October 13, 2024 • 17 mins
What if advertising doesn't mean endorsing every aspect of a platform's content? Join me, Wayne from E-Stim Systems, as I confront the backlash surrounding our decision to advertise on certain platforms. We tackle the moral outrage and misconception that advertising adult products can generate.
We discuss the necessity of reaching potential customers where they are, while dismissing the unrealistic expectation that any platform is free from potentially offensive content. We must start with reasonable conversations rather than rants, as we navigate the labyrinth of ethical advertising.
Privacy and discretion are key when purchasing adult products, and I assure you that we prioritise these in our shipping and communication.
We've faced criticism about our presence in adult-only sections, but remain committed to respectful engagement with our community. Lastly we reflect on the joys and hurdles of podcasting, from audience interactions to technical mishaps, and invite you to share your thoughts as we continue this journey together.
Drop us a message, we cannot reply directly but it would be great to here from you
"I make sex toys" is a the personal podcast of Wayne Allen, the Director of E-Stim Systems. The content of these podcasts are not designed to be Explicit or Erotic but we may discuss adult topics and therefore these podcasts are not suitable for children or those of a nervous disposition. You have been warned.
If you are interested in E-Stim Systems the company, or any of our products, have a look at https://www.e-stim.me/buy
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
So, hello everyone.
This is Wayne here from eStimSystems, also known as the guy
who does the podcast called IMake Sex Toys.
Why do I do a podcast called IMake Sex Toys?
It's really simple I make sextoys, so why not do a podcast
about it?
How's that?
For an introduction, that's nottoo bad.
Anyway, why am I here?
I have a question for you, andthe first question is are you
(00:21):
morally outraged?
Well, you should be, because Icould be sitting here with no
clothes on.
Okay, yes, if you've got thevideo version of this podcast,
you might notice that I haveclothes on, at least in front of
the camera, but how do you knowwhat I might be wearing
underneath?
I might be wearing nothing.
You should be morally outragedAt least that's what I've been
(00:46):
told because we have peoplecomplaining about what we do,
and we don't just have peoplecomplaining about what we do.
We have people complainingabout where we do it, which gets
even more intriguing.
Where does this all come from?
Well, this actually came froman email that I received this
week from an interestinggentleman who was hiding behind
a ProtonMail account yeah,that's where this is going to go
(01:09):
and he was complaining quitevoraciously about the fact we
advertise on a website calledFetLife.
Now, what's FetLife?
If you're an adult and you haveany interest in the fetish
environment, then you probablyknow what FetLife is.
In fact, you're probably onFetLife because FetLife is one
of the biggest fetish-basedforums on the planet.
It's big, it's like Facebook,but for adults who are into
(01:32):
fetish, that's why it's calledFetLife.
And FetLife has a number ofcommunities and a number of
sections which allow you to talkabout virtually anything.
They try and keep things legaland generally they manage it.
If you start to talk aboutstuff that is illegal, then you
get kicked off very, veryquickly.
If you want to dress up in agreen rubber mac, a pair of
black rubber wellies, coveryourself in sugar and lick the
(01:53):
end of a ruler, you can.
And in fact, on FetLife,there's probably someone out
there who also wants to watchyou do it or help you do it.
Who knows?
It's what adults do, so I'mtold.
Anyway, this gentleman was veryupset the fact that we were
advertising on FetLife becauseFetLife allowed, shall we say,
certain tags, certainconversations that he felt
(02:14):
breached the rules, breached thelaw, breached basic morality,
and when I first got this emailI was a little bit concerned, as
you would be.
The email was quite long andwent into quite a lot of detail.
Unfortunately, like a lot ofthese emails, it went into far
too much detail.
But I decided that I was goingto talk to FetLife and I pinged
them an email and said hello,I've just received this, what
(02:36):
can you tell me?
And I got a reasonable replyquite quickly, with the eye
rolls of yes, we've seen thisbefore, we're aware of it.
And here's a couple ofresponses which were quite
reasonable.
Fundamentally, it came down tothe fact this individual didn't
like certain subjects beingdiscussed by adults, by
(02:56):
consenting adults, in theprivacy of their own home or
even in the privacy of FetLife.
Fetlife is designed to beadults only, so you can talk
about quite a lot of things onthere.
