A stuck TTB. Some suggestions ?
Started a TTB awhile ago and it was going well till it disappeared with T(e)ARDIS. She hasn’t done any notes nor replied to anything on the thread. Does anyone know her that can contact her? I tried to send her a snail mail note 12 days ago but still nothing.
Anyone have any other suggestions?
Well, if you know her email, facebook, tumblr, etc you can try to contact her that way. But if she’s not responding to messages, short of showing up at her doorstep yourself, there’s not much you can do.
Unfortunately there is a lesson to be learned here, and this result is why so many TTBs are wary of people with little to no history on the site. I don’t mind so much letting new but active people give a box a shot, but months with no activity (posts, tea reviews, even lack of an icon other than the stock one) should be a big red flag.
Sadly, there is no way to be sure. We lost TTB-C to someone who had participated in several prior TTBs with no problems. She stopped participation in Steepster after we set up the TTB but 2 months before the box arrived.
Yeah, I make sure I only include people in the teabox I started who have been around a while: tasting notes, etc. If they eventually love Steepster as much as I think they will, they won’t mind as they will eventually be able to participate. I’m sorry if your teabox is permanently lost!
A big lesson learned is to ask people to verify active participation via PM IMMEDIATELY BEFORE shipping. I’ve seen at least one case where this prevented a box from just going out into the unknown.
Yes, that’s exactly what I was going to say. I stopped having everyone exchange addresses at the beginning of the swap because some people will just send the box off to the next person without contacting them to make sure they’re ready for it. We had someone get a box when they’d already told us they’d be on vacation and to move them to a later slot in the box because of that. Now I wait until the right before a persons turn to get the box to contact them so that I know they’re still actively on Steepster and it doesn’t get lost.
I did that with the Butiki box I was running and I’m glad I did since the last 3 people on the list dropped out/didn’t respond to messages and I was able to get the box sent back to me.
The other thing is that the organizer needs to be able to PM every participant. Everything is easier with hindsight, but it’s important to be able to make contact between the head of the box and each participant. If they don’t use Steepster or e-mail often enough to get that interaction, that’s a bad sign.
Login or sign up to leave a comment.