Where To Buy Tea Online!

Oh dear......

I am beginning to be a little more sympathetic than before to the guardians of RFDT non-commercial purity (though I do not like the vehemence of some of the participants.) Let me gently state my own view. It is not appropriate to push favorite online sites. I have my own preferred suppliers, as I am sure we all do. Some members of the group may well be operating their own sites, too. Maybe I run a site

-- you will never know, nor should I use this forum to advertise it if I did. Teafan1 has not been an active contributor, provides no personal profile and adds nothing to our discussions.

My own favorite suppliers are XXXXXXX.com and YYYYYY.com. ZZZZZ.com is pretty terrible but QQQQ has some neat offers. So?

Self-regulat> I suggest

Please do not advertise here. You have no idea what you're in for....................

i would recommend some vendors that sell quaity tea

all the above sell quality teas.

hope this helps.

regards ankit

Dear Ankit,

Another place worth checking out is

Regards, Jayesh

also

I didn't know it was illegal to give my opinion and attempt to get feedback from other tea lovers where they buy their tea!!!

Nobody said it was illegal, we just dont want it here. Trust me when I say that we seen just about every marketing ploy in the book. You did not simply ask for feedback you spamed this group with 2 messages only

6 minutes apart, both recommending the same (rather lame) site. The whole thing is rather transparent especially since you have NEVER posted here before. Most of us here do not appreciate marketing, spamming, shilling, etc by those who do not contribute to our discussions.

One of these days you guys will learn that all you are doing is putting yourselves and your site on the black-list of the largest concentration of hard tea drinkers that exists online. Not only will most of our group never buy tea from your establishment, but most of us will also recommend to the many who ask our opinions that they avoid you as well.

So unless you intend to contribute something beyond spam, please go away.

Mike

Hello I am new to this blog. I am some what of a tea connoisseur and have been searching for an excellent source of tea. I recently purchased some tea from sofo tea and I am very pleased with the quality as well as speedy delivery of tea. I dont' understand why everyone is verbally bashing them because another customer like myself is simply stating an opinion. I don't believe in the level of respect coming from this group who are annoyed because a link to a tea site is posted and yet another member here in this community has posted a link to their website with clipping's from other people's work. Please understand that the integrity of any blog must be maintained and balanced with both negative and positive feedback and we should never cross the line and threaten to black ball any one as the old saying goes " what goes around comes around"

Take a good look at Mike Petro's reply. It's not you per se, but the fact that no one knows who you are or what your agenda is. Contribute first and recommend later. Of course, hackles rise when a pitch is made out of the blue -- or rather out of the ether -- for an unknown seller. The obvious question is, given that everyone on RFDT knows how and where to buy tea, why should they be interested in what amounts to an electronic ad for another seller?

Who, by the way, is the member posting links to his/her Web site with clippings from others' work?

I've only been on RFTD for a few months. There are lots of great people, with phenomenal knowledge and a willingness to share it. They know their teas, like chatting and simply want to preserve a spirit of collegiality. That's what I love about the group. Looking at your own profile, you obviously have much to add in that spirit -- the medical qualifications and your book. Great! Tell us about that and don't get hung up about who you buy tea from. Believe me, there are people in the group (not me) who can tell you the best source of Turkish, Albanian, Malawi and even Sudanese tea.

Hang on here - no one is "verbally bashing" and this is not a blog. It is a discussion group and, had you read the posts available here in the past few weeks, you would understand the resentment for commercial advertising, which does not belong on a usenet group like this. An opinion from a consumer is fine and warranted; however, the poster in question jumped onto this board merely to advertise and not to contribute worthwhile and beneficial information to the group. Admittedly, one or two members have been very aggressive and rash in their reactions to this type of thing, while most of us, as Mike mentioned previously, just ignore these advertisers and refuse to support them with opinion or recommendation. New people are welcome here. There is a great deal that can be shared and learned from the many kind posters who take the stuff of tea very seriously. And, if you are really interested in the ways of tea, of course, you are welcomed, as well. However, if you, too, have come on board merely to support the "spam advertising" of this mediocre vendor than you are in no real position to mention karma. Personally, as an concerned teahead, I am getting rather sick and tired of this babble and will return to my habit of ignoring such irrelevant marketing drivel and the covert posts that support such junk and the too often mean-spirited responses to them. Shen

I have an inkling that you are the same person who started this thread, but I am not technical enough to make an accusation, so I'll give you the benefit of the doubt.

A few things:

1. This is not a blog. This is a usenet group. These are very different concepts. One of the issues here is that those who host this group aren't doing so in order to fund fraudulent tea vendors who attempt to deceive others.

1. I've been following this group for some time now, even though I havent been posting for long. It is very easy to spot a vendor disguised as a pleased customer.

2. While some responses are excessively negative, I don't feel that any of the comments in this thread have been rude or inappropriate. There is always the option for the vendor to come back and apologize, and then become a valuable member of this community-- it has happened before and likely it will happen again.

1. You talk about the integrity of this group. Even rudeness is more honest than deception, like the vendor who started this thread.

-Brent

Thanks, Brent, Shen and Mike. Let me endorse all that you say.

Let me also express my respect to Deserea, of steepingpot, who made the same faux pas of pushing her site and got the same slap down. She's now a real contributor and, I hope, comfortable in her involvement in the group. No one -- well, almost no one -- is looking to make this a pitbull fight arena and I sense a very warm encouragement in the group of ideas and views.

Your own credibility is not exactly high at the moment. For instance, this is not a blog. What on earth made you think it was?

Thanks Peter! I really appreciate you saying that. Now as an active member of the group, I completely understand why everyone was so upset with my first post. Reading this posting is like deja vu. I'm just glad I'm not on the wrong side of it this time :-).

Desirea

Hey all

As a newcomer myself, I have to say I LOVE this group! Why? Because the participants are knowledgeable and willing to share.

And best of all, unlike other tea forums I've joined, your messages don't get deleted by some ghost editor. (believe me, that is 10 times worse). Okay, that may means that sometimes you get attacked when you posted the wrong thing, but at last everyone gets a hearing, and we all eventually learn to live together.

:)

Thanks everyone, for making this forum such a lively group (I read it every morning, I wish I have more time and knowledge to contribute more!)

Julian