Anatomy Of A Fail: Rise And Fall Of The Tea Party Exchange

[babylonsister]

Anatomy Of A Fail: Rise And Fall Of The Tea Party Exchange
Evan McMorris-Santoro | August 19, 2010, 8:40AM

snip//

The TPX card is "similar to a customer-loyalty card consumers can attach to key rings -- and show it at a participating business can get a discount on the company's services. The local merchant then gives 5 percent of the sale revenue to the local Tea party chapter to help fund rallies."

The man behind the plan is Donald Hutchinson, a "human resources consultant" who said he planned to debut the Exchange system at the big September tea party rally in DC. Ohio was meant to be "the test market" for the program, according to what's left of the Tea Party Exchange website.

It appears that things didn't work out the way Hutchinson planned.

snip//

Almost as soon as it opened for business, the Exchange started to have some serious problems. Number one? It turns out Hutchinson outsourced building the program's homepage to a company in India. (That's a real tea party no-no, for those playing at home.) An Ohio blog, Ideatrash.net, sniffed out the story. Hutchinson fessed up in an interview with the Daily News:

"I designed the website myself. However my programmer is outsourced," he told the paper. "Local database programmers are welcome to talk to me."

Meanwhile, local blowback caused things to break down. Democratic Congressional candidate Joe Roberts threatened to lead a boycott of Exchange businesses, telling the Daily News, "Once those businesses decided to become political they need to deal with that."

Some dealt with it by backing out of the Exchange as quickly as they could. Patti Ballachino, owner of Reiber Cleaners, told the paper, "I've had probably 60 to 80 people come to me and say they aren't going to come to me anymore." She told the Daily News she never expected customer anger to be the result of joining the Exchange after what Hutchinson told her:

more...

http://tpmmuckraker.talkingpointsmemo.com/2010/08/anatomy_of_a_fail_rise_and_fall_of_the_tea_party_e.php?ref=fpi

[mike r]

1. They were scammed pretty good

"I feel like I was hoodwinked. I think (Hutchinson) was trying to make money."

[HughBeaumont]

2. Outsourcing to India is a "tea party no-no"?

Gee . . . I figured those Denial-icans were completely on board with a vital tenet to Laissez-fail-o-nomics! How does unbridled capitalism thrive without a never-ending supply of cheaper and cheaper labor, after all??

[malaise]

3. This is freaking perfect

Hope they get back their money...NOT!

[JNelson6563]

4. The epitome of special kind of stupid

They're doin' it right.

Julie

[Recursion]

5. He's having trouble finding out of work database programmers???

Bullshit. They're everywhere, because 10 years ago we told everybody that if they could just learn SQL and ASP they would have gainful employment for life. But, since pretty much every business that needed a website got one in the intervening decade, the newbies all got canned and they're all looking for work.

Also, let me add that while I'm never an advocate for offshoring programming work, this isn't even the situation it's good for from management's perspective: one guy getting one small single-purpose application done will almost never be able to do it cheaper through somebody in India. It's going to take longer and end up costing a lot more. The times it does save the employer money are when you need to grind out a whole lot of middleware with well-defined APIs on both sides.