Poetry.com was certainly not at all what I had expected. I'm a writer - or at least I've always wanted to be. Poetry is my language. It's the only way I feel I can express myself and the easiest as well. Poetry.com proved to be one of the biggest mistakes of my life. It's a scam - a big, fat scam. Nothing good comes out of it. They use you and use you and use you. Your pride is ripped and torn away from you, exposing you unnecessarily.
Poetry.com is not at all what it seems to be. I just can't believe I was as stupid to let them use me and take advantage of me. I don't want this to happen to anyone else out there because it is completely unfair and just shows how big name companies use people at their disposal. Poetry.com is a scam. Period!
I sent them a poem about two, three years ago? I'm not too sure about the date, but I know it was a pretty long time ago - too long maybe to get notified about whether I had won the competition or not. It had been a few months before I got any contact whatsoever. I tried calling them, but an answering machine picked up each time. I e-mailed but they don't have a valid e-mail address.
The odds of actually winning the so-called competition - oh please - is probably 1 in a 1,000,000. People are just getting ripped off without realizing it. Anyway, in about a month, I started receiving e-mails. And more emails. And even more. So many, I realized it was spam. It used to fill up my inbox.
The first few e-mails were like that of any other organization or website. You know, the occasional e-mail that notifies you of your registration, how things are going, content submittals and approvals - things like that. I got a few e-mails that talked about my progress in, let's say, the first paragraph. The rest was all promotional stuff. They bribed and prodded and disturbed and annoyed until I bought the supposed lead crystal award that I had won. Oh please. If I had won it, why exactly did I have to pay for it? I was so upset and angry at my foolishness.
Poetry.com does post the poem at their website just as they promised in the beginning, but it's the publicity I'm not too sure of. I'm not sure if they ever tried to sell my poem to some other company without my knowledge. I'm not sure at all and I'm too much of a cowardice to find out. They're liars. You can't believe a word they say.
I was even invited to a convention in Las Vegas about two months ago. I didn't want to waste time at some phony convention. I knew the e-mail was a hoax - a fake. They just wanted to make a bigger fool of myself. I ignored their e-mails for a few months. Each e-mail was just another to coax and lure me into their deceptive trap. They wanted me to so desperately go that convention. But I wouldn't.
I wanted to make money. I wanted to become someone with this website, but I became no one to them. Point of correction, I was no one to them. Their big name company crushed me and hurt me. What could I do, though? I'm just one person.
