Once upon a time, I was browsing through a gay newspaper when I saw a big, splashy ad for a sweepstakes for a free one-week vacation for two to the Carribean. I entered and won. As the official winner, my name was printed in the paper in another advertisement.
The terms of the sweepstakes were that I could choose to take the vacation anytime. All I had to do was call them up and book the trip. So I did. The travel agent asked me when I wanted to take my vacation. I said, "Whenever. Anytime at all that is available, how about that?"
"Fred handles the sweepstakes, but I'm afraid he's not in the office right at the moment. He'll call you back as soon as he gets in." Thus began a game of phone tag that persisted for weeks.
The travel agency was located a good fifty miles away, but I drove out there to speak to the gentlemen in person. Once again, Fred wasn't in the office, as luck would have it, but I had taken the day off from work and wasn't leaving until some sort of arrangement was worked out. When I made my position clear, that's when the story changed. "Oh, you waited too long to redeem your vacation prize. Sorry, but the offer has expired."
This is one reason that I no longer make a point of patronizing gay-owned businesses. All it takes is getting ripped off once to realize that all the talk about keeping dollars within the community is just self-serving propaganda for the gay business owner. Good for them, but not necessarily good for the gay customer.
At any rate, in what might have been a case of poetic justice, the travel agency went bust about three years later. I imagine their philosophy about how to treat people came back to haunt them later.
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