Little Bird

Oh no, I don't mind at all! I think the biggest problem I'm having with the paperwork at this point is that it looks a little too straightfoward to me in some regards. I keep looking for the catch that'll come around to bite me on the ass. I hadn't even considered seeking out a lawyer to help out with anything. Honestly, I'm surprised I got past my little moment of panic about whether or not I could work as a vet assistant in Canada that crept up over me earlier. All the immigration stuff I saw regarding skilled workers only had notations for veterinarians or vet techs. Google searching found me info on vet assistant programs at a bunch of universities up there, so I'm guessing I'm okay.

 

I just don't know where to start with half of it. Course, I think part of that has to do with the whole not quite having my brain past the squeeing stage regarding getting married.

I know what you mean about looking for a catch; I always do that too, especially after the horrible attempt my boy and I had crossing the border at Sarnia. That attempt was so bad that we ended up hiring a lawyer. Of course, then we later found out that we just had the misfortune of getting an officer who was having a bad day and there wasn't really much of a problem with us crossing originally. But oh well. I think that hiring a lawyer is probably a waste of money now (which is why we didn't re-hire a lawyer for processing my study permit applications, so I'm hoping that all goes through okay with what we did on our own).

My boy keeps reassuring me that it all really is straightforward and that they make it simple and straightforward so that your average person can fill it out by themselves. He is less cynical than I am

Again, congrats on getting married

I hope you don't mind that I just sent you a PM about all of this, since my boy and I are going through such a similar issue right now. We ended up paying a lawyer $2,000 to advise us on how to fill out a lot of the immigrations paperwork because it was so overwhelming to us, so I thought I would try to share some of that advice with you, lol. Of course, it is 1 AM here and I might be slightly incoherent.

Let me know if there's anything I can do to help. Or, you know, I'm also here if you just need someone to complain to about all of the paperwork

I have to leave shortly (class from 2 - 9 PM, wee I hate college), but I just wanted to say that even the whole 'she was using us for market research' thing sounds pretty far-fetched to me. H&EE is a small company, more of a hobby for Michele than anything. She's not planning on doing hostile takeover of the perfume industry.

And, quite frankly, if she were using BPAL for market research... I'd expect her to have some similarities to BPAL. And she doesn't. What could she get from this forum? Everyone here has different tastes. So far, Michele has done a lot of custom scents for people on HER forums. She hasn't been feverishly trying to recreate BPAL fragrances.

H&EE mainly has a lot of blends that are vanilla/tonka, use her antique patchouli stock, or are foodie. Which BPAL doesn't have a lot of. Her fluffy fairy scents don't strike me as being very similar in concept, feel, or scent component to the lab at all. She sells a lot of bath products, which doesn't even compete with the lab on any level. There are definitely more etailers on the retail therapy forum that remind me much more strongly of BPAL.

Thanks for that, PilotKitten. You made a lot of really good points that I agree with.

It’s the obvious double standards here that have really been upsetting and disheartening to me. The mods quite honestly seem to watch the H&EE thread, hoping for a potential legal issue or complaint to arise, so that they can escalate it. This has happened so many times, it’s obvious and plain as day if you just read through the thread. It’s almost like the mods and a few people are literally trolling that thread and looking to start drama/suspicion at any available point. H&EE gets jumped on more than companies that have actually robbed customers and copied BPAL's scent descriptions. And for what, really?

And, like PilotKitten has just pointed out, there’s even a double standard with how the customers of H&EE are treated on this forum. On the H&EE thread (before the lab posted an announcement about using the term imp), the mods came in and started a huge debate on the H&EE thread, publicly calling out and embarrassing one of the H&EE customers for innocently using the term frimp in reference to a free sample oil. The mods noticed this slipup a day after it was posted and jumped at the chance. Several of the mods came in and were actually very defensive and rude, making everyone involved feel like morons for daring to be stupid enough to use the lab’s term “frimp” on anyone else’s oils. It was *very* poorly handled and unnecessary.

And… yet… olympia301 referred to her own blends as frimps in her own etailer thread on the bpal.org retail forum. And the mods didn’t say a word, and no one cared. No one cares. The mods rudely told us that it was important not to use the term frimp/imp and that we should be more considerate of the lab’s feelings. We said that it was an honest mistake, and the mods acted like we were idiots. Yet… they didn’t care when an actual perfumer used the same term in reference to her own products. That speaks volumes to me.

Do I think that the mods are bad people or even bad mods? Definitely not. For the most part, I love how this site is handled. But I think that the drama and picking on Michele/H&EE/and customers of H&EE is wrong and uncalled for and has been rather underhanded at points. I love BPAL. I love and like many people on bpal.org (and don't hate or dislike a single person here). But I also love H&EE and like Michele.

I've been around for and noticed all of the same things that filigree_shadow has mentioned. I didn't see any of those events in the same light. If you're trying to find something wrong or you want to believe that something is wrong, you can always find it. Maybe there were communication issues between Michele and the mods... that have obviously been blown out of proportion and escalated. But Michele really isn't the manipulative monster that she has been painted out to be, and H&EE obviously hasn't ever stolen anything from BPAL, which is clear to anyone who has looked at the site or tried the products. BPAL & H&EE just aren't anything alike.