibr //ibr /iApparently they sent out emails saying it was going to take a while to get the credits and then they told the reviewers they couldn’t use the credits for a certain amount of time. nbsp;Ultimately they deleted all the credits and pending orders leaving the reviewers with nothing./ibr /br /People are mad! nbsp;I wouldn’t blame them.br /br /Last summer I wrote a post about a href=”http://www.daveramseyroad.com/2010/08/integrity-and-money.html”Integrity and Money/anbsp;when it comes to finances. nbsp;The same idea is true for businesses as well. nbsp;When a business does not have integrity in its practices you can be sure it will fall apart.br /br /It seems this company is about to fall apart. I would not be surprised if there is a class action lawsuits. Their deception is going viral i{Viral marketing goes in the opposite way, too.}nbsp;/ibr /ibr //ibr /How could they have prevented this?br /br /There may be a few things they could have done:br /br /ollibPut a limit on the amount they were giving for the reviews/b. nbsp;They should have set a cost limit at what they were willing to give in return for reviews. nbsp;If they said, “The first 100 reviews will receive $5.” That would have only meant $500 in credits./lilibOffer the credit only if the review had purchased the item from their store/b. I think this was their biggest mistake. nbsp;They allowed anyone to review their products even if they did not purchase from them. nbsp;Sounds great at first, but I don’t think they considered that there would be people who already owned the products would go through their store and write reviews on every product they could find so they could add up the credits.nbsp;/lilibShut down the credit opportunity sooner/b. nbsp;When they realized how quickly everything was happening, they should have stopped the opportunity sooner so they wouldn’t be in the mess they are in. nbsp;Yes, people would have been angry, but not as angry as they are now./lilibHave a clause in their offer that gave them the right to take away credits./b nbsp;There should have been a clause somewhere that states they have the right to end the opportunity or take away credits if they could not meet the demand. i{Did they have one? nbsp;I don’t know.}/i/li/oldivI wonder if the benefits of free advertising blinded them to the work they were going to have as a result. nbsp;Although it was “free” marketing, it really was not. nbsp;Nothing is free. Building a business takes work, effort, and integrity. nbsp;Once you lose your integrity in your customer’s eyes, you can bet it will take a LOT more work to rebuild that if they even give you a chance to try./divdivbr //divdivPersonally, when someone I meet has little integrity when it comes to money, they no longer have influence with me. nbsp;When it’s a business that has no integrity and it’s profit over people, you can be sure I am quick to tell everyone I know about it. nbsp;/divdivbr //divdivThat is what is happening with this company. nbsp;Mommy bloggers are telling everyone they know about the deception and making sure their friends do not shop there. nbsp;Look at this post. nbsp;I was not even a part of this process and I’m blogging about it./divdivbr //divdivI am not blogging about it to bring this company down. This company is an example of how integrity and money in business is vital to a company’s ultimate success or ultimate failure. Remember, businesses are build by people and if the people running the business have no integrity, you can bet the business will not either./divdivbr //divdiv style=”text-align: center;”i”Integrity is the essence of everything successful.” -Richard Buckminster Fullernbsp;/i/divdiv style=”text-align: center;”br //divbr /br /a href=”http://www.aghdesigns.com/images/blogs/siggy4.png” target=”_blank”img alt=”Anna” border=”0″ src=”http://www.aghdesigns.com/images/blogs/siggy4.png” //a