Group orders and free gifts...

I've often wondered about this.
I have never yet participated in a GO but I'm so grateful to those who organise them and give me the option of saving shipping costs! I'm completely cool with them keeping freebies, especially as in most cases the free stuff isnt worth all that much. I also think it's a good idea to run a GO so you can spend enough to get an event item you want, that wouldnt bother me at all.
I haven't seen anyone mention companies that have reward points schemes yet - I would be happy for the GO organiser to benefit in that way, too.

 

Seeing as hosting a group order can be quite tough, I think it's fair if the host keeps the goodies.
Of course, I wouldn't mind if the goodies were also given to the participants, but whatever :B
Here we have someone who owns a doll shop and owns a forum and everything and they also host a big dollie event twice a year and most of the goodies they get when they hosy group orders get raffled on those events. Which I think is pretty cool.

 

I think the person running the go should get the items since they spent the time and effort to run it. They might want to say up-front that they're getting the extras though, just in case somebody were to get antsy but I still think they deserve it. If you did the work, you should get the reward.

 

My two cents-
the go runner has every RIGHT to keep the small stuff, and personaly i don't care.

One time FL was giving free shoes with every Feeple that was ordered. as i ordered the feeple (i kepted the whole doll), The split leader let me have them sold to a differnt person in the order. now the shoes wouldn't have even been in the order without my Cali, which is why i don't think she cared so much and we talked about things anyway.

But for things like the normal FL or luts 'events' i think the orginzer needs to be up front about what they are doing with them.if they want to keep them cool but stating it is the best idea.

Like a lot of people were/are after the Soom monthly doll cards. In my split i started who ever bought the body got the card. It just made sense to me.

 

I think the etiquette here is that if it is something small then it goes to the person running the group order, if it was something larger then it should go to the person who spent the most money, although a lottery or selling the item and distributing the money would be a good idea. Personally I'd just ask the others in the group, but then I would never go in on a group order where I didn't know at least 2-3 of the other people in person, it makes communication about something like this much easier if you know more about the other people.

 

I think the GO host can keep and should keep the free items. It takes time and effort to run a GO smoothly.

If I want the free items myself I will place the order myself and not join a GO.

 

This is my thought to. It isn't easy running a GO, the host should get to keep the freebies. I feel lucky that in the few local GO's I've participated in the GO host has handed out at least some of the freebies, particularly to the largest spenders. However if she had kept them all I would have been totally ok with that.

 

I've participated in a couple of GOs and I think that the person who organized it should be able to do what s/he wants with the free gifts. It would be nice if s/he offered the freebies to the members who participated in the GO and saying something along the lines of "First to PM gets it", or something like that. Maybe having a lucky drawing--put all the participants names in a bag and then randomly selecting a few to give the gifts to...

But, I imagine that organizing a GO takes an immense amount of time & effort and can be a huge task, so I would totally understand if the organizer wanted to keep the free gifts or even try to sell them.

 

i think organising GOs is hard work, and to me, the person organising it has every right to keep the free gifts, no matter what it is. anyway, it's not really easy to decide who gets what, even if the organiser decides to give the free gifts away.

the only GO where the organiser actually said something like, oh, you'll probably get the event head (cos i spent the most, i think) if there's still the event going on was when i bought my first doll. which meant i probably spent the most in the GO. but anyway, the event was already over, so, it didn't matter.

(there was also a GO i saw, where the person put a slot down for the event head (i.e. sort of like a split or something) that was definitely coming with the order as they were aiming to hit the target amount spent to get the head. not sure what they did with the money from the event head though.)

the point is though, that some organisers don't mind giving away the free gifts according to their own system of working (eg to the person who spent most, or by lucky draw or what), but i think most GO participants don't mind if the GO organisers keep all the freebies.

 

I've held a few local group orders and received free thank-you items in a few of the packages, most recently one from Dollmore. It came with quite a lot, so what I did was contacted all the participants in the group order, post pictures of the items we'd received, and if anyone wanted any of it they could let me know. If I had more than one person ask for something, I tore up little slips of paper with their names on them, threw them in a hat, drew a name, and that's who got it.

I run group orders to help save on shipping when I want one or two small things; sometimes if I'm making an order large enough that I don't need to worry about shipping, I ask if someone local needs something on a piggy-back from the same place.

If it came with something that I really wanted to keep, I'd contact all of my participants and make sure they were okay with me keeping it. I don't want anyone to feel slighted over something so small. n__n​

 

I've never partaken in a group order, but I think the organiser of the GO should keep the free gifts if they want them, if they don't want them then they should raffle them off amongst any of the GO would might want them

 

Personally my approach would be as follows:
- If a specific arrangement has been agreed beforehand, go with that.
- Otherwise, if the freebie was tied to a specific item or combination of items (free outfit with a certain doll), it should go to the person who bought the item(s).
- Otherwise, if it's a general freebie for the order as a whole, it's the organiser's to do with as they wish.

