Annoyances and Drama...

So, the fabulousness that is the charity drive is being threatened by nasty rumours and some ads that no one is able to control (thank you Tribe.com and Google ads).


Apparently, the school has been getting phone calls from people stating that they were told no one would accept checks (*CHECKS*, mind you) made out directly to the school - thus indicating that the money would be diverted elsewhere or some-such thing... This in-of-itself is interesting, since no one in the fire troupe was ever approached about taking checks in the first place.


The school also got complaints from parents who had looked up the fire troupe online and found them on Tribe.com - along with the in-thread ads that sometimes included such lovely items as "find super-sexy singles NOW!". While this is the age of watching male-enhancement adverts on TV (and I personally find those rather amusing), it's not something that's appropriate for advertising a children's school charity. But the big thing about THAT is that there's not a damned thing anyone can do about it. It's powered by GoogleAds.com - and Tribe bloody well refuses to remove the in-thread ads. Their reasoning is supposedly it helps drive revenue in on an otherwise free site. Hmmm.


So - Fred has no idea what's going on, other than the school is currently considering pulling the plug completely on the whole thing. It'd be one thing with just the ads - it's not something anyone could do anything about, and the announcements were taken down as soon as it was reported that there was an issue. The other thing though, about the checks - that's just plain malicious garbage. It's shitty when people decide that they want to screw others for no apparent reason. If there HAD been anyone offering to write checks written out to the school, there wouldn't have been an issue. Hell, Fred said that he would have turned THEM in early, so as not to overdraft those writing them later on.


I don't want all of the charity work that the troupe has done to go down the drain. So - if you happen to have a phone, and some time, and know the troupe, please give the school a call and let them know what a great bunch of people they are, and what they've done in the past. Please. The contact number is on their website, at http://www.transitionalschool.org .


Thanks!


~M