I’m beginning to fully realize how much Web 2.0 is just Web 1.0 but worse. Wasted money, broken promises, lack of business models. I mean, I’ve assumed this for some time, but each time I read about something like YouTube’s million dollar bandwidth bill, I really start to see things coming back around again.

Speaking of which, I signed up several months ago for Valleyshwag. They essentially gather the free crap that companies in the Silicon Valley give out and then sell said crap to folks like me. And see, I have a great affinity for these things on account of my past when I was working at a PR firm at the height of the web-schwag-pissing-away-money-about-to-be-bankrupt bubble.

Now, there are lots of reasons to give Valleyschwag benefit of the doubt: they are an offshoot of a real company for one (although their site does say some very Web 1.0 things: “From rich web applications to mobile sites, we’re doing our part to build tomorrow’s Internet for fast-moving market leaders and innovative startups.”). They also are collecting a lot of very varied schwag, and shipping it to about 1500 subscribers.

Here’s the problem. They charge monthly, without fail. I’ve paid 5 times, meaning I should have received 5 “care packages” as they call them. I’ve received 2. They have a blog where they attempt to outline the holdup, make cute excuses and otherwise appease the subscribers. But the funny part is, it appears they don’t really have to. I mean, I’ve paid 5 times for 2 packages, and I’m not the only one. Somehow they have stumbled onto that fundamental aspect of Web hype, convincing people to bend over and take it while giving you money. That’s how the venture capital craze happened. And now, I’m sitting here reading about how they aren’t even going to try to send packages out monthly any more… and I’m still a subscriber.

UPDATE: Check out the comment by Jonathan Grubb, co-founder of Ruby Red Labs. Now that’s some customer service. There is no denying that they are doing a great job of fixing their system.

This entry was posted on Friday, August 4th, 2006 at 6:29 pm and is filed under Web. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.