The t-shirt deal is starting to look like a Nigerian scam. The original offer was that I would get some free printed t-shirts from Ooshirts.com if I advertised about their site. Now have a load of this:
Do you have an American credit card? … I know that you’re getting the sponsorship amount off your order, but our site automatically charges every customer one cent as a security measure no matter what their total. Even my boss has to do this when ordering with the company card. I should have mentioned this earlier but did not think of it at the time. It’s a feature that some people find extremely off putting but others don’t mind. Do you mind?
A Nigerian scam (or advance-fee fraud) of course typically takes the form of an offer out of the blue for something valuable, like a million dollars (or a bunch of free tee shirts), with the condition that you need to give up something less valuable first, like $10 000 (or your credit card number). And Ooshirts aren’t willing to go through with the sponsorship deal unless they get my credit card number and one cent. The company has received decidedly mixed on-line reviews, and the positive ones tend to be pasted boilerplate text. So I ain’t going there unless Ooshirts clean up their act and take a straightforward approach to sponsorship.
Anyway, we have an excellent design for Aard merch now. I know about CafePress.com. Dear Reader, are there other on-line merch shops I should consider? Most of you guys are in the the continental US, so that would be a good place to ship the shirts from.