Yesteday I posted what I hope is a reasonably well controlled post about the state of affairs we Creative Memories devotess find ourseleves in. Employees, consultants and customers have been put in a holding pattern. We are advised to hold on tight and have some faith. We are asked to give it all some time. We are asked to understand the voluntary administration is NOT Bankrupty…..it is stop for a minute while someone sorts out the mess!
If we were in an aeroplane as a seated traveller we would have no choice but to place our faith in the pilot that we will in the end land safely as the pilot negotiates conditions not in their control.
And so we do, in very good faith. Consultants are rallying, long time consultants are being emotionally supported by long term and faithful customers and some of us are in fact being so well supported our customers are bringing NEW customers on board to help fill workshops and live, eat and breathe the spirit of scrapbooking in our workshops.
Unfortunately we are not in the air and the leeches are conning the lemmings big time.
Yes, some of you who read this and may be thinking Jen..your hope is ill founded, there is no more CM Australia. Ok then …give me the the FACTS not the emotion or claptrap. Contrary to the fact some consultants are privately moaning that there is ‘nothing left’ there IS product in the warehouse, just not our top 10 items; there is also a dedicated CONSULTANT waiting to serve you the customer and you the consultant. In order to honour the company and the consultant sisterhood, you our valued customer, should not be turning to Ebay. I beg of you do not have your wallet sycked dry by purchasing wall st crash style. In good faith, if your consultant is ethical she is NOT selling on ebay OR profiteering. If she is, she would be snubbed by those of us who are carrying on as best we can.
Chances are your consultant is taking stock, perhaps just like you now fossicking through that stash of yours. She is ensuring she has what she needs for her own regular and new customers and answering swap calls from sister consultants to help them supply their customers in return for product she needs for her own. She is part of a team, a network, making the most of the holding pattern. Your consultant Is a Leg! (not pronounced as l -e -g but rather l -e – j…short for legend…) and if you feel she is not ask why not. If she is honouring the company, the mission, and the future of CM Australia New Zealand she will be doing exactly a I have described above and will not be profiteering on the shortage of pages and protectors by selling them on ebay. I bet customers are telling her right now she is a legend, when this is usually a phrase our teens and tweens would use!
And yes I get it…as a member of the public it just might be you who has excess supplies in your stash and given the situation you have decided to sell them. This is your right and I cannot deny your right to put whatever you like on Ebay. So that brings me to the bidders.
You could reasonably pay a little something more for a product that is still MADE AND SOLD in the USA. It is still available there. In Australia supplies are limited, the available inventory at the centre of distributional gone, for now, not necessarily forever! While consultants who operate their business in an ethical way are sourcing and sharing, leaders are working hard on a new business suooly and a reliabel source of albums and pages in the future. So, ALL IS NOT LOST, not yet at least.
So I ask you. Why are you purchasing from Ebay when you can get pages for the BARGAIN PRICE of their actual RETAIL VALUE from a consultant.
STOP AND THINK, please!!! Do not make like a lemming and follow the pack to Ebay and bid on pages for far more than their retail value. That is a total waste of your money…truly. Such lemming like behaviour is undignified.
Have some faith in your company, its leaders, your sister consultants, and our desire to continue to do business in an ETHICAL manner.
So…to wake up thinking about the leeches today makes me mad! They are scalpers not scrapbookers, they are leeches interested in only sucking away YOUR hard earned cash, not in helping you preserve your precious memories. I just looked – 7.35 am…
Sydney seller xandro2010 has ‘a’ pack of 12 x 12 pages . Postage is 14.95 (go Australia Post you are making a fortune too). The current bid is $157.00 for a product that retails from us, the consultants at $29. Already they have a whopping profit of $137 on just ONE pack of pages.
What?
Are you for real?
Someone has hat sort of money and stupidity? More fool you. Each of the packets of pages you are bidding on have a retail value of UNDER $30 AU – and there are consultant who have them and will sell them to you at that price.
There are 26 bids so far. The auction is still active. I do not care to look at how many bidders there are…no bones about it they are LEMMINGS, suckers, and obviously have money to throw away.
The next time a customer comments to me about the ‘expensive’ CM pages I may just say if you think RRP is expensive take a look at the bargain you are getting by comparing my price to EBAY !
This seller also claims the CM lifetime guarantee on these pages….really? That is clearly misinformation. Maybe I should dob them in to ATSIC ! Simple logic tells us that if CM Australia is under administration our guarantees are too. They may no longer be upheld. (We know now, given that there are none in the warehouse at this point in time a faulty pack of pages cannot be replaced…unless you want thin air.) This is a decision of the administrator. If I cannot guarantee unequivocally the CM guarantee while we are on hold I for one am not using it as a plug to sell the pages. I know I don’t have to anyway. Experience tells my my CM Albums have been the best on the market from the day they became available in Australia and the quality of the product consultants like myself have in stock is the very same as the albums I made over 1o years ago. I have never had to call CM to task on the basis of their guarantee on albums, pages and protectors.
Our warehouse may be out of stock but our scrap rooms, cupboards and sheds are not. Consultants (who are not leeches profiteering with a phantom presence on Ebay) are now banding together and sharing their stock. We are swapping. As a team we believe you, our valued customers, need your pages and we are doing what we can to get them to you. All we ask is that you CALL US and give us time to source them for you. PLEASE do not be so stupid as to purchase with lemming like behaviour the pages on Ebay at more than five times their retail price. There is no need to do this. Be Patient. allow your consultant to make suggestions to you, advise you and guide you through this fog that is administration.
While you wait…
stay in touch with your consultant
Please avoid purchasing on ebay. It does not help us and it will cost you a fortune in P and H let alone final bid price as exemplified above.
Book into a workshop with your consultant.
Make use of what is already in your stash! Get your stash out – all of it. (Be sure hubby is out when you do this or you may get into trouble!)
Enjoy the pleasure of discovering what you forgot you had!
Identify what pages and protectors and other items from CM you need and ask your consultant to do her best to source them for you. Be Patient.
use your cardstock and papers as the foundation on pages
make pages
store them in a crop box. If you don’t have one of those, store them in a pizza box or a stash supply storage container from whatever source you may have got it.
If you really really really need these pages in an album use a generic slip in one just to keep your pages safe while we wait.
I will add some images to this post later….right now I need a second coffee and a chill pill!
*goes off muttering* …$157 …really…and rumours of over $200 yesterday…what are people thinking I am a Legend! I will attempt to supply my customers at RRP! Not ripoff prices. How un-Asutralian! …..*continues shaking head at stupidity of it all*
PS I am going to publish this now too…will return to edit typos shortly. – be patient – please feel free to comment. (all comments must be approved – C’est la Vie)
Jen
The Creative Heart 