17 Most Complaints about The Crochet Crowd

We get several complaints, some of it is our fault, others are user error. However, other times we are the target of someone's bad day. It's about balance.

Let's examine what are hot complaints our team faces off with. You can decide how you interpret it.

Pattern Details

You didn't bother to mention the hook size in the tutorial, what is the size and how much yarn do I need?

To error is human and yes, at times, I miss that detail in the tutorial as I am paying attention to the camera, sound and reading the pattern at the same time as trying to demo.

If I do miss this detail, there's a free pattern link for more information about the tutorial. In today's climate where people don't prefer to read, YouTube has suppressed the video information detail to be just one line and you have to open click it to open the description.

Knowing people may not open the video description, two years ago I started putting the same link in the comments so when people comment to complain, they may run into it. It's helped a lot.

Creative License and Pattern Mistakes in Tutorials

You did something different in the tutorial than suggested, is the tutorial right or pattern? 

If you are cross-referencing the pattern and questioning this, the pattern is king. If there is a mistake in the pattern, I usually call it out. It's very possible for me to be saying one stitch and my hands did something else. Again, I barely chew gum and walk at the same time, so to get it perfect is a miracle.

I also have the power to improvise and show something different or show tips not suggested in the pattern. All roads lead to Rome, sometimes, you can have several different routes to get to the same conclusion or close to it. The point of the tutorial is to show tips when it's helpful.

Cyber Bullying

I was bullied, what are you going to do about it? 

Gawd, this is such a hot topic because it's easy to accuse bullying when there is a difference of opinion. And yes, there are people that will rub others the wrong way and their back goes immediately up.

I know a person, not in our community, but intentionally posts comments and knee-jerk comments to get a rise out of people. He loves to watch the dominos fall. Truly, he intentionally posts false details to watch it unfold. I don't respect this as life is already hard enough. He really does need an enema from a sewage truck.

I was taught by my parents to walk away and avoid confrontation when at all possible. To look at things from different angles and in the cyber age, that's so hard as the keyboard can be your worst enemy.

Bullies love one thing, attention and fire-feeding reactions from others. Feed burning coals fresh wood, you are going to ignite it. Walk away and let the coals burn themselves out.

I'm not of the belief that the customer is always right. There are customers that are opportunists and will spin you into pretzels for their own enjoyment! Block the person causing the upset side of you to react, stomp it out.

I Want My Money Back

I bought a pattern from you, you didn't send it to me. Send me the pattern or my money back.

This one confuses me a lot because we don't sell patterns. The sales of patterns are something I don't involve myself in for this very reason. The stress of day-to-day financial transactions for pattern sales doesn't bring me joy.

Why yes, we could charge for patterns but we opt not to. It saves the drama. The answer to this is always the same. We don't sell patterns, you have the wrong company.

Yarn Unavailability

The yarn you are using isn't available in my country. Where can I get it?

The problem with the global presentations of anything is the lack of ability to be accessible to all. In Canada, where we are, there are many USA products we cannot have access to as the border is in the way. This is a two-way street as it's possible for the USA to be blocked from products due to border issues.

We aren't in the direct knowledge of the global distribution of products. You are best to contact the manufacture and ask. They can find out if they actually have locations or shipping options to wherever you are. That's the best solution.

Yarn is Sold Out

The yarn is sold out and I really want to do your project. What do I do now? 

You can find substitutions but if your heart is set on that particular yarn though, you are going to have to wait or find an online source.

I Cannot Shop Online

I cannot shop online, how else can I get the yarn?

Speaking personally, I have been in a position where I blew my credit. No credit card. I really wanted to attend an event that required me to have a credit card to get advance tickets. I had the cash but that wasn't an option. I didn't go to the event. I was upset about it but I got over it pretty quickly.

Today's era has more options than in my earlier years. I have to defer this back to the person to find solutions that are obtainable within reach.

Shipping Prices Are Rip-Off

The prices to ship the products are a rip-off, it should be free.

I have personal experience here with shipping as I worked in a courier company and then trucking logistics. Shipping is never free. The change of handing off boxes from one facility to another, changing hands and arriving at your door requires people power. The transporter hasn't been invented yet.

