Embroidery Etiquette

Aren't most embroidery people stay at home moms who are sewing for their kids? They may do a thing here or there for friends and family! Or they are like me, and embroidery is almost a full time job! I am a mother of 3 children, ages 6 1/2 (boy-Kindergarten), 3 1/2 (boy) and 21 mos (girl). I have a husband too, am active in my church, play in a bunko group once a month, am in a wonderful Titus 2 monthly bible study with some amazing women, etc etc etcetera... For the most part though, lately I should say, I do embroidery every waking moment that I can! Naptime, late at night (I've been known to stay up til 2:15!!), sometimes even early in the morning before school. My kids only go to school for a few hours on Monday, Wednesday and Friday so my time is very limited and on those mornings I'm usually trying to run what errands I can without 3 kids in tow!
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I run this blog and keep up with a Yahoo group (barely), not to mention our website www.appliquecafe.com and our designs are also sold on etsy at www.themerryrose.etsy.com.
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OK, Applique Cafe - we painstakingly installed "instant download" ourselves and for the most part it runs smoothly! When you purchase an applique design, you are supposed to be directed to a page which allows you to download your designs INSTANTLY! Hence the term, instant download. In addition to this, an e-mail is generated and automatically sent to the e-mail address you enter upon checkout (so be careful when typing in that e-mail address!). This e-mail ALSO contains download links for you to INSTANTLY download your designs right then and there! For security purposes, the downloads expire after 24 hours! That should be plenty of time to download that new design and get to work on that t-shirt!! If for some reason you miss the download page, you should receive the download e-mail. If for some reason you don't get it, first check your SPAM folder, and then e-mail me and I'm happy to resend it! My e-mail domain has been known to have been flagged for spam, so it happens! Always check your spam folder first!!
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Etsy - unfortunately Etsy is not set up with instant download, and therefore I check my e-mail about 25 times a day and as soon as I receive an order from Etsy, I e-mail the design(s) out. It is usually within minutes, sometimes hours if I'm away from my house! Again, if you do not receive the e-mail, check your spam folder and then e-mail or conversation me! I'm so happy to send the e-mail again! Regarding Etsy, I find that a lot of the time, there is one e-mail address tied to Etsy, and a totally different e-mail address tied to Paypal. I always click on the Etsy e-mail address and send the design there!
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Designs - I have been doing embroidery for several years and sampled designs for Embroidery Boutique over this past year. My husband & I bought the software and started digitizing ourselves! It's a lot of fun and having done embroidery work for people for several years, I feel like I have some knowledge of what works, what looks cute, what is easy, how to cut steps, etc. We study our designs and test each one before it is listed! If there is an error, a step out of line, or if something doesn't look right we fix it, sample it again and then list it! Also, we sell TONS of designs both on Etsy and at Applique Cafe. If there is a problem with a design, we would learn of it very quickly I have a feeling!
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Where am I going with this, you ask? Here is where I am going and I do not mean to offend ANYONE, but if I get one more rude, snippy, condesending e-mail about an applique design I am going to SCREAM!! a) If you don't think that you received your applique design, PLEASE check your spam folder and shoot me an e-mail! I will re-send designs out all day long if I need to! b) If you sew a design and your machine jumps and it does not stitch right, shoot me an e-mail and I will be glad to research the design and try to help you figure out what the problem might be! We digitize on one computer, then e-mail it to another computer to test and e-mail out to Etsy customers, it's uploaded to part of our website for instant download, e-mailed to you, you save it on your computer, then transfer it to your machine, etc etc etc. These are DIGITAL files!! We're working with COMPUTERS and COMPUTERIZED sewing machines! ANYTHING CAN GO WRONG in all that transferring!! If your design isn't sewing correctly, please please please do not e-mail me and tell me how poorly my design was digitized! PLEASE e-mail me and explain what is happening and include a picture if at all possible! I can count how many times this has happened on one hand, but when it happens I do want to know about it!
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I've just had an incident where someone purchased a design off Etsy Saturday. I e-mailed the design to the customer on Saturday as soon as I received the order. Sunday I get a conversation message saying she had not received the design. I sent her 2 conversation messages back explaining that I had sent it, and even told her the exact times I e-mailed them, which e-mail it went to, told her to check her spam folder, etc. I sent the design again at this point and got another message today saying she still didn't have it and that "it would have been nice to have known I tried to send it". I thought e-mailing it twice and two messages on Etsy with each exact time (to the minute) that I e-mailed it was "letting her know I tried to send it". I can ONLY e-mail the design out to the e-mail address listed! If I don't get a return to sender e-mail, then I can only assume the customer received the e-mail!
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I've also been told that a design I sold was "digitized poorly", that it had to be given to a "professional" to do (like I am an amateur) and that this customer had wasted $23 on the design and t-shirts and that she just "hoped" the other designs she bought worked. No picture was sent, the explanation of what went wrong was vague and I have sold tons of the same design without a single complaint. I e-mailed asking for more info and a photo so I could SEE what went wrong and got no response.
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These are just a few examples of e-mails I've gotten from people and I just ask that people take a deep breath before they e-mail! Embroidery is tedious work!! It's time consuming and nervewracking!! I get frustrated too but would never send some of the e-mails I receive to a fellow embroidery mom, or grandma!! I feel like some of these people think I am laying on the couch all day with my feet propped up watching Days of Our Lives! It just ain't so!!!
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This is just something I had to explain and get off my chest!! There is nothing more frustrating than a rude e-mail given all the time and energy I give to EMBROIDERY!! Please be considerate of others, especially fellow embroidery people!! THANKS!!