But this individual was quiteupset about the fact that there
were certain tags being used,there were certain discussions
being allowed, and he felt thatbecause they allowed certain
(03:18):
discussions by advertising onFetLife, we were condoning their
stance and we were condoningthese discussions, which is a
little bit obtuse and twisted inmy eyes If someone wants to
dress up as a Nazi.
Now, before I say anythingfurther, I find Nazism abhorrent
.
I have no connections to Nazism.
(03:39):
I'm aware of what Nazism isbecause I did study the World
War II.
I went to school, we didhistory and all that.
If somebody wants to dress upin a Nazi uniform in the privacy
of their own home, quitefrankly, as long as it's not
against the law, why can't they?
Yes, I agree it's probablyinappropriate or barren, etc.
Etc.
But that's my opinion.
What you do in the privacy ofyour own home is down to you.
(04:00):
But this individual basicallysaid because FetLife allows
discussions about wearing Naziuniforms, that made everyone who
advertised with them a Nazi.
No, I am not a Nazi.
My company's not a Nazi.
I don't have anyone that I knowof in the business who supports
Nazis.
So, based on that logic, Iwouldn't advertise anywhere.
(04:21):
Let's face it some of thecontent on Facebook is pretty
abhorrent.
Some of the content that can bethrown up by doing a Google
search can be pretty disgusting.
So if you're not going toadvertise on anywhere that has
the potential to come up withsomething that somebody will
consider to be immoral orinappropriate, then you'd never
(04:41):
advertise.
And I'm going to be honest I'ma tiny little company trying to
survive in the world byadvertising to people who may or
may not be interested in myproducts.
I could just sit there spammingthe forums.
I don't.
I pay to advertise.
So if you're going to have a goat a company for advertising
with another company that youdisagree with, might I suggest
(05:01):
you start looking at the bigcompanies?
I mean companies that aredestroying the rainforest,
digging for oil, everything likethat.
I'm just a tiny little company.
I'm trying to survive in theworld, so attacking me for
advertising in a group that hasa large proportion of people who
potentially might be interestedin my products is not the way
to go.
I'm going to decide when Iadvertise and when I don't
(05:21):
advertise.
And just because you go intothat rant mode and start
complaining and suggesting allsorts of weird and wonderful
things, I'm not going to stopadvertising.
The biggest mistake these peoplemake they don't start with a
reasonable conversation, theyjust start to rant, and probably
some of this podcast sounds abit like a rant.
It's not a case of they come upand go.
(05:42):
I'm really concerned about theway this has been handled, or I
don't like the fact they do X, yand Z.
That would be quite areasonable way to approach it.
But no, you get 400 pages ofdiatribe from a ProtonMail
account and it's just impossibleto have any discourse with them
.
So fundamentally I don't botherand strange enough, this isn't
the first time this sort ofthing has happened.
When you're running a businessmaking sex toys, there are a
(06:02):
proportion of people out therewho find your activities to be
inappropriate, immoral.
I could just go on with a wholelist of insults.
But fundamentally they don'tlike what you do and therefore
they feel that it's necessaryfor them to tell you they don't
like what you do in a very loudand inappropriate manner.
And then they'll throw a fewcomments in there and you then
(06:23):
just switch off because it'slike yes, really, no, we don't.
First one, your website is fullof porn.
No, it's not.
Our website is designed to benot full of porn.
It's a website for the picturesof eastern boxes and eastern
electrodes.
There are no people in it, soit's a bit difficult to turn
(06:43):
around and go.
It's full of porn unless youfind a cable pornographic.
Why do we not have lots ofpictures of people here?
Because we don't want to have awebsite that's full of porn.
We don't want people justvisiting the website to look for
porn.
That would just increase ourtraffic and wouldn't increase
anything else apart from ouroverheads.
The law is quite fluid at themoment.
Things are changing.
(07:03):
People are trying to crack downon what they see as porn and we
don't want to be there, so wetry and keep our website to be
informative and interesting foradults and clear and, yeah, no
porn.
They still complain that wehave porn.
Possibly maybe they haven'tactually seen the website.
Maybe they should.
I've already mentioned Facebook,but Facebook is another one of
those organisations that havesome strange and interesting
(07:25):
ideas in relation to moralityand what can and can't be
advertised on Facebook.
I would love to advertise mybusiness on Facebook.
If Facebook gave me the toolsto advertise to adults in
certain areas, I'd love to useit.
