On Fri, 11 Jun 2004 21:01:15 GMT, Bob wrote:
Dave,

I agree that a vendor that doesn't contribute but wants our business is a
bit on the sly side but... Let's invite him to join in and provide some
guidance / advice on his products. We get some tips/hints and he gets a
world-wide audience. His ad was well done I might ad.

Perhaps, but he's going about it backwards if he wants me to consider
buying anything from him. In one of the VW auto groups, there's
a guy there (John) who is _very_ helpful and an active participant.
Picture Charlie Self, but with VW Beetle stuff. Months into
reading the group, I realized that he was also the person selling
restoration products, repair parts, and all that, that people were
refering to by vendor name (rather than his name, y'see, so it wasn't
obvious).

To contrast, if it's someone who hasn't participated (and/or
contributed) in a group and they wander in with their commercial,
I see it as about the same as someone crashing a party, breaking
into conversations, and trying to sell everyone at the party something.

It was one of the milder spam's that I've seen, but it's still a
pork product in a can with that disgusting jelly stuff on it.