What is a good response to blackmail?
 

This was in the comments section of an order recently:

"Give me a free shirt or something or I will shop at my local homebrew store."

About once a month I get comments like this.

Forrest

"Get used to whatever it was that made you stop shopping at your local homebrew store and start shopping here, because, no."

That's not right, either they want to shop at your store or not, blackmail is not cool!

Go to Good Will, find the rattiest, stained T-shirt for 50 cents and send it to him with his order. Apologize about the delay in shipping his order because you had to go get him a shirt. Thats what I would do and probably why I never wanted to go into business for myself. No restraint for unreasonable requests.

Ha yes! That's a great idea. Or maybe a pink one with bunnies rainbows and unicorns.

My response would be shop at your LHBS.

Better yet, don't respond at all. Those people will not be good customers anyway, so don't respond.

Thats funny, I was donating some goods to the Goodwill a few weeks back so I went in and looked around and found an Ommegang t-shirt for 2 bucks!

"Thank you for your business in the past, best wishes on your future brewing."

+1 here, just keep it professional and above the board, but the goodwill shirt is a good idea too!!!

Wow, that's pretty tacky. +1 on the above about not responding. probably the best response. Alternatively, you could throw in something pretty close to worth nothing, like a bag of bottle caps.

Don't let idiots get you down!