Unfortunately, they won't,although they do keep poking me
and saying you need to advertiseon Facebook, and every time I
try advertising on Facebook theygo no Bard.
(07:46):
Strange enough, the only thingI have managed to advertise on
Facebook was the live stream,which just generated a whole
load of people saying can I havea freebie?
Without even reallyunderstanding what the product
was.
So complete waste of time.
If you're in the adult industry, don't bother even trying to
advertise on Facebook.
It just doesn't work.
Now the next story comes, when Imade a genuine mistake and I
(08:08):
managed to slightly misaddress aparcel.
Now these things happen.
Luckily they don't happen asmuch these days because we use
electronic addressing.
Nobody actually writes anaddress in.
We use the address that thecustomer gives us.
However, in this case we werehandwriting addresses and I
wrote an address that had theword cottage, which was the
correct address, and I wrotecottages and I got a very irate
(08:32):
email from a gentleman who wasreceiving the package who
informed me that I had told hisentire village that he was gay.
What?
Excuse me Really, personally,I'm really sorry to hear you
feel that way, sir, but couldyou give me a little bit more
information?
The fact that I'd addressedthis package to cottages as
opposed to cottage meant thateveryone knew that he was a
(08:55):
cottager and he wasn't.
He wasn't gay, because it waslike, yes, I put an extra letter
in accidentally and it changedyour address to from cottage to
cottages, but there's still afew letters needed to go to
cottages or cottaging, and theonly person who's going to see
that is your postman, and he didmanage to address it to you
(09:16):
correctly.
So really sorry, sir, but Ithink you're possibly going a
little bit over the top, andthat has happened in more than
one occasion, not not themistakes on the address, but
people make some assumptionsthat people are constantly
looking at what they're doing.
A classic one that we get askedis do you ship in plain
packaging?
Yes, of course we do.
(09:36):
Now we don't stick a label onthe side saying sex toys are us
be quite good advertising, butwe send in generally plain
packaging.
If we're sending international,then yeah, we have to put a
little bit more information onthe package.
Unfortunately, customs andexcise require that.
But even then we describe itemsas signal generators and cables
.
There are no sex toys describedon the side of your box.
So the fact that someone mightsee a package that's addressed
(10:00):
to you, so what?
It's a brown box.
It could have a cat food infood in it, who knows.
And this then leads to peoplecomplaining that if we send a
box to that requires a signaturebecause we send expensive
packages across the world.
Sometimes we have to send themand they end up at your local
post office and they want you tosign for them.
Quite reasonable, quite normal.
But my local post office willknow what I'm buying.
I'm not sure how, unlessthey're going to sort of open
(10:23):
the package in front of you andstart pulling things out.
And if they are, maybe youshouldn't be using that post
office.
But no, just doesn't happen.
Banks is another one.
Now we use banks to takepayments and credit cards and
things like that, and we havehad in the past people express
concern that their bank is goingto know what they're going to
buy and therefore we should hideit, and it's like, well, that's
(10:45):
quite difficult because thebank knows that you're
purchasing from a company callede-stim systems, but the banks
see thousands and thousands andthousands and thousands of
transactions a day.
Nobody's ever going to look atthose individual transactions
unless you flag them up.
See, that's where things getslightly interesting, because
we've had a handful of peopledecide, for whatever reason, to
issue a chargeback.
Now a chargeback is basicallyyou going to your credit card
(11:08):
company and say I want my moneyback, and generally our answer
to that is please talk to usfirst, because chargebacks get
registered against us.
It's a big rigmarole because wehave to provide all the
evidence and it's a lot easierjust to talk to us and we can
sort it out without doing achargeback.
We don't do fraudulenttransactions.
If you want to put a chargebackthrough, please talk to us
(11:29):
beforehand.
It's a lot quicker as well.
But if you decide that you'regoing to do a chargeback for
whatever reason, please be awarethat we are required to provide
the bank or the credit cardcompany with a lot more detail
than you currently have giventhem.
And generally in chargebacksituations we find people don't
necessarily give the full story.
So we have to give our side ofthe story and then the bank have
(11:53):
full details of what you boughtand what has gone on and what
conversations we've had and allthe correspondence.
And generally the chargebackgets denied.
So it's a lot easier just toask us can I have a refund or
can you change something or canyou fix something?
Without going for all thatrigmarole?
