Links to get FREE Samples

I have facebook but no twitter account. Hmmm…..

If you don’t want to post your own tweets, that’s fine. But I’d strongly suggest at least following tea companies.

Huh. I just tried getting into the Twitter site…and it crashed Firefox.

i live on twitter! ok not really but i check it often, it is nice if you use the “lists” meaning you can make a tea merchant list or a tea fanatic list etc.

whaaaaat? How’d you manage that?…. I’m on twitter and follow quite a few tea merchants or tea related users… Not adagio though, so i definitely missed out on that…

LOL Garrett- simply by following them and paying attention to their tweets. They wanted volunteers so I did.

Yeah, I went and made sure I followed them after reading that… lol…

Unbelieveable that you got the Adagio sampler for FREE! Lucky!!

Lori, I actually got both sets.

While we’re talking about twitter and tea companies, what companies do you follow, and have any others given out free samples? I saw the Adagio master sampler, but I didn’t go for it — wish I had!

here is my tea list: http://twitter.com/amazonv/tea/members
you can follow the list itself, or pick through the members and choose peeps to follow

BTW: full store http://www.chicagoteagarden.com/

Thank you!! I just signed up for the Sticky Rice Puerh Tuocha.

Thanks!

I signed up for Golden Bi Luo – Thanks so much!

Yay! Getting a free sample of one that was on my shopping list – Competition Grade Tie Guan Yin. Thanks for the tip!

Yay! I just signed up for Sticky Rice Puerh Tuocha :-) Thank you for the heads up!

thanks for this! I signe up for tie guan yin… but i didn’t get a confirmation email. hope it comes soon! :)

Ah what to try sticky rice or camel’s breath?

i have tried the sticky rice before and it really does make one think of sticky rice, so i went for camel’s breath, i had to

PS-if ya’ll are on any social networks (facebook, twitter, etc) please RT tony’s link or share (in FB) he’s shooting for 300 free samples, i know we all have tea friends, pass it on!

I caved, even though I’m scared of pu-erh. I signed up for the jasmine, which seemed least scary. I do really want to try their wild orange pu-erh though – it just looks so cool!

Also shared the link on Twitter. :-)

US-only, boo!

I signed up for the Sticky Rice Puerh. I was between that and the Golden Bi Luo. I would have definitely picked the Wild Orange Puerh, had that been a sample choice.

Signed up for the Golden Bi Luo….puerh just isn’t for me at this point.

I signed up for the Golden Bi Luo but Sticky Rice Puerh Tuocha was really calling me. I can’t wait to read the reviews on it!

Ooh, a Chicago store? Awesome, my current hometown. :) I decided to play it safe with the competition grade oolong, since I’ve never had pu-erh before and I’m not sure if I’d like it. (Granted a free sample is probably the best place to try it, but I’d rather try a high-quality version of something I already like!)

I LOVE sticky rice… So I totally had to go with the Sticky Rice Puerh..

Thanks for the link

http://us1.campaign-archive.com/?u=4569d1a169c578b341fb2c3b4&id=0ab4f86b44 he’s just finishing sending them out now, so if you haven’t gotten yours yet it’s on the way!

sent!

Sent! thanks

Says you have to buy 15 dollars worth first though

That sounds a bit selfish.

It frustrates me when you go through the process, and then find out that it is not wholly free. To me, shipping on a small amount of tea is not worth my money. And if I go through the process for something I would not pay for, I am upset at the waste of my time. If they do truly free tea, I am likely to order from them in the future. Tea with strings attached does not usually get an order from me. It is all about their posturing and confidence in their products.

I do agree that they should be completely upfront Spot52.

OK… I’m going to add my 2 cents in here, because, I would like to share an experience that I went through some years ago, right when I was starting out my business. Back then, I offered free samples if they emailed me a request for them. (My shopping cart wasn’t equipped for a ‘free’ order or a coupon that would render an order free)

Anyway, someone got hold of the information and posted it to a “freebie” type of message board, and one morning I woke up to over A THOUSAND sample requests, with more coming in as I attempted to respond to the thousand requests.

Now… I was just a one person operation. Because I didn’t buy bulk and repackage (all the tea blends were my own), I didn’t have the luxury of having my samples pre-packaged for me, I had to do this on my own. My samples consisted of a teaspoon of tea into a t-sac, and I would fold the t-sac to fit into the little zipper pouch that was labeled for the tea… That may not seem like much to do, but, if you have to do over 2K of those, it becomes quite a chore.

And that doesn’t even begin to tackle the cost of it. Each package cost about $1 (or more, depending upon the number of samples that were requested) to ship. That “free” sample phase ended up costing me about $2,500 when I was finished, and sadly I couldn’t even fulfill all the requests, because, that would have ended up bankrupting me. I ended up making a lot of people unhappy because I couldn’t send them the free tea they felt they were “entitled to.”

The most frustrating part of this was after I finished sending out a wave of these free samples, some people ended up creating another email address and asking me to send them MORE free samples (as if I wouldn’t notice that the address was the same)

The purpose of a company sending out free samples is so that hopefully, the one receiving the sample will LIKE the tea enough to purchase it, not so that they will like it enough to ask for more free tea. Most of these people did not end up purchasing from me, they were just interested in the freebie. In the end, I probably ended up with 3 customers (very loyal ones) out of the thousand or so free samples I sent out.

so… I can totally appreciate the need to include a “purchase” with the free sample, or, even charging $1 or so to offset the cost of shipping. It’s even nicer if that comes with a coupon for your first purchase so that you, in a sense, get your money back.

Lib,
I am with you on the business end of samples, it has to be expensive. One sample is not worth the shipping to me, why would it be any different for a business. I am always surprised when a company offers truly free tea.

Now i have ordered samples, but the company had enough tea that I wanted to try; and that warranted the shipping. I think I ordered fifteen different teas. It is rare for me to find a tea company that has enough tea variety samples, at the right price, for me to order. It is always about the cost benefit analysis.

http://steepster.com/discuss/1994-teasta-com-isnt-giving-away-free-samples-so-dont-sign-up