tristan da cunha stuff

[pilvikki]

well, I thought it'd be cool to buy some stuff from there as it's not like they grow fat from tourism. or anything else either.

sigh.

after waiting for a couple of months for the package, it showed up today and... i'm not impressed. the only thing that was acceptable out of the lot was the T shirt, made in south Africa... ok, so I did not expect to have full manufacturing practices on an island with some 250 people or so, but they might have provided clear pictures for their fridge magnets etc (haskins, England). you know, so one can actually make out the subject AND read the inscription without stadium lighting.

they kindly added a wee wheelbarrow - pink and off white, looked like it had been made by a 7 year old. arrived with the handle broken off, but it can be glued back together. if I even want to bother.

the cup is pretty - alas, handle broken in transit.

I got these to give out as whimsical presents, but I don't know what to do now. I will put in a complaints about the broken mug, totally due to poor packaging and which cannot be fixed, but the rest...?

bah.

[yogi]

Well ... you did a very cool thing. But you can't expect the same service from tristan da cunha as you would get from, say, Amazon. On the other hand, a time or two that I received similar merchandise via the postal service, I wrote back to the sending company with my complaints. In each case the defective products were replace free of charge, and in one case the company sent me a free tee shirt for my trouble. Then again, none of the companies I'm thinking about existed on a volcano populated by 266 people.

[pilvikki]

I know, there's my problem...

so, I was thinking of complaining about the fridge magnet to the company I assume manufactured them in England, but tell the tristanians (in the delta quadrant) about the mug and the wheel barrow, so they can upgrade their packaging.

[Icey]

It's a shame about your items being damaged in transit, but of course, things run in a much more primitive way on Tristan da Cunha. The residents still live communally. No one owns any land, so that the more well off folk don't buy it up and push the poorer people out. Also, visitors aren't allowed to either. I imagine that they still live pretty similarly to how they've always lived on the island, so you have to be pleased that your purchases made a bit of money for someone, despite being broken.