We can be discreet, but ifyou're going to go and complain
to the bank, we have to givethem that additional information
(12:14):
.
I'm sorry, that's the way itworks.
Then we come to events.
Now we used to do events manyin the UK.
We still do events dottedaround the world, but they tend
to be business to business.
We were doing events in the ukand we attended a pride.
Now prides are basically greatplaces to to be.
It's a fun day out with peopleof all persuasions joining in
(12:36):
the festivities and a couple oftimes we've done prize, where
we've had a little roped offsection where traders like
ourselves can talk to people andexplain what we do and
potentially try and sell thingsto people.
That's what you do when you'rea business.
Now this particular pride, whichwas in cardiff, had a roped off
section which said adults only,18 plus, and great fine, we
(12:59):
were in there, we were enjoyingtalking to people.
Nice sunny day and a gentlemanturned up with a book and the
book was held in a particularway and I immediately thought,
oh yes, the book was the bible.
And this gentleman spent twohours standing in front of our
stand lambasting us about ourmorals and our obligations to
(13:23):
life, the universe andeverything and how, the fact
that ezekiel 17 dash, whatever,some a number of quotations for
the bible were thrown at us.
And then he got into the we arecorrupting children, where I'm
sorry, because we were incardiff pride and pride was
trying to build itself as afamily event, which it was.
(13:45):
We were corrupting the children, which was like, yeah, but
we're in the 18 plus area.
There are no children here.
There's a gentleman over therenot allowing anyone who appears
to be less than 18 in, so I'mnot quite sure how you're
corrupting the children.
He just went on and on and onTwo hours later.
Eventually the organisers hadenough complaints from other
(14:07):
people and possibly ourselves.
The gentleman was asked to moveon and he moved on.
But one of the things that keepsbeing thrown at us and
generally, if you look at anyadult industry, there's some
element of think of the children.
I don't like to say this, butsometimes you think what are the
parents doing?
If you're going to let yourchild have unfettered access to
(14:30):
the internet, they are possiblygoing to come across stuff that
you find inappropriate.
You can't blame every singleother person on the planet for
your inability to stop yourchild typing in sex or porn or
whatever they might type intoGoogle and finding it.
Let's face it I was 12, 13years old when I first
discovered magazines with ladiesin them, and it was a phase
(14:51):
that you went through as a child.
But these days it seemseveryone else has to put up the
barriers and protect thechildren and let the parents
just sit back and go.
It's everybody else's fault.
I don't feel that way.
I have grown up kids.
I've had some experience ofthis sort of thing.
So if you want to throw yourtwisted morality at us when we
(15:12):
spent the last 20 years makingsex toys for adults, please
don't use the standard think ofthe children because, quite
frankly, it doesn't work.
We don't sell to children, wesell to adults.
This is beginning to sound a bitlike a rant and, quite frankly,
I don't want it sounded like arant.
It was one of those.
Something cropped up and Ithought I'd do a little bit of a
podcast on it, so I'm going tofinish off with one last thing,
(15:34):
which was the gentleman who feltthat we were all religious
nutcases.
Why did he think that we werereligious nutcases, and that was
actually the term he used?
The answer is because we toldhim we were closed for Christmas
.
Now, christmas is a holiday andwe like to have holidays and
our staff like to have time off,so we tend to close over the
(15:56):
Christmas period.
Because of this, he felt wewere all religious nutcases.
No, we're just normal peoplewho like to have a Christmas
holiday.
That's the sort of thing thatgets thrown at us from time to
time.
Anyway, this is the end of mylittle mini rant stroke pod.
If you like it, please considerleaving a comment or a review,
depending on whether you'rewatching on YouTube or listening
to it on a podcast.
If you don't like it, pleaseconsider leaving a review or a
(16:18):
comment, because that's the waywe get feedback and I find out
whether I'm completely wastingmy time or actually.
This is turning out to be quitean interesting thing to do and
lots of people like me doing it.
Strangely enough, it doesappear to be that because I'm
getting more and more peoplecommenting on the fact that they
listen to my podcast, which isbrilliant.
I love it.
Anyone who says hi, wayne, Iheard you on your podcast.
(16:39):
I'm like, yay, and I'mbeginning to get more people pop
up who'd like to come on thepodcast.
So that's going to be quiteinteresting, because I like
talking to people and I liketalking about what we do, but
I'm also interested in whatother people do.
