I'm so sick of people who join Swap-bot and various swaps and then decides to send nothing for their partner; flakes on them. Swap-bot is supposed to be fun for EVERYONE, but those selfish people ruin the fun for so many of us.
I hosted a swap "Memo Sheets and Letter Papers -swap" a while ago. The idea of the swap was to send different stationery to your partner. As a good host, before assigning the partners, I looked through their profiles. Every participants had excellent profiles. So I assigned the partners and let the fun begin. It was fun while it lasted. I got to know that there are three(!!!!!) suspicious persons/flakers. One of them is now fully suspended from Swap-bot, other one is partially suspended and the third, I don't know why she hasn't sent off her swap yet(the deadline was a couple of days ago) although I left her a comment on her profile and reminded her of the upcoming deadline.
Swap-bot is supposed to be a fulfilling experience and a peaceful place for us mail lovers. I personally can not understand what goes on on the flakers' mind!!? Why to ruin the fun for others? Don't they have any feelings, what do they think when they join countless of swaps, not intending to send stuff for any of them? Do they feel bad afterwards? Or are they just pleased with themselves for committing a perfect crime and getting a great haul of free stuff? I really would like to know what kind of persons flakers are in real life, as I know the majority of the Swap-bot users are mothers and wives. I don't really see how a stealing mom is a good role model to her children, or how can her husband let the illegal action of his wife slide?
The flakers do not seem to understand that first joining a swap, then receiving something from her own partner without sending something to other is a crime, it's stealing from others, it doesn't matter if it happens on the Internet or not. Stealing is always stealing, no matter what!! Mailing and buying stuff for the swaps is not cheap, so it feels very awful to notice you're not going to get anything in return.
To tell a bit more about my swap, I kindly angeled(=sent the swap instead of her flaker partner) for one of the participants and I'm hoping someone else could angel as well as I do not have resources to angel anymore.
Until this experience I liked to host swaps as I was able to share my ideas with others and be creative, but now I am afraid to host any swaps, I don't want to take the risk of letting a sneaky person get in and ruin all the fun for others!. Also, I'm on the alert whether to join any swaps or not -- especially if the swap is large and many participants are in as= more people in swap, more possibles a nasty flaker (or two!) is lurking in the corner waiting for FREE STUFF FROM ME!!
Flakers, get off of my Internet!
Had my first experience with a flaker a few months ago and it did set me off in a bad mood. She didn't even bother explaining why.
ReplyDeleteI absolutely know what you mean. It´s so frustrating to be flaked at every third swap. The people destroy all the fun which you should have with swap-bot. One host promised me to angel for her swap. I sent her my adress and she never sent me something, so she´s also a flaker in my eyes.
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