The Steeping Pot - Specialty Teas & Accessories

I went to this sight and realized it seems to have "ripped off" Adagio Tea's wording exactly.

Even the #8 is used. Are you an extension of Adagio Tea? If so , let us know.

cjteas

Maybe it's time to revisit the group's charter... the current one is pretty minimal:

If there's agreement from the group, I think it might make sense to specifically limit commercial posts entirely, or at least clarify the policy on commercial posts, so that we don't have any ambiguity w/r/t posts like this, and the Art of Tea post.

This is not an extension of Adagio, but I'll cross post this on their forum so they know about this. Good catch!

-Brent

Adagio is one of our wholesale tea suppliers. That particular tea is their tea, so you will see some similarities throughout the site. We are adding more tea varieties every month from multiple suppliers, so it's not an exact replica of their sites content.

Desirea

I'm puzzled.........

This Steeping Pot message is clearly "commercial" and comes from someone who has not to my knowledge ever before contributed to RFDT. It's basically spam.

What puzzles me is that all the brou-haha -- and over 50 messages -- about the Art of Tea announcement of its second issue generated some pretty virulent attacks on commercial misuse of USENET, violation of charter, etc. The Steeping Pot's ad plus discount coupon offer seems a tad "commercial" but has generated no comparable response. Am I missing something about netiquette? Is there some personal background about The`Art of Tea? Is the Steeping Pot ploy approved of by the slammers of AoT?

I ask for two reasons. My first is that I had absolutely no problem with the AoT announcement. I didn't see it as commercial but informative. I immediately subscribed to the magazine, which arrived today, and I am delighted by it -- I lack expert knowledge of puehrs so for me it is very instructive. I do have problems with the SP stuff, though. So what is the distinction that makes AoT out of order but SP acceptable?

My second reason for raising the issue is a little more complex. It's tea publications versus tea products. I welcome every single reference to and, yes, selling message, about things worth reading about tea. I don't know what's available -- such as AoT -- and am information- eager. I do know where to go to find great products and don't need or want PP type stuff interrupting the style and content of RFDT. So I'd like to encourage pubs and discourage prods.

Anyway, to the Art of Tea folks my message is Thanks -- I love it.

Good catch, Cheri - looks like another internet charlatan.

I was more bothered by the Steeping Pot ad also. I don't know why that is - probably because I may be interested in checking out Art of Tea, while I'm not particularly interested in what the Steeping Pot is selling.

Also, the folks from the Art of Tea seemed genuinely interested in engaging in dialogue, and not just promoting their magazine.

I think part of the reason that you didn't see as many posts complaining about this thread is because it's MORE blatant - people who were bothered by it probably reported it to the OP's ISP and / or google groups, or wrote them off-list to complain. I wasn't quited bothered enough to file a spam complaint since the group's charter isn't that clear, but I did write the sender off-list to complain.

Another part of the reason is because the spam issue was already discussed recently.

That said, I did reply to this thread, and suggest that we amend the charter to be clearer.

My reading of the Google Groups TOS is that (in THIS particular case, since the message was sent via Google Groups) the sender may be in the wrong, even if they're not technically in violation of the group's charter.

I guess the sticking point is whether the message is "disruptive" or not.

Charter or no charter, I think we can all agree that no one needs to get their tea from anyone this unscrupulous.

I don't see why it's an issue as long as it's related to the topic of the group, and provides some sort of useful information. As a consumer, I like to be informed of something I might be interested in.

Internet charlatans aside, how is any genuine and honest new tea vendor supposed to make his/her presence known without posting a brief intro on groups such as this ?

I may sound a little naive here, but not all new tea vendors are out to rip us off. I also don't do frequent internet searches for new vendors that may just happen to start up. I also personally have no issue with someone making an honest living from a well managed and honestly conducted business - whether it's online or bricks and mortar.

Whether we like the idea or not the internet IS a market place open for commercial exploitation, some are honest and bone fide, some are crooks. So, rather than jump on the toes of someone innocently trying to promote a product or business that we as tea drinkers may actually benefit from, perhaps we can work something out that allows relevant commercial posting to this group.

A suggestion perhaps is that promoters of new businesses/products (tea related of course) could use some form of ID or token in the subject line which members who wish not to see commercial posts can use to filter them out. I have seen ADV used in some groups.

Think about it, allowing something like this could actually work in our favour. Anyone who is familiar with this group will know that if you try to sell a dodgy product or promote a dodgy business he/she will be 'chewed' up here. Therefore they are probably less likely to advertise their dodgy enterprise on this group. Those that choose to do so then, would probably least be worth a look.

Having said that, any commercial poster that does choose to post here should also be prepared to be fairly and reasonably scrutinised by able-minded members of this group.

We can not physically stop commercial posting on this group (correct me if I am wrong), so perhaps we might be able to manage some commercial posting to our advantage.

Anyway just a thought.

Cheers Mal Oz

I'm extremely sorry - I didn't realize everyone would be so up tight about my announcement. Why don't you simply delete it as if it never happened?

Why is this post an issue, but no one is complaining about the Agape posting?

Alex, Did I miss something, or did a representative of this company answer that Adagio supplies them, and they therefore used Adagio's text to describe the tea supplied? That's not unscrupulous, I don't think, unless you refer to another episode of unscrupulousness. Of course this doesn't answer to the question of whether we ought to tolerate advertising here. On that I tend to agree with you, although a one shot ad doesn't offend me. I *don't* find the teas offered by this company particularly attractive. Michael

It's an issue because you ripped off Adagio.