So watch this space.
There are a few people who aregoing to crop up who are quite
(17:00):
interesting.
Anyway, if you like what I'mdoing, as I say, please consider
leaving a review, comment, likewhatever's available to you.
If you don't, please considerdoing the same.
But whatever you do, pleaseenjoy yourself, be safe, have
fun.
Oh, and don't forget, think ofthe children.
Anyway, bye, ps.
This is the third time I'veactually recorded this podcast.
(17:20):
The first time I didn't have acamera that was working properly
.
The second time the sync on thecamera and the audio were a
little bit out.
Hopefully the third time thisis going to work.
Anyway, thanks, bye.
So, hello everyone.
This is Wayne here from eStimSystems, also known as the guy
who does the podcast called IMake Sex Toys.
Why do I do a podcast called IMake Sex Toys?
It's really simple I make sextoys, so why not do a podcast
about it?
How's that?
For an introduction, that's nottoo bad.
Anyway, why am I here?
I have a question for you, andthe first question is are you
(00:21):
morally outraged?
Well, you should be, because Icould be sitting here with no
clothes on.
Okay, yes, if you've got thevideo version of this podcast,
you might notice that I haveclothes on, at least in front of
the camera, but how do you knowwhat I might be wearing
underneath?
I might be wearing nothing.
You should be morally outragedAt least that's what I've been
(00:46):
told because we have peoplecomplaining about what we do,
and we don't just have peoplecomplaining about what we do.
We have people complainingabout where we do it, which gets
even more intriguing.
Where does this all come from?
Well, this actually came froman email that I received this
week from an interestinggentleman who was hiding behind
a ProtonMail account yeah,that's where this is going to go
(01:09):
and he was complaining quitevoraciously about the fact we
advertise on a website calledFetLife.
Now, what's FetLife?
If you're an adult and you haveany interest in the fetish
environment, then you probablyknow what FetLife is.
In fact, you're probably onFetLife because FetLife is one
of the biggest fetish-basedforums on the planet.
It's big, it's like Facebook,but for adults who are into
(01:32):
fetish, that's why it's calledFetLife.
And FetLife has a number ofcommunities and a number of
sections which allow you to talkabout virtually anything.
They try and keep things legaland generally they manage it.
If you start to talk aboutstuff that is illegal, then you
get kicked off very, veryquickly.
If you want to dress up in agreen rubber mac, a pair of
black rubber wellies, coveryourself in sugar and lick the
(01:53):
end of a ruler, you can.
And in fact, on FetLife,there's probably someone out
there who also wants to watchyou do it or help you do it.
Who knows?
It's what adults do, so I'mtold.
Anyway, this gentleman was veryupset the fact that we were
advertising on FetLife becauseFetLife allowed, shall we say,
certain tags, certainconversations that he felt
(02:14):
breached the rules, breached thelaw, breached basic morality,
and when I first got this emailI was a little bit concerned, as
you would be.
The email was quite long andwent into quite a lot of detail.
Unfortunately, like a lot ofthese emails, it went into far
too much detail.
But I decided that I was goingto talk to FetLife and I pinged
them an email and said hello,I've just received this, what
(02:36):
can you tell me?
And I got a reasonable replyquite quickly, with the eye
rolls of yes, we've seen thisbefore, we're aware of it.
And here's a couple ofresponses which were quite
reasonable.
Fundamentally, it came down tothe fact this individual didn't
like certain subjects beingdiscussed by adults, by
(02:56):
consenting adults, in theprivacy of their own home or
even in the privacy of FetLife.
Fetlife is designed to beadults only, so you can talk
about quite a lot of things onthere.
But this individual was quiteupset about the fact that there
were certain tags being used,there were certain discussions
being allowed, and he felt thatbecause they allowed certain
(03:18):
discussions by advertising onFetLife, we were condoning their
stance and we were condoningthese discussions, which is a
little bit obtuse and twisted inmy eyes If someone wants to
dress up as a Nazi.
Now, before I say anythingfurther, I find Nazism abhorrent
.
I have no connections to Nazism.
(03:39):
I'm aware of what Nazism isbecause I did study the World
War II.
I went to school, we didhistory and all that.
If somebody wants to dress upin a Nazi uniform in the privacy
of their own home, quitefrankly, as long as it's not
against the law, why can't they?
Yes, I agree it's probablyinappropriate or barren, etc.
