Tricia Meyer

Affiliate Marketer, Blogger, and Consultant

Three Strikes for Kmart

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As an affiliate marketer, I get to know hundreds of online merchants. I see their prices, their coupons, their shipping policies, and what my members say about them on a daily basis. It’s not very often that a merchant makes me so angry as a customer that I am willing to completely out them on one of my websites. But today is that day for Kmart.

I was never a Kmart shopper. I didn’t go to my local Kmart before it closed. I’m mainly a Target girl. However, they were giving us some good promotions at Christmas and so I wanted to send them some of my business. I ordered a sleeping bag for my daughter as one of her main presents. She only likes pink and purple, and it couldn’t be too big. I was picky, but Kmart had what I needed. I was excited and placed the order, only to find out a few days later that it was canceled. I ended up at my local Target a couple of days before Christmas buying a replacement. Strike one for Kmart.

Fast forward a month. My daughter is a huge fan of Wizards of Waverly Place and Kmart has a good deal of WOWP merchandise. I launched a new website and prominently featured their products. Valentine’s Day was coming and I wanted something WOWP for my other daughter. I visited Kmart and placed a number of things in my cart. When I went to check out, one was out of stock. So I added something else to even out the gifts for my two girls. When I went to check out, something else was out of stock. So I had to keep shopping. I finally placed the order and at the same time that I got the order confirmation, I got a notice that one of the items that I ordered was already out of stock! Strike two for Kmart.

Again I went to Target locally to buy a gift to even up my two daughters. As I was wrapping gifts today, I realized that one from Kmart was still missing–the WOWP bracelet that was the main gift. I checked my order online and Kmart was still showing that it was part of the order. No cancellation. I checked my credit card and the full order amount was billed. So I called Kmart to find out if they could give me the tracking number. Turns out they canceled that item but their system is not set up to always kick out a cancellation message. Further, they charge the card first and then check the inventory for Sears products. Now I have to wait for a credit (and the last time that I had to wait for a Sears credit, it took multiple calls and weeks to get my money back). Strike three for Kmart.

The worst part of all of this is that Customer Service told me that they have known since November that they have website and inventory issues. They only update their inventory every 24 hours. As a consumer, I’ve placed orders for 3 items in 2 months that were not in inventory. Think about how many products I have sold through my websites that I ended up not getting paid for due to the same issue, not to mention the frustration of my visitors.

Customer service told me to feel free to email them with my complaints so that they can have them “on file.” The best that they could do was tell me that they were sorry and I would get a credit back within a couple of weeks. I told them I would send them a link to my story once I put it online instead.

A Groundhog Story or Spaghetti for Three

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Have I ever told you my groundhog story? Not many people have their very own groundhog story, but this girl does.

Picture me in 1999, newly married and living in a little apartment, studying each day in the house by myself for the bar exam. It wasn’t my first time away from “home,” but it was my first time being married. I was still a little confused about whether I was supposed to call my mom (who lived 4 hours away) or my husband (who worked 10 minutes away) when something went wrong.

I was making spaghetti for dinner (being the good wife that I already was) and was watching bar review tapes. We had a sliding glass door leading from our tiny kitchen area to the woods behind the apartment, and I had it open to the screen. The spaghetti was smelling great and as I was checking on it, I heard a sound from the screen door like something was rattling it. When I looked over the counter, I saw a groundhog!! (we actually call them woodchucks here) I just know that the smell of my spaghetti attracted him and he was trying to get in.

I screamed and ran up the stairs and called my mom. By the tone in my voice, she thought someone had died or was dying that very minute. After I explained to her what happened, she said “What do you want me to do about it? I live 4 hours away.” Hmmm… good point. She told me to go back downstairs and see if it had actually gotten in the apartment. What?? What if it was running around and started chasing me or something? I had an image in my head of a big fat groundhog chasing me around the furniture with its teeth bared.

So I called my husband. I refused to go down the stairs until he came home from work (early…so the spaghetti didn’t burn). At least I figured that groundhogs probably couldn’t climb a flight of stairs. He came home and checked everything out. No groundhog in the house. I know he thought I was crazy until….

A week later he was leaving for work and saw a groundhog running into the woods!! Sneaky little guy was probably looking for more spaghetti.

Teaching Kids About Chocolate

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There are not many areas in which I consider myself an expert, but chocolate is one of them! This year I am fortunate enough to be teaching for the second time “Chocolate University” at our elementary school. It’s basically an hour long course where the kids get to learn things they might not already know about chocolate and then figure out which kinds that they like. Here’s how I put it together:

Advance Preparation

First, I found a couple of pictures of cocoa beans on the Internet and some basic history. I combined this into a PowerPoint to teach them about the origins of chocolate and how we use it. Next, I purchased various different kinds of chocolate individually wrapped for tasting. Then, my I made a form for each person with the name of each chocolate and a rating scale. Lastly, I gathered up all different kids of chocolate items in my house (philosophy Dark Chocolate shower gel, chocolate scented candles, hot cocoa, etc.) to use for smelling and examples.