When free shipping is offered, it means the company is willing to slice off a portion of its profit to provide it. Some products are too close to the wholesale pricing to provide free shipping without causing products to be sold at a negative. Free shipping is sometimes offered when a minimum purchase is hit so the price is high enough to take a hit on the shipping.

You cannot have everything, at least I feel. You cannot have a big discount and free shipping.

Many people including me factor in the time and location of our homes when it comes to online shipping. I live in a village, seriously. For me to drive to the big city is a two-hour round-trip plus fuel. Plus any food I buy along the way. For me, shipping is generally cheaper when I factor my time and expenses to get something. I really resent not wanting to pay for shipping, I don't need it bad enough.

Remember, everyone is not in your shoes. Options on shipping are helpful for people who really cannot get out or don't have the time.

Trying New Yarn

I really want to try a new yarn but I want to feel it first, I don't want to buy something where I haven't touched it first.

Totally valid. Yarn is a tactile purchase. You want to touch it first but in today's era, especially with a pandemic. At the time of writing this, Nova Scotia is locked down. Touching the yarn, other than Walmart, hasn't been an option. Curbside is required.

What I do is throw in a ball or two as a temptress of something I haven't tried before. I trust brands from Yarnspirations, I don't like all of their yarn but I do look at the brands I love and look at their material content. Chances are one of two things will happen. I will either like the yarn or love the yarn. I have discovered yarns that I didn't know I would love using this process.

If I get something I really don't enjoy, I can always give it away to a friend. Giving yarn to yarn friends is a good thing.

Your Humour is Off-Putting

Your humour is offensive, knock it off. 

One of the hardest lessons in putting myself online is to let me by myself and take the good, the bad and the ugly as a result of giving access to the core of my being.

I grew up in a house when innuendo is the key to humour. Talking to my parents today is like talking to an echo of myself. We laugh at the same things. "Don't come upstairs for an hour, we are wrapping Christmas presents!" You don't want to wreck Christmas so you don't go upstairs. While this makes sense from September to Christmas, They are still wrapping presents in January, February and March. AHHHHHH... I get it.

Humour is really subjective and personal. Yes, I step over the line and sometimes way too easily when the opportunity is in my face and undeniable.

Through the years of being online, I have learned to suppress my personality and try to keep the recorded videos clean of any my humour. While lack of humour can make me a dull boy, it saves me from the drama it can create.

What makes humour work is the sense of being relatable. What makes us relatable are stories where there is a punchline, joke or moment of thought that catches our tickle bones. In the live videos, I struggle to hold the line and at times just give up and let my personality-free. Thus, I don't do live videos much to save myself from walking over the line. I find real-time online teaching the hardest.

I try to keep it family-friendly but cannot guarantee it. What makes me laugh is raw sarcasm and innuendo.

You're Not A Nice As You Appear

You come across as nice but it's not always so. 

I will agree with this statement. While I try to give the benefit of the doubt and I am really naive and trust people wholeheartedly until there is a reason not to trust, the other side of my personality does show up.

I can foresee someone's abilities before they know it themselves or they are in self-denial about their skills. The women I surround myself with within my team are amazing. I have watched them flourish. They make tough decisions for themselves and for our company. Sometimes uncomfortable decisions strike a chord. It's not easy.

Part of my personality is workaholism is that I can be very serious and I zone out while I am thinking. The serious side of me is analytically driven. It's part of my personality. In college, the professors would give us a breakdown at the beginning of the semester of all of the tests, what they are worth to the percentage of the final grade with the final test value which was usually 30%. I knew by ¾ the way through the semester that I had already passed and the final exam wasn't so stressful.

Selfishness is a trait that really gets me worked up. I am selfish myself but try to give more of myself without any expectation. It's when the expectation is forced is when I disengage.

I struggle to take a compliment because I feel nothing is ever good enough. I am striving for something that doesn't exist and I know it. But I cannot allow myself to take the bow and feel the joy in this area of my life. I'm always full of self-doubt.

There's no such thing as a perfect person. I don't pretend to be and make a ton of mistakes. My goal is to try to get from day to day and try to do as little damage as possible.

Lifestyle Decisions

You have a lot of yarn, it must be nice. 