Etc.
But that's my opinion.
What you do in the privacy ofyour own home is down to you.
(04:00):
But this individual basicallysaid because FetLife allows
discussions about wearing Naziuniforms, that made everyone who
advertised with them a Nazi.
No, I am not a Nazi.
My company's not a Nazi.
I don't have anyone that I knowof in the business who supports
Nazis.
So, based on that logic, Iwouldn't advertise anywhere.
(04:21):
Let's face it some of thecontent on Facebook is pretty
abhorrent.
Some of the content that can bethrown up by doing a Google
search can be pretty disgusting.
So if you're not going toadvertise on anywhere that has
the potential to come up withsomething that somebody will
consider to be immoral orinappropriate, then you'd never
(04:41):
advertise.
And I'm going to be honest I'ma tiny little company trying to
survive in the world byadvertising to people who may or
may not be interested in myproducts.
I could just sit there spammingthe forums.
I don't.
I pay to advertise.
So if you're going to have a goat a company for advertising
with another company that youdisagree with, might I suggest
(05:01):
you start looking at the bigcompanies?
I mean companies that aredestroying the rainforest,
digging for oil, everything likethat.
I'm just a tiny little company.
I'm trying to survive in theworld, so attacking me for
advertising in a group that hasa large proportion of people who
potentially might be interestedin my products is not the way
to go.
I'm going to decide when Iadvertise and when I don't
(05:21):
advertise.
And just because you go intothat rant mode and start
complaining and suggesting allsorts of weird and wonderful
things, I'm not going to stopadvertising.
The biggest mistake these peoplemake they don't start with a
reasonable conversation, theyjust start to rant, and probably
some of this podcast sounds abit like a rant.
It's not a case of they come upand go.
(05:42):
I'm really concerned about theway this has been handled, or I
don't like the fact they do X, yand Z.
That would be quite areasonable way to approach it.
But no, you get 400 pages ofdiatribe from a ProtonMail
account and it's just impossibleto have any discourse with them
.
So fundamentally I don't botherand strange enough, this isn't
the first time this sort ofthing has happened.
When you're running a businessmaking sex toys, there are a
(06:02):
proportion of people out therewho find your activities to be
inappropriate, immoral.
I could just go on with a wholelist of insults.
But fundamentally they don'tlike what you do and therefore
they feel that it's necessaryfor them to tell you they don't
like what you do in a very loudand inappropriate manner.
And then they'll throw a fewcomments in there and you then
(06:23):
just switch off because it'slike yes, really, no, we don't.
First one, your website is fullof porn.
No, it's not.
Our website is designed to benot full of porn.
It's a website for the picturesof eastern boxes and eastern
electrodes.
There are no people in it, soit's a bit difficult to turn
(06:43):
around and go.
It's full of porn unless youfind a cable pornographic.
Why do we not have lots ofpictures of people here?
Because we don't want to have awebsite that's full of porn.
We don't want people justvisiting the website to look for
porn.
That would just increase ourtraffic and wouldn't increase
anything else apart from ouroverheads.
The law is quite fluid at themoment.
Things are changing.
(07:03):
People are trying to crack downon what they see as porn and we
don't want to be there, so wetry and keep our website to be
informative and interesting foradults and clear and, yeah, no
porn.
They still complain that wehave porn.
Possibly maybe they haven'tactually seen the website.
Maybe they should.
I've already mentioned Facebook,but Facebook is another one of
those organisations that havesome strange and interesting
(07:25):
ideas in relation to moralityand what can and can't be
advertised on Facebook.
I would love to advertise mybusiness on Facebook.
If Facebook gave me the toolsto advertise to adults in
certain areas, I'd love to useit.
Unfortunately, they won't,although they do keep poking me
and saying you need to advertiseon Facebook, and every time I
try advertising on Facebook theygo no Bard.
(07:46):
Strange enough, the only thingI have managed to advertise on
Facebook was the live stream,which just generated a whole
load of people saying can I havea freebie?
Without even reallyunderstanding what the product
was.
So complete waste of time.
If you're in the adult industry, don't bother even trying to
advertise on Facebook.
It just doesn't work.
Now the next story comes, when Imade a genuine mistake and I
(08:08):
managed to slightly misaddress aparcel.
Now these things happen.
Luckily they don't happen asmuch these days because we use
electronic addressing.