 

Do you think that these fun little extras belong to the group order runner?
Yes. As far as I joined the group order, I always do it with my own friends, so I don't & never mind if the free gift is theirs. If they don't need it and I actually need, I will offer myself to buy the free gift. I don't really want to get "dizzy" and questioning little things like that with my own friends.

 

I have never participated in one, and would probably never run one, but I know I wouldn't have a problem with the GO keeping any cool, even expensive, free gifts (as long as it didn't specifically come with my order, like free eyes with a doll or what not.) I do think the GO should say what they plan on doing with any free items they get beforehand though, just so everyone knows. Oh, and just a question, if the GO is going to sell the free head, or other gift, to help cover the shipping costs out of pocket; what's wrong with them just keeping it if they want it? Wouldn't paying for the shipping, in this case, be paying for the gift in a way?

As another note; I think If you want a promo item, like a Halloween head or whatnot, you should just spend the money and place your own order... Unless the GO expressly says they plan on raffling it off or something...

 

I think it's perfectly fair for the person running the group order to keep freebies unless it's specifically related to what you purchased ie. "Buy this special edition item and get this gift!". In which case I think it's abit more iffy. If it's one of those companies that always sends freebies or its based on the total order amount though the person running the order should feel no guilt keeping the items. They have to put in work to get the packing to ship the groups item to them, not to mention running to the postal and keeping the orders straight! And if anything goes wrong in the GO, they're the ones who basically have to deal with getting it fixed. I've done a few local GO's and joined a few non-local ones and they're great. I have alot of appreciation for the people who run them - I don't think I could manage to run a big non-local GO myself.

 

I once organized a Dollmore GO and kept the free things afterwards, it wasn't that much so yeah. Though I've joined a GO aswell some times and those amounts raise very, very high from time to time and the organizer gets a ton of free stuff. She then randomly divides the stuff under the participants.
She does have the right in my opinion to keep every part of it, but if she didn't need it, I would say it's better to hand them out

Another time I organized a small GO for Camellia, we ended up with two :p That friend wanted to order a body and the shipping costs to her country were a loooot more expensive and the customs charges a lot more.
I ordered some small stuff and we got a free horn :p unicorn-something I suppose. Since my friend ordered for a far greater amount I just gave it to her, it's only fair I suppose...

 

Well, I have a couple opinions on this.

One, yes, the person did go through a lot of trouble to place the order. However, at the same time, they're getting A LOT of points for a specific company that they wouldn't have otherwise gotten on their own. I think that's quite a bit of payment on it's own right, especially when people have a lot of $300-900 orders because they're trying to meet some special, or free shipping promotion.

Two, it might make a good collection of items to give randomly to other members if you mess up on something (maybe they didn't send the right item, or you accidentally ordered the wrong thing, or you had to ship out later than usual) so you can add these little goodies into the package to try to make their day a bit brighter.

My last opinion is that I think that if you know there will be goodies, you should specifically ask the group if anybody wants it. I think a lottery or something would be most fair. To some people that order ALL the time, they might think the little napkins or card that comes with the package isn't so special anymore after they get about 20 of them. However, some people will never even see them. It'd be a nice gesture to include one in somebody's package if they have the room for it, just as a nice little surprise. Or if nothing else, say something like, "It's free as long as it fits in your package or you can handle the small amount extra for shipping."

 

I run GOs as well as participate in them, and I believe that GO Runners SHOULD get the free items. Hands down. They should not be thought less of, no matter what they decide to do with the items...whether that is raffling, selling, etc..I don't think they should be pressured at all to do one option over another by their participants [to me, that is rude].

Running a GO smoothly is a lot of extra work and time investment. If a participant really wants a certain free item, I'd highly encourage them to start their own GO. It makes little sense to want a free item but not be willing to do the work necessary for it.

EDIT:: Forgot ^^; Also, about the points that Go Runners gain...It reallllllly isn't that much money. The points may sum up to 10 bucks or so for a 1000 order, and to be honest, if I wanted an item for 10 dollars, I'd rather just pay than try and earn that amount in points. The time and effort alone is not worth the amount received back in points. I really don't think that points are a valid argument against Hosts keeping the freebies~

 

This is actually a really good question.

As far as I am concerned, I think the person running the order has first dibs on any and all extra goodies. I think that's only fair and right. However, if, for example, a pair of eyes someone needed happened to come in an order, then it shouldn't break the person's heart to part with them.

At least, that's how I would go about it.