[Elfsea] Pennsic Story

[Matthew G. Saroff]

On Fri, 8 Aug 2003, Sean Slattery wrote:

> What happened to Iolo seems to me to be unnecessarily high handed on
> Cindy Cooper's part.
>
> I also think that this situation is similar to the Pillaged Village
> "problem" that occurred last year. A customer came after "closing
> hours" to pick up something they had set aside earlier in the day.
> Their transaction was arranged well in advance of the established
> closing time, and the Pillaged Village people were concluding in good
> faith business already in progress; but when Cindy Cooper caught wind
> of them being "open for business", she banned them from Pennsic this
> year.
>
> Her actions appear to foreshadow a disturbing and disappointing trend.
> A few years ago, there would have been some discussion and an
> opportunity for remedial action in any situation like this. If Cindy
> Cooper has known about this "problem" for "years," she should have had
> someone talk to Iolo long before throwing him off the Pennsic site.
> ...like "years" ago.
>
> As an aside, I have always understood fair warning to be a part of any
> due process...
	While there have always been written exchanges on certain issues
regarding Pennsic, like rates, there has never been a formal contract.
	This allows the the Coopers to behave arbitrarily.
	We are not the Cooper's guests, but their TENANTS, and as such we
should be treated accordingly.
	On a more sinister note, when you start seeing a pattern of old
merchants being forced out, one has to wonder if new merchants are being
asked to pay some sort of "Commission" to the Coopers (or maybe Cindy
directly) to get on the list.
	This would explain a policy of forcing older (i.e. less revenue
generating) merchants out.
	The best solution, of course, would be to have competing vendors,
and I set up a (now rather moribund unfortunately) mailing list dedicated
to finding an alternate site.  The web page for it is
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/movepennsic/, and you can subscribe by
sending an email to movepennsic-subscribe at yahoogroups.com.
--
--Sfi Mordehai ben Yosef Yitzhak, Aka Matthew G. Saroff

This is not the Dream.  This is what I do on weekends to have
some fun.

The Dream involves 4 sets of identical twins, 2 gallons of Cool
Whip, 5 quarts of chocolate syrup, 2-1/4 pounds of strawberries,
satin sheets, a magnum of champagne, a trapeze, and a python.
Check http://www.pobox.com/~msaroff, including The Bad Hair Web Page
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