Gaiam
Thinking of buying from Gaiam Inc.? Think again! Although this company bills itself in its print catalog and on its website as an ecologically oriented place to shop, our experience with them indicates that rather than any kind of real commitment to ecology, this company simply talks the talk in order to get your business. We urge you to deal only with companies that are truly committed to ecological goals. As our story will show, Gaiam Inc. is not one of these companies.
Gaiam Review
Gaiam Complaint
Please
consider the picture at the right. Know what it is? It is the six
(count 'em) catalogs that Gaiam Inc. sent us at the end of April. Lot
of trees died to get their so called ecological products in front of
our eyes, right? It gets worse – here's the full story.
My sister in law, being a very ecologically conscious person, ordered Christmas (2005) presents for everyone in our family from the Gaiam catalog. Imagine our surprise when we came home one day to find a pile of large boxes on our doorstep. After getting them all inside we found that the self described ecologically aware Gaiam company had shipped us eight presents in eight separate boxes, each with its own pile of packing materials. My sister in law ordered these all at the same time and they were all going to the same address, but rather than ship them in one or two boxes Gaiam Inc. instead chose to wipe out a major hunk of the forest and ship each present in its own box.
At the time we considered that this was one company that we would never do business with. We judge a company's commitment to ecology by their deeds and not by their words, and by shipping all these boxes and mountains of packing material Gaiam Inc. showed itself to be a company that is not all that concerned with ecological matters. Little did we know at the time that Gaiam Inc. wasn't done killing trees in the name of trying to get us to buy something from them, not by a long shot.
In January 2006, we got not one but six catalogs from Gaiam Inc. (Gaiam Harmony) - one for each member of the family. We called and asked them to please not send any catalogs. In February 2006 we got six more Gaiam Harmony catalogs from Gaiam. We called again to complain, and asked them to stop sending catalogs. Guess what happened in March 2006? You're correct – six more Gaiam Harmony catalogs from Gaiam. I'm telling you, they must own their own patch of clear cut former forest in the Pacific Northwest. Even the ecological waste involved with sending just one catalog every single month is unconscionable, but to send six catalogs each month to folks that have made a complaint asked them to stop sending any is really too much.
Clearly Gaiam Inc. is not just the kind of company that doesn't mind decimating forests to send out unwanted Gaiam Harmony catalogs. They're also the kind of company that doesn't bother to listen to their customer support phone calls. Since we tried twice to get the avalanche of Gaiam Harmony catalogs that Gaiam Inc. sent each month to cease by calling customer support, this time we opted for a more heavy handed approach via email. We sent email to Gaiam Inc. with the picture you see above, telling them of our previous attempts to get them to stop sending all these Gaiam Harmony catalogs, and suggesting that if they continued to send a mountain of catalogs each month that we would have to put up a web page letting the world know about their un-ecological practices. After all, we would hate to see folks getting duped by the Gaiam Inc. claims of ecological sympathy, only to find out the hard way (as we did) that they are really just another big company that cares more about the bottom line that the future of our precious planet.
In response to that email message we received the following reply from Gaiam Inc:
OK.
So, at least Gaiam.com is not going to continue killing trees to send
us a mass of Gaiam Harmony catalogs we don't want to get anymore -
our gripe with them is over, right? Well, no. Review the picture at
the right. This one is of the six Gaiam Harmony catalogs Gaiam.com
sent us a month later, at the end of April 2006. I can hear those
trees falling – can you?
So now, here is our web page about our experiences dealing with Gaiam.com. For some reason (call it a hunch) I think the story will not end here. We'll update this site as things progress. Pretty soon we think you'll get as tired of looking at pictures of Gaiam's Gaiam Harmony catalogs as we are of getting them. We'll also continue to update this page to increase its Google page ranking. The more people that know what this company is really up to the better we, and our planet, will be.
If you have a website or a blog and are genuinely concerned with ecological issues please link to this website. Links also help to spread the word and also increase Google page rank. Thank you.
5/13/06 – This page is now fully indexed by Google and it is getting thousands of hits.
Last updated May 13, 2006
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