I have attended many conferences in my lifetime and usually, I am a very reasonable person when I comes to returning home with swag. (For those of you who don't know what swag is, in this case, it is the free items that are given to conference attendees.) Before the airlines started adding charges for luggage, I would bring a second bag inside of my luggage in order to transport my swag home. After the airline luggage fees came into affect, I forced myself to edit down the swag items to carry home only what would fit into my one free piece of luggage. But that was all before I went to the BlogHer'10 conference in New York City ....
Every party at BlogHer had wonderful giveaways and swag bags - most of which was filled with great items. Touring the vendor exhibition hall added more wonderful items to the swag pile. I am a purse and bag collector and "White House Black Market" gave away a wonderful black and white bag that was "to die for" - and I picked up more than one.
As I looked at the swag pile in my hotel room, I did not know how any of it was going to get home to Detroit. Where was my usual self control? Well, where ever it was, it was asleep because I wanted everything in my swag pile. Even after doing yet another swag paring, it was still a large pile.
BlogHer, knowing the lure of swag, arranged with the Hilton to have a shipping area conveniently located as part of the conference hall. So I and Laura from @LauraMotorCity paid a visit to get the cost since neither of us planned to part with even one more swag item. To our shock, the shipping area did not have any scales (what?) or boxes (come again?) and they could not tell us the cost for shipping the items home (seriously?). We were asked to hand over our credit card numbers and trust them. Nothing personal against the shipping area, but I like knowing how much a transaction is going to cost me before I hand over my credit card.
So Laura got out her beloved iPhone and looked up the address of the nearest UPS Store - which was only two blocks from the hotel. We packed up our swag piles and headed over to the UPS office. We both looked like bag ladies since we were pretty loaded down. UPS charged me only $33 dollars total to ship home 31 lbs of swag. And the cost included the boxes and the tape!
Laura was so happy that she was tweeting and tweeting her joy to everyone at the BlogHer conference. When I arrived at the airport, I only had my carry-on bag and no worries other than to finish reading a book on my smartphone.
This story gets even better because the items were shipped on our last day in New York which was on a Monday and arrived in Detroit at lunchtime on Wednesday! My swag and I were reunited in less than 48 hours after leaving New York.
Laura and I have already checked and there is a UPS store only two blocks away from the hotel for next year's BlogHer conference.
Thank you UPS for your reasonable prices, your many convenient locations and your quick shipping. You saved my swag and I love for it!!!
Click here to read all the posts from BlogHer10.
Follow FREEISMYLIFE on Facebook
I will do a GIVEAWAY at 100 followers !!!