Nobody actually writes anaddress in.
We use the address that thecustomer gives us.
However, in this case we werehandwriting addresses and I
wrote an address that had theword cottage, which was the
correct address, and I wrotecottages and I got a very irate
(08:32):
email from a gentleman who wasreceiving the package who
informed me that I had told hisentire village that he was gay.
What?
Excuse me Really, personally,I'm really sorry to hear you
feel that way, sir, but couldyou give me a little bit more
information?
The fact that I'd addressedthis package to cottages as
opposed to cottage meant thateveryone knew that he was a
(08:55):
cottager and he wasn't.
He wasn't gay, because it waslike, yes, I put an extra letter
in accidentally and it changedyour address to from cottage to
cottages, but there's still afew letters needed to go to
cottages or cottaging, and theonly person who's going to see
that is your postman, and he didmanage to address it to you
(09:16):
correctly.
So really sorry, sir, but Ithink you're possibly going a
little bit over the top, andthat has happened in more than
one occasion, not not themistakes on the address, but
people make some assumptionsthat people are constantly
looking at what they're doing.
A classic one that we get askedis do you ship in plain
packaging?
Yes, of course we do.
(09:36):
Now we don't stick a label onthe side saying sex toys are us
be quite good advertising, butwe send in generally plain
packaging.
If we're sending international,then yeah, we have to put a
little bit more information onthe package.
Unfortunately, customs andexcise require that.
But even then we describe itemsas signal generators and cables
.
There are no sex toys describedon the side of your box.
So the fact that someone mightsee a package that's addressed
(10:00):
to you, so what?
It's a brown box.
It could have a cat food infood in it, who knows.
And this then leads to peoplecomplaining that if we send a
box to that requires a signaturebecause we send expensive
packages across the world.
Sometimes we have to send themand they end up at your local
post office and they want you tosign for them.
Quite reasonable, quite normal.
But my local post office willknow what I'm buying.
I'm not sure how, unlessthey're going to sort of open
(10:23):
the package in front of you andstart pulling things out.
And if they are, maybe youshouldn't be using that post
office.
But no, just doesn't happen.
Banks is another one.
Now we use banks to takepayments and credit cards and
things like that, and we havehad in the past people express
concern that their bank is goingto know what they're going to
buy and therefore we should hideit, and it's like, well, that's
(10:45):
quite difficult because thebank knows that you're
purchasing from a company callede-stim systems, but the banks
see thousands and thousands andthousands and thousands of
transactions a day.
Nobody's ever going to look atthose individual transactions
unless you flag them up.
See, that's where things getslightly interesting, because
we've had a handful of peopledecide, for whatever reason, to
issue a chargeback.
Now a chargeback is basicallyyou going to your credit card
(11:08):
company and say I want my moneyback, and generally our answer
to that is please talk to usfirst, because chargebacks get
registered against us.
It's a big rigmarole because wehave to provide all the
evidence and it's a lot easierjust to talk to us and we can
sort it out without doing achargeback.
We don't do fraudulenttransactions.
If you want to put a chargebackthrough, please talk to us
(11:29):
beforehand.
It's a lot quicker as well.
But if you decide that you'regoing to do a chargeback for
whatever reason, please be awarethat we are required to provide
the bank or the credit cardcompany with a lot more detail
than you currently have giventhem.
And generally in chargebacksituations we find people don't
necessarily give the full story.
So we have to give our side ofthe story and then the bank have
(11:53):
full details of what you boughtand what has gone on and what
conversations we've had and allthe correspondence.
And generally the chargebackgets denied.
So it's a lot easier just toask us can I have a refund or
can you change something or canyou fix something?
Without going for all thatrigmarole?
We can be discreet, but ifyou're going to go and complain
to the bank, we have to givethem that additional information
(12:14):
.
I'm sorry, that's the way itworks.
Then we come to events.
Now we used to do events manyin the UK.
We still do events dottedaround the world, but they tend
to be business to business.
We were doing events in the ukand we attended a pride.
Now prides are basically greatplaces to to be.
It's a fun day out with peopleof all persuasions joining in
(12:36):
the festivities and a couple oftimes we've done prize, where
we've had a little roped offsection where traders like
ourselves can talk to people andexplain what we do and
potentially try and sell thingsto people.
That's what you do when you'rea business.
