Kaleido-dope.

I guess the lesson I would wish to impart is, if you're going to be a craftsman, and charge craftsman prices, create crafted works. 

And if you sell things online, don't just post the good reviews. 

Okay, from the top:

Last year I wanted to buy a gift for a loved one who makes a great living and buys whatever she needs or wants herself. But AH! I did once hear her say that she'd wanted a really good kaleidoscope, as she had loved them from childhood. 

To the Internets! 

Amazon had a bunch, but nothing struck me as special. It seemed like the kind of thing that you wanted a real artiste to create, and I was willing to spend some money. I found one that looked good on an Etsy-type site (for the record, it was NOT Etsy) and ordered it. 

It arrived like this:

The glass jujubes were all over the place. It was held together (poorly) with glue. Frankly, it was a piece of garbage, and I went on the site to demand a refund of my $100+.

I also wrote a poor review of the product, which never ran. I wrote it again; it also never ran. They refused to post a bad review.

Now, I did finally get my money back, and a sort-of apology from the guy who was running the site. And I doubt he could personally inspect everything that was up for sale. But the plain fact is, if you're going to post user reviews, you have to post the bad ones too. I did not use profanity, I did not otherwise violate norms of user reviews. But they just weren't going to run something negative, regardless of how true it was.

I wasn't going to write about it here, because I did get my money back and purchased a nice kaleidoscope elsewhere that was a well-received gift, and this exact product is no longer for sale on the site. But when I came across this photo on my hard drive, I thought, this is a good reminder, at least to me, that good reviews are not the whole story.

Caveat emptor onlinus. And readus the return policius. In some corners of the Internet, it's still a little dicey. Another reason why Amazon is so stinking rich.