I just saw an immaculate pair of

Gucci white patent pumps,

marketed by a very sleek consignment shop.  Beautiful shoes. I saw these shoes because of a tantalizing tweet. But oops… the shop directed me to a photo of these shoes on yfrog. Apparently, yfrog is a free app.

Too bad.

1- There was no way to buy these, or ask the shop to hold them until I could make it in. All I could do was drool.

2- There was no link on yfrog or the tweet back to the shop’s (very professional) site. Heck, there wasn’t even a CLUE as to where these shoes could be obtained. So the business didn’t gain an ounce of recognition for having these incredible shoes.

And on top of THAT? Turns out, in fact, that said site says “back soon” (I guess they had to take it down to redesign it? NOT. Any web master that says so is either lazy or not attuned to marketing or dumb.) Site message says nothing about how the shop could still be followed on FB or Twitter.

3- Meanwhile, their FB page (found only because I was doing my Sherlock Holmes impersonation) didn’t say diddley about the site being unusable. The Twitter site sends folks off into the unusable web site (don’t they know that just in case, this can be changed for a length of time, if necessary?). What a fiasco. Especially because this shop has a big fashion show coming up the day before Mother’s Day (Marvelous promo…great day for a fashion show… what a nice M-Day gift for their clients to give!)

4-The ad right next to the photo of these elegant shoes on yfrog? It read:

Need help with your itchy, scratchy, smelly dog?

Not the image they were going for, I suspect.

Bottom line: Free ain’t worth it if it devalues your goods or makes the potential customer gnash her/his teeth in frustration.