Never judge a person by the size of their yarn collection. Part of the size of my collection, other than work-related is an addiction to the stuff. I love yarn and the possibilities they serve.

Part of my life is the decisions I have made for myself. As a teenager, I decided not to have children as an adult. I didn't feel it was for me and I know people say once you have a child, you can change your mind but I didn't want to do that in the event that my mind doesn't change. It's not fair to the child.

Unexpectedly for me, I was a step-parent for a few years and having children really shocked me on how children can enlighten your life but also the financial cost of raising another human being. The unexpected school trip fees, clothing, and peer pressure for the kids to keep up with others. It was a  financial struggle and mental struggle as things I took for granted before were out of reach.

Not having children has allowed me to spend money on other things like travel, home and living expenses. I'm not saying no one should have kids, but be conscious that everyone has different living conditions, expenses and situations.

You Talk Too Fast

You talk too fast, slow down as your tutorials are undoable. 

Yes, I can talk too fast. I talk to you on camera like you are my friend and understand me.

If I talk too slow, I feel I am condescending to your experience. This is part of the business that I will never get right, so I feel. At the time of recording, I don't realize it. During editing, I don't think about it as I am hearing myself back at my same speed at which I speak.

It's a tough one.

I Didn't Expect That Reaction

You actually told me to find another tutorial host, you aren't that bad. 

I have experience in one of the jobs I held. We had a customer constantly chewing at us at the phone centre. She would order service and automatically expect the service to be sped up complimentary. So the company would prioritize her packages but it couldn't always be done based on the driver's route. When it didn't happen, you could expect this person to be calling in and giving us a hard time and complain about how terrible our services were.

One day, she demanded to speak to our manager and he was sitting in the call centre with us at the time. She chewed his ass hard and he finally let out the feelings we all had. "If our services are that bad, find a different business!" After the intense call, one of my co-workers turned and said, "I bet she didn't expect to be told to find a different option." That statement has stayed with me. Finding a different option was the only answer but not something she expected to hear.

She called in the next day ordering service but a completely different person on the phone. Her leverage as a customer was shattered as the company was willing to lose a profitable customer to let the customer service team (my team) off the hook from the verbal abuse.

I feel when people threaten to leave a channel or quit a tutorial host, they have already made up their minds. If there is an expectation for the host to change based on things that cannot be changed, the customer should be given permission to find a different YouTube Host. This response is the only solution when someone is unhappy. If someone is lashing out on their bad day, this response can be a terrible one but it's honest.

I Expect a Personal Response

You have a celebrity complex as you cannot be bothered to respond. 

I've had to come to terms where I cannot physically keep up. Our team is at a size that is manageable for our company but my team's responses aren't always good enough as it needs to come from me personally.

It's really difficult to be the sole proprietor of this operation. From planning and budgeting, I wear multiple hats throughout the day. I have certain settings on my phone turned off as my phone would deplete its battery by midafternoon with so many notifications.

It's hard to be in full creative mode and suddenly bounce to customer service to then bounce to finances then bounce to tutorial creation all within a short time frame. Sounds like an excuse but behind the scenes, there's a lot happening in real-time that involves a lot more than just sitting here waiting for something to happen.

If I don't personally respond, it's not intentional. I cannot do it all.

Where Is The Tutorial?

Where is the free tutorial for this pattern?

I have been designing a lot more lately. Part of the catch-22 of being a tutorial host is the assumption that every pattern I make has a supportive tutorial. It comes back to the last statement of not personally responding. I just cannot do it all.

There are some patterns where I have no intention of filming them as I have to be selective. When there is a strong demand to film, I will but I don't design something with the 100% commitment that a supportive tutorial will be done.

What Are the Changes?

I really don't like this size, what are the sizes to change the pattern?

I've had to learn that the sizing that a designer presents is sometimes all there is to work with. Especially with clothing. A change in starting chain may not be enough.

This question I face nearly every day. I've had to learn saying it's unavailable as the changes need research and development. Though I cannot prove this, I think most people will move on and find a different pattern closer to what they wanted and will forget about this pattern they want to be changed.

In the end my friends, there's only so much I can do as a company. Being global is hard, especially with languages and access to products.

Try to do provide as much free content as possible but also produce quality content. It's a fine balance.

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