[McHUG] SparkFun giving stuff away

[n3sb at qis.net]

Folks;

SparkFun will be giving stuff away on January 7. See www.sparkfun.com

73; Steve, N3SB

You can blame it on Chris Anderson's book Free. After reading his  
book, I started kicking around the idea of what we can do that's  
'free'. Sure, we have free bits (open-source hardware designs,  
available code, etc.), but we don't have free physical widgets. Now  
combine that with our love of creating shear havoc (AVC, C&D letter,  
Portable Rotary Phone), and you get Free Day.

Nobody gives away a free physical thing. There's always a catch. So up  
front: you have to pay shipping. Other than that, it's open season.

     * $100 max per household
     * You pay shipping
     * Limit of $100,000 in giveaways for the day
     * Starts 9AM MST January 7th, 2010
     * Ends 11PM MST January 7th, 2010 (or when we hit $100k,  
whichever comes first)
     * Rainchecks for popular items will be allowed

Why are we doing this? It's not that I want to create hell for the  
shipping, production, and the IT teams at SparkFun. There's a  
multitude of reasons.

First and foremost, we want to give back. We've had a stellar year in  
2009, and it's all because of you. So please, have a beer (or a  
Stepper Motor Driver) on us.

Second: We wish we could sponsor more groups but we don't have a sound  
way of selecting appropriate projects. Because we can't afford to say  
yes to everyone, we have to say no to everyone. It pains us every time  
we have to do it. So this is a way for us to evenly enable all the  
students and great minds of the world to pickup a $100 worth of free  
gear. Go for it!

Third: Free Day will possibly create a maelstrom of site traffic, the  
likes of which our servers have not seen. At the beginning of  
December, 2009, SparkFun will be graduating out of its high-chair and  
moving into a server cluster. We are excited to have the breathing  
room, and Free Day will help us evaluate just how much breathing room  
we're getting. We'll do everything in our power to keep the site up  
but please understand that the site may go down.

Fourth: We turn 7 years old! SparkFun is now over 70 employees and is  
the ripe old age of 49 (in business and dog years). We'd like to  
celebrate our birthday with a party.

More nitty gritty details:

     * There is no special code to type in. But you get only one order  
on Free Day, so spend it well!
     * Only one $100 credit per household. We ask that you respect  
this limit and don't try to abuse this gift.
     * There is no minimum or maximum order. You can spend more than  
$100, the balance of which will be charged to your method of payment.
     * Only Credit Card and Paypal orders will be eligible for the  
$100 credit. We don't want to have people tying up inventory with POs,  
wire transfers, checks in the mail, or lost faxes.
     * You will see whether or not your order qualifies for a credit  
in the checkout process.
     * Free Day does not apply to our distributors. Sorry!
     * Gift Cards cannot be bought on Free Day.
     * Every order isn't going to ship on Free Day, or for a few days  
after. We've got extra tape guns on hand, but please be patient and  
give us some time to catch up!
     * We are ratcheting up inventory for Free Day, but backorders  
(a.k.a. rainchecks) are allowed on most items (some items we simply  
can't get anymore). We'll get you your goodies just as soon as we can  
get them back in stock.

As we usually do things here at SparkFun, these rules are open for  
revision. We may need to tweak them as our astute users point out how  
silly we are. If we have to make any changes to the rules, we'll let  
you all know here on our homepage. So mark January 7th, 2010 on your  
calendars - it's Free Day!