This thread should be moved closer to the website exit, and we should have a parting gift basket ready for any poor soul that is silly enough to enter it! I've been in haunted houses that were less scary!
Bonus plants and seeds....yikes! Who ever came up with this particular practice should be whipped with a limp sculpted crispy thinger...lol.
My take....and I have been on both sides of this bonus issue. I think if you are a seller, and you state in your selling that a bonus will be given based on a certain percentage of a purchase, and ask for suggestions, then you are asking for trouble. When a bonus is based on a percentage, it's like it really isn't a bonus anymore, but part of the original purchase. It's kind of like if you buy two rolls of paper towels, you get the second roll for half off. You, the seller, have made it "thing", given it a "value" and have even asked for "suggestions". What could possibly go wrong...lol?
I remember when I started selling seeds many years ago. The originator of seed selling on the LA was a fine gentleman with an alias of "akinback". A dear friend! He came up with the original idea. His crosses were hilariously odd, in that he gave them zero consideration, and crossed anything with everything. He gave two or three extra seeds of the purchased cross as a bonus. When I started selling, he thought I was nuts for putting in other crosses as bonuses and that it would end up biting me at some point. It hasn't yet, but I do it because I know that all of the purchased seeds will most likely not germinate, and I am just trying to cover the purchase if something goes wrong. But, while I do like giving bonus seeds, I do know at this point in my selling career, that there is an expectation that they had better be pretty good. My own fault? In some ways it is, but it is also very strange that bonus things take up much discussion at all.
For me, most bonuses that I have been given have been discarded, seeds or plants. It is nice when I get extra fans of a purchase, but other than that I just don't have the room to keep them. I don't think less of the seller because I choose not to keep them, and I don't throw/ give them away because I am loaded with cash (I am a lowly seed seller, remember). I don't have the room and most likely, they aren't exactly what I was looking for, otherwise I would have bought it.
As a seller, I don't mind suggestions for bonuses, but really prefer to just wing it on my own, since so much of what I give away for free is based on what I have that day. It is not based on a percentage of the purchase...it is a gift freely given. If the buyer chooses not to plant them, I understand.
Get my exit gift basket ready, because I'm sure I have offended somebody...lol.