Chocolates Used

Plain cocoa powder, white chocolate, milk chocolate, dark chocolate, peanut butter chocolate, mint chocolate, and fondue. Keep in mind that it took very little of each of these–essentially one bite. I cut everything up into small squares or use individually wrapped candies. For the fondue we are testing salty versus sweet combinations with a graham cracker stick versus a pretzel stick. (When doing this at my own house, I included things like hot chocolate and chocolate truffles as well).

Class Time

I started off by asking them about chocolate and they told me it was sweet. I had them taste the cocoa and explained to them why it was bitter. I then showed them the pictures of the cocoa beans and explained the origins of chocolate. From there, we started with white chocolate and then worked our way from milk to dark. We ended with the flavored chocolates. For each one, we talked about how it tasted and they “rated” it on their sheet. At the end, we went back through and compared the darkest to the lightest chocolate and a few other things.

After cleanup time, I have also added a Chocolate Word Find to keep the kids busy while waiting for pickup. I made it online and used words like cacao, brownies, pudding, melt, and fudge.

The kids always have a great time. Most do not like the dark chocolate and the fondue is usually the biggest hit. But you do get some surprises.

If you love chocolate as much as I do and are looking for something different to do with your friends or family, give a homemade Chocolate University a try. It’s great to do for a Girl Scout troupe, a school activity, or even a boring Saturday afternoon at home. If you would like the PowerPoint that I use, just contact me and let me know.

Social Media Friends and the Birthday Paradox

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I was noticing last night that of my 400 Facebook friends, 5 of them have a birthday on Thursday. That’s not including the ones that are businesses with a “start date” of the end of the year or friends who do not allow access to their birthday. I mentioned to my husband that it was improbable. With 365 days in a year, I should only have one birthday friend per day–two tops. He started talking about the “birthday paradox” and how if you put only 23 people in a room, you would have 2 people with the same birthday. I thought he was nuts. I mean, 365 days? Out of 23 people 2 will have the same birthday?

So of course I did a search for it. I found the “Birthday Problem” Wikipedia page, which explains that if you have 23 people together, there is a 50% chance that 2 of them will have the same birthday. If you get 57 people, there is a 99% chance that 2 of them will have the same birthday. It still doesn’t seem possible. 366 possible birthdays. 57 people and you have a 99% chance of the same birthday popping up?

Here is where YOU come in. I need a little help from my social media friends because I can’t get 23 or 57 people into a room today. Can you leave a comment below with your name and your birthday? I don’t need the year. Leave your name so I can verify you’re real people when two birthdays pop up the same and it isn’t just someone messing with me. I’ll make a little chart and we’ll see how many people have to comment before we get the same birthday. Curiosity has gotten the best of me now!!

Edited: It took only 18 people posting to get our first repeat birthday. We defied the odds! And my husband proved, once again, that he is better at math than I am.

Bendaroos Commercial with My Kids

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I have finally captured the Bendaroos commercial with my daughters, Jillian and Cassie, in it! It’s not the best quality, but it is still pretty cool.

How did it happen? My girls make video reviews pretty regularly for Sunshine Rewards. Cassie made a Bendaroos video when she was 6 and we uploaded it to YouTube. In June, I got an email from a man who said that he had seen the video on YouTube and was producing the newest Bendaroos commercial. He asked if Cassie would like to be in it. After a few weeks of going back and forth (and sending a current “head shot”), we agreed on a day for him to fly to Indiana to shoot some footage for the commercial. I told him I had another daughter who also does videos and actually made most of the creations in Cassie’s video. He told me that he might be able to use her in the video as well.

On a sunny summer day, a small crew arrived at our house. They did some shooting on our front porch (which you see in the part where Cassie dances and they show the sunglasses and ring). They also shot at our kitchen table (which you just get a quick glimpse of). We waited all summer and were about to think that there was not going to be a commercial.

All of a sudden last week Jillian came home from school and said that a friend has seen the commercial on Nickelodeon. Within a couple of days, other friends started telling us about it and we finally saw it ourselves. The girls were so excited!! Every day now they come home from school and talk about who saw the commercial the day before.

Here’s the commercial in a very low tech way (my Flip camera in front of the television!). There’s a cute little shot of Fishers, Indiana, that locals might recognize. (For the record, they didn’t get paid for the commercial but they did get a lot of Bendaroos!)

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