Now this particular pride, whichwas in cardiff, had a roped off
section which said adults only,18 plus, and great fine, we
(12:59):
were in there, we were enjoyingtalking to people.
Nice sunny day and a gentlemanturned up with a book and the
book was held in a particularway and I immediately thought,
oh yes, the book was the bible.
And this gentleman spent twohours standing in front of our
stand lambasting us about ourmorals and our obligations to
(13:23):
life, the universe andeverything and how, the fact
that ezekiel 17 dash, whatever,some a number of quotations for
the bible were thrown at us.
And then he got into the we arecorrupting children, where I'm
sorry, because we were incardiff pride and pride was
trying to build itself as afamily event, which it was.
(13:45):
We were corrupting the children, which was like, yeah, but
we're in the 18 plus area.
There are no children here.
There's a gentleman over therenot allowing anyone who appears
to be less than 18 in, so I'mnot quite sure how you're
corrupting the children.
He just went on and on and onTwo hours later.
Eventually the organisers hadenough complaints from other
(14:07):
people and possibly ourselves.
The gentleman was asked to moveon and he moved on.
But one of the things that keepsbeing thrown at us and
generally, if you look at anyadult industry, there's some
element of think of the children.
I don't like to say this, butsometimes you think what are the
parents doing?
If you're going to let yourchild have unfettered access to
(14:30):
the internet, they are possiblygoing to come across stuff that
you find inappropriate.
You can't blame every singleother person on the planet for
your inability to stop yourchild typing in sex or porn or
whatever they might type intoGoogle and finding it.
Let's face it I was 12, 13years old when I first
discovered magazines with ladiesin them, and it was a phase
(14:51):
that you went through as a child.
But these days it seemseveryone else has to put up the
barriers and protect thechildren and let the parents
just sit back and go.
It's everybody else's fault.
I don't feel that way.
I have grown up kids.
I've had some experience ofthis sort of thing.
So if you want to throw yourtwisted morality at us when we
(15:12):
spent the last 20 years makingsex toys for adults, please
don't use the standard think ofthe children because, quite
frankly, it doesn't work.
We don't sell to children, wesell to adults.
This is beginning to sound a bitlike a rant and, quite frankly,
I don't want it sounded like arant.
It was one of those.
Something cropped up and Ithought I'd do a little bit of a
podcast on it, so I'm going tofinish off with one last thing,
(15:34):
which was the gentleman who feltthat we were all religious
nutcases.
Why did he think that we werereligious nutcases, and that was
actually the term he used?
The answer is because we toldhim we were closed for Christmas
.
Now, christmas is a holiday andwe like to have holidays and
our staff like to have time off,so we tend to close over the
(15:56):
Christmas period.
Because of this, he felt wewere all religious nutcases.
No, we're just normal peoplewho like to have a Christmas
holiday.
That's the sort of thing thatgets thrown at us from time to
time.
Anyway, this is the end of mylittle mini rant stroke pod.
If you like it, please considerleaving a comment or a review,
depending on whether you'rewatching on YouTube or listening
to it on a podcast.
If you don't like it, pleaseconsider leaving a review or a
(16:18):
comment, because that's the waywe get feedback and I find out
whether I'm completely wastingmy time or actually.
This is turning out to be quitean interesting thing to do and
lots of people like me doing it.
Strangely enough, it doesappear to be that because I'm
getting more and more peoplecommenting on the fact that they
listen to my podcast, which isbrilliant.
I love it.
Anyone who says hi, wayne, Iheard you on your podcast.
(16:39):
I'm like, yay, and I'mbeginning to get more people pop
up who'd like to come on thepodcast.
So that's going to be quiteinteresting, because I like
talking to people and I liketalking about what we do, but
I'm also interested in whatother people do.
So watch this space.
There are a few people who aregoing to crop up who are quite
(17:00):
interesting.
Anyway, if you like what I'mdoing, as I say, please consider
leaving a review, comment, likewhatever's available to you.
If you don't, please considerdoing the same.
But whatever you do, pleaseenjoy yourself, be safe, have
fun.
Oh, and don't forget, think ofthe children.
Anyway, bye, ps.
This is the third time I'veactually recorded this podcast.
(17:20):
The first time I didn't have acamera that was working properly
.
The second time the sync on thecamera and the audio were a
little bit out.
Hopefully the third time thisis going to work.
Anyway, thanks, bye.
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