I challenged the "violation of the Charter" thing because I felt the Charter was being misquoted and/or misinterpreted. The challenge was in the interest of being factual and really had nothing to do with my opinion.

My "opinion" is as follows, this is only my opinion and it has nothing to do with the Charter or USENET netiquette:

If a "contributing" poster to this group throws out an occasional blurb I really don't mind. If someone throws out a blurb that is

When someone who has never *contributed* throws out an ad I do mind. I guess to me the real metric is the motivation of the person over time. If their only motivation for posting is profit then I really don't care what they have to say. On the other hand if they are truly passionate about tea, and sometimes post solely in the interest of sharing knowledge, then I think they earn the right to the occasional blurb. In other words, those who contribute are welcome, those who do contribute are not.

In most cases I do not respond to "blatant" ads from non-contributors because to do so only gives them more buzz and bandwidth. I personally didnt respond to the SP post because it was a blatant ad from someone who has never contributed except with profit as a motive. To keep their thread alive only rewards them and I choose not to do that. I suspect that many old-timers feel the same way which is probably why you didn't see a flurry of posts. Any buzz is good buzz etc.

The Art of Tea blurb was acceptable in my opinion. The SP ad was not. Probably the only reason the AoT generated so much controversy was because it was indeed something of interest to many members of the group, but some contributors objected because they have an aversion to anything even remotely commercial. Blatant ads seldom generate that much buzz. Actually, I now applaud AoT for their efforts, even though I had reservations early on, I sincerely believe they will improve and refine their publication over time. To have such a resource in English is fantastic, I hope more publishers will follow this example. On the other hand, shops like SP are a dime a dozen, if they are depending on Adagio for their tea they have nothing of interest to me. If I want Adagio tea, I will simply go to Adagio........

Mike

This is USENET. Ignorance of the law is no excuse. Commercial postings are implicity prohibited in the discussion newsgroups. We don't have to admend the Charter for anything. The advertizers start their own .marketplace groups where they explicity state commercial posts are allowed.

Jim

PS I'm still work> Maybe it's time to revisit the group's charter... the current one is > pretty minimal:

Thank you! I have no intentions on trying to rip people off or doing anything ill manner. If anyone wants to ask me anything about The Steeping Pot, I have no problems in responding. I started this business because I love tea. It's a hobby for me. If you live in my area - I'm not above sharing a free pot of tea with anyone. That's why I do this. I give away more of my tea than I sell it. Why? Because I love seeing the looks on peoples faces when they taste and smell the tea for the first time - especially if they've only had supermarket tea bags before. I'm a people pleaser - that's just how I am.

I was not prepared to be so ridiculed for making a simple announcement and offering everyone a coupon - I guess that was me just being naive. Forgive me for not expecting people to be so rude. The only reason I thought it would be ok to post here was b/c of the posting I saw for Agape. There was no backlash, so I didn't think it would be a problem since the posting was tea related and relevant to the group. Forgive me for not searching through the entire group postings to find whenever it was that this was discussed before.

I don't see how anyone starting a new business can gain any kind of brand awareness if they don't use mediums like this. If I weren't the owner of the owner of The Steeping Pot and simply posted a message about the store as a consumer, none of you would have had an issue with that. That's what I don't understand. Why must there be such a conceptual difference between the two situations? I could have done this the way most marketers do viral marketing and pretended to be a general consumer, but I'm not comfortable with that. I prefer to take the honest approach and offer some sort of incentive such as a coupon.

At this point, I don't care if I make any money. I'm doing something that I love in the only way I know how, and maybe one day I'll own a cafe where people can get real gourmet tea perfectly steeped in a relaxed and comfortable setting. That's all I want.

I challenged the "violation of the Charter" thing because I felt the Charter was being misquoted and/or misinterpreted. The challenge was in the interest of being factual and really had nothing to do with my opinion.

My "opinion" is as follows, this is only my opinion and it has nothing to do with the Charter or USENET netiquette:

If a "contributing" poster to this group throws out an occasional blurb I really don't mind. If someone throws out a blurb that is

When someone who has never *contributed* throws out an ad I do mind. I guess to me the real metric is the motivation of the person over time. If their only motivation for posting is profit then I really don't care what they have to say. On the other hand if they are truly passionate about tea, and sometimes post solely in the interest of sharing knowledge, then I think they earn the right to the occasional blurb. In other words, those who contribute are welcome, those who do contribute are not.

In most cases I do not respond to "blatant" ads from non-contributors because to do so only gives them more buzz and bandwidth. I personally didnt respond to the SP post because it was a blatant ad from someone who has never contributed except with profit as a motive. To keep their thread alive only rewards them and I choose not to do that. I suspect that many old-timers feel the same way which is probably why you didn't see a flurry of posts. Any buzz is good buzz etc.

The Art of Tea blurb was acceptable in my opinion. The SP ad was not. Probably the only reason the AoT generated so much controversy was because it was indeed something of interest to many members of the group, but some contributors objected because they have an aversion to anything even remotely commercial. Blatant ads seldom generate that much buzz. Actually, I now applaud AoT for their efforts, even though I had reservations early on, I sincerely believe they will improve and refine their publication over time. To have such a resource in English is fantastic, I hope more publishers will follow this example. On the other hand, shops like SP are a dime a dozen, if they are depending on Adagio for their tea they have nothing of interest to me. If I want Adagio tea, I will simply go to Adagio........

Mike

I would support that.

--scott