Coffee Hero

Time for a mini rant.

I love receiving positive emails from fans of INeedCoffee and Coffee Hero. Over the past decade, I received wonderful emails from coffee fans that have started home roasting or used my press pot tips to brew excellent coffee. These are my favorite fans. Sharing coffee information was the goal when INeedCoffee was launched in 1999 and it still is the goal today.

However, about every month or so I get an email or a Direct Twitter message from someone claiming to be a “fan” that asks that I send samples of coffee to them. This annoys me for two reasons.

1. If they were really a fan of the site, they would figure out in about 10 seconds that neither INeedCoffee nor Coffee Hero sells coffee.
2. I am no fan of people that brazenly make demands of other people’s time and resources without compensation. I don’t even like people that hang out at end of Costco aisles eating free samples of food. Gee, I’ve always wondered what cheddar on a cracker tastes like. Really? The world owes nobody a free sample. Digital begging is still begging.

If either site sold coffee and I gave out free samples, the LAST PERSON I’d give a sample to is the one that requests it.

Rant over.

Tags: culture, free samples, ineedcoffee, rant