Unsolicited Advertising

[JustAskJulie]

I just received the following disturbing email:

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I own Schooners Sports Bar in San Antonio, Tx.
One of your members continually distributes fliers in my bar and parking lot soliciting my customers. WE ARE NOT A SWINGERS BAR. WE DO NOT WANT TO BE SOLICITED ANY LONGER. Please investigate this matter and stop it immediately.
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While I appreciate anyone's attempts at promoting this site, please be discrete, tell your swinger friends but DO NOT use tactics such as the above. It not only makes this site look bad but it makes swinger in general look bad that we would go around trying to "convert" the general population.

[Mistral Wind]

Julie
I think we all agree with you 100% that should never happen for the reasons that you stated.

Out of interest I did a search for Schooners Sports Bar on Google.com and Switchboard.com and found nothing. It is always worth sourcing a nice watering hole for future reference when you are visiting a city.

I am not for one moment sugesting that the bar does not exsist I am just saying that it did not show on any internet searches I did. What this has thrown up is the fact that maybe the owner should consider his marketing and look at widening his catchment area for advertising. People will travel a way for a really good location.

Anyone finds it or sources a web site please let me know, I would never condione soliciting anything on someone elses premises but would enjoy chilling out with a really good cocktail. I think in reality the owner would find the majority on this board as adult intelligent people that would NOT do this and we are sorry that it happened to him.

[CandPinSA]

I realize this thread is very old... but as I didn't see anyone actually replying that Schooners truly does exist, I thought I'd post a reply.... since I do live here in San Antonio. Schooners does in fact exist. I've been there myself. It was ok. Not a bad little bar.... not one of my favorites, but not bad... not that I frequent a lot of bars either LOL. It's on Loop 410 (that's I-410) in north central San Antonio.

Mr C

[JustAskJulie]

Now that we know they exist, please honor their request and keep swinging on the "down low", at least when it comes to that pariticular bar.

You didn't find any flyers on your car there did you?

[CandPinSA]

Originally Posted by JustAskJulie

You didn't find any flyers on your car there did you?

LOL nope... didn't find a single one... of course, it's probably been a year or more since I've been there.

C

[imsnowman]

Did you ever get any feedback from Schooners Sports Bar? Hopefully, whoever wised up.

[JustAskJulie]

I haven't heard any more about this from them, thankfully. My main purpose in this original post here was to remind people that sometimes their good intentions could be ill-placed and to use some discretion in where they choose to advertise things.

[sereneiders]

Julie, I wholly agree with you.

However, the whole thing somehow reminds me of some of the Get Smart typical jokes: someone wants to advertise a bar, then he/she sends e-mails to several suitable boards complaining about flyers advertising the board. The boards are suitable because they belong to communities that would get more harm than good from those flyers, so it is expected the board administrators to start a thread telling their members to avoid distribute flyers in such a place.

It wouldn't matter if there are flyers or not, the bar owner may think some board members may end up going to that bar too see if there are someone really distributing the flyers, expecting to meet a peer and perhaps through this peer to meet other people alike, thus fulfilling the purpose of bringing people to the bar.

I cannot tell if there was a member who actually distributed flyers or not, but I can tell two things that are for sure:

1) Among the boards devoted to alternative lifestyles like swinging, this one should be one of the most populated ones, there's no need to promote it this way.

2) Since the board purspose is to discuss lifestyle related issues and it is NOT to hook up, it'd be pointless to promote it to get more chances to hoop up. This could make sense for a personal ad website, but not for this one.

As for the members who are regulars and devoted to participate in the discussions, I doubt someone would even think of spend time and momey in such a pointless and unnecesary advertisement campaign.

In the other hand, the bar owner doesn't have to know this, but to believe this is a personal ad site, and figure out that an advertisement campaging not devised by the board owners that may risk the community public image wonuldn't be tolerated. Given the huge amount of members the board have, with big chances to have several members near enough, complaining about non exixtent flyers is the best way to have the bar mentioned in one of the forum administrators threads!

And we've seen a lot of people comming here without a clue of what's swinging is about driven by prejudices, and devious enough as to devise a trick like this.

So my guts tells me the complain doesn't have grounds and it's devised to promote the bar among the members. If I were near such a bar, this couplain would ensure me to avoid going to that bar.

[Mistral Wind]

Originally Posted by sereneiders

So my guts tells me the complain doesn't have grounds and it's devised to promote the bar among the members. If I were near such a bar, this couplain would ensure me to avoid going to that bar.

Very interesting thought, allegedly you could well be right and I wonder if anyone else shares this point of view!

I think allegedly is required in today's litigioussociety.....

Mistral

[JustAskJulie]

Maybe, maybe not. The fact is that I've seen it happen... people who don't think things through "just trying to help" and doing so in what is really not the most appropriate way.

Again the point is to remind anyone who reads this to make sure you think things through before you act. Even if it's not advertising this site via flyers, it might be bringing up the subject of swinging to the wrong person on a one to one basis or some other act that has more negative consequences than positive. Recently I saw a very active and very OUT member pack up their bags and leave the site because they let it slip to the wrong person about their lifestyle and that one person decided to make things very difficult for them.

THINK. That's all I'm saying.