One of the features available at the newly-overhauled Pear Tree Pen Company website is the ability to post consumer product reviews. Since our new site is still pretty young, there's a noticeable dearth of reviews on there. And since the reviews ought to come from uninterested consumers, I certainly wasn't going to add some phony reviews to beef up the site (do some sites do that? I wonder).

Anyway, it occurred to me that I could make an appeal to the good folks here at FPN to visit the site and offer their opinions. I know none of you needs any encouragement or enticement, but as a token of my appreciation, I'll select one reviewer at random every week from now until the end of August for some random freebie, courtesy of yours truly. That presumes, of course, that the site gets more than 5 reviews that week. If the site gets fewer than five, I'll hold over the drawing until the next week.

Sounds good? Good. Then hurry up on over to The Pear Tree Pen Company and start writing the reviews. Pens, Ink, Paper? It's all up for grabs.

By all means, please feel free to let your friends on other forums or email lists know about this opportunity, too.

Thanks!

James

Pretty nice offer, James! Thank you for the opportunity.

PMS

Thanks indeed!!

Jim

OK! I just put up a couple reviews for you, on the Lamy Safari and the Parker Sonnet, two of my regular working pens. Now where do I go to review my Waterman 52?

Odd, it wouldn't let me log in to post a review. I've ordered from PTP before.

Thanks for reminding me, Rocket -

The new website is completely new from the ground up - everything was re-done from scratch. As a result, I was unable to export/import all of the customer information from the old site to the new one. While I could have manually copied each person's contact information, the password was encoded and would not have been transferred anyway, so the log in information would have been useless.

It is therefore my sad duty to report that you'll all have to re-register on the new site. I am truly sorry about the inconvenience.

James

Please clarify whether anyone wishing to provide a review must be a previous or new customer.

Thanks.

Oh, the agony!

I should've guessed.

Ive got a couple of popular pens id love to review. I went to the site and saw no option to do so. So how do I do so?

You have to create an account. Then you will be given the option to post reviews. "Write a review" is in a shade of yellow/brown on the page. Sometimes the "related items" pushes it down the page, so scroll down if need be.

In other news, several reviews posted

No purchase, previous or otherwise, is necessary to post a review. At this point, you need to be a "registered" member of the site in order to post a review. I don't know if that can be changed, but I'll look into it. Regardless, I don't do spam and, while I may in the future elect to do newsletters to those on my subscriber list, you are able to opt out if you choose.

James

I would love to add a review.

ok I created an account and there is still no way to write a review. I have spent as much time on it as I can so thats a see ya. If you dont make it easy for everyone it is no good, so theres your feedback.

I'm sorry you're finding it difficult to write a review. I'm not sure what the trouble is. It's actually quite simple to do. Here are the steps:

1. Find a product on the site you'd like to review;
2. Click on it.
3. Scroll down the page until you see something like this:
4. "Share your knowledge of this product with other customers... Be the first to write a review."
5. or this: "Average Customer Review: Based on 2 Reviews. Write a review."
6. "Write a review" will be highlighted. Click on it.
7. Write your review.

You can only write a review of a product that's displayed on the site. Re-reading your message, perhaps you thought you could write a review of any pen?

Oh well, Thanks for giving it a shot, anyway.

James

WOW! I can't believe I was the first person to get in there and review the Waterman Phileas!

Great site, thanks for the tip.

Thanks for the opportunity, James! I'll get to it soon, and I love the photo magnifier you put up, it's great.

The whole site looks great. Good job!

Hi,

Very nice idea.

I created an account, wrote a review (that 1000 character limit certainly enforces brevity!) and clicked "submit" - but I'm not sure anything happened. There was no acknowledgment message, and the product still doesn't show any reviews.

Do new reviews go into limbo until they've been checked over? (That would be prudent, I suppose.) Or are there browser incompatibilities?

Cheers,

Jon

There have been lots of great reviews written already. Thank you, everyone. I must admit, I'm surprised no one's reviewed the ink sampler. It's very possibly one of the best-selling products I offer, and I was expecting a bit more review activity.

For those who do not already have a current customer account, when you click to 'write a review' it will ask for your customer info. Enter/create it and it will put you back where you can do the review. Threw me the first time, but it works like a charm!

Ladies and Gentlemen -

In the first week since I announced this little "contest," I received reviews from no fewer than 21 different reviewers. Each of their names has been entered into a random drawing, and I will be announcing the winner shortly. For those who participated, thank you! The winner will receive a $20.00 gift certificate, courtesy of the Pear Tree Pen Company.

Reviewers in second week have been less plentiful. The week, which ends today, has seen only 4 reviewers. Remember, that I must have 5 or more before I will award a prize, so folks, if you haven't already done so, please review a product at our website to be entered into the drawing.

Thanks for helping me out!

James

Sorry I didn't respond to this earlier. I completely missed it in my zeal to post about the contest, I suppose.

Certain reviews get flagged for "offensive" language and arent' displayed. I need to amend the filters or talk to the tech reps, because it looks not only for whole words, but letter strings within words. Words such as "glass" and "class" seem to be the most commonly flagged words. Once I get notified that an "offensive" review has been submitted, I read it and determine if the filter was just being overly cautious or someone was actually using naughty language. I can then zap, modify or approve the review. But if a review gets through the filter, it gets posted immediately.

The results of the first random drawing are in. Congratulations, go to Sean Bullock for his review of the Lamy 2000 on the Pear Tree Pen Company website. For his effort, Sean will receive a $20.00 gift certificate, valid for any merchandise available at the Pear Tree Pen Company.

The ability to issue and process gift certificates has been is one of the many features now available on our all-new and updated website, so it seemed like an appropriate prize. Enjoy, Sean!

And I'm pleased to report that we did squeeze in enough entries for this week's reviews so I will be holding another drawing later in the week. We've still got 3 more weeks to go for this promotion, so keep the reviews coming in!

James

Congrats to Sean!!!!

Jim

I tried to register, James, but the website appears to think that Spain does not exist

Hi Roger,

Thanks for the heads up on that. I think I got that problem solved. Let me know if you notice any others!

James

What ever happened with this promotion?

Thanks for the nudge. I'll be announcing the other winners this week!

Great idea and the new site looks great. Just saw this and chimed in my opinion on two pens.

Also found something that needs to be corrected: at this page (http://www.peartreepens.com/Sailor-1911-s/62.htm), the description of the 1911-Black was listed as a clear demonstrator.