What I Have Learned as a Sample Addict

I LOVE getting free samples. It has become an addiction for me. Coming home to see what I've gotten in the mail for free makes me almost giddy with excitement.  Sometimes, its just a tiny sample, which I'm perfectly happy with.  Sometimes, it's a full size product.  This is even better.  Most even come with coupons and sweeten the deal.

If there is one thing I've noticed, its that a lot of people who like to request free samples enter giveaways (another thing I love to do) or consider themselves couponers are crazy.

And I don't mean this fondly.  Many of these people are straight up jerks.

Take today, for example.  Cafe Escapes was supposed to open some sort of sample giveaway at 2:00 p.m. eastern time.  Some of these people did not even wait until 2:02 p.m. to start freaking out that the giveaway was not posted.  Several people accused them of setting up some kind of scam, while others got snotty and said that Cafe Escapes clearly did not value their customers time, while still others threatened the dreaded "unlike".

Forty-five minutes later, it finally went live.  And promptly crashed.  Also, not an unusual event, that everyone, again, flipped out about.

This is nothing unusual.  I routinely watch people completely lose their shit over samples.  It's madness.  People get pissed when something is not available within seconds of the time that was mentioned.  They get pissed if they were expecting a full sized product (which is really pretty rare) and get a sample size instead.  They say the whole thing was just a scam all the time, particularly if, for one reason or another (usually that the sample runs out) they weren't able to get a particular sample.  They constantly threaten to "unlike" that particular company, because, obviously, they don't care about their customers.


Really people?  These companies are offering something FOR FREE.  They want you to try their product, they are not trying to "scam" you or make you angry.  Sometimes there are going to be technical difficulties.  Other times, demand might be much greater than the number of samples they have to give away.  It's insane.  It's just unreal how entitled all these people feel.

You win some, you lose some.  I certainly don't get every sample I set out to acquire and that's fine. I just wish people weren't so insane.  I feel like it gives people like me a bad name.

Don't even get me started on the couponers.  That's a rant for another day.