I’ve collaborated with many brands on TikTok Shop. I’ve done TikTok Shop for about 6 months now and I don’t think anything’s topped my probably worst brand deal that I ever had. This was the first like brand that ever reached out to me the same day that I got accepted in the TikTok shop program. At the time, I was making a lot of like breastfeeding, pumping, nursing mom informational videos cuz that’s what I was doing at that point in my life. And the same day I get a message from this girl. She’s a small business owner, independent boss space. And she’s like, hey, I want you to promote these products that have like my name brand on them. And I look up her brand, it’s been on the news. Like I see that her brand is sold in like Walmart and whatnot. So I’m like, okay, like that seems legit. So she sends me like the product card. So a product card is like a list of products that basically you’re agreeing to promote either one of them or all of them, but they will usually tell you, and it was a list of 15 things and she sent it to me and was like, hey, would you be interested in promoting these for me? I really need like brand awareness. I want you to wear these in your videos. And I’m like, okay, cool.
But she didn’t tell me that she wouldn’t accept an unboxing video initially. So I agree to do it. After a little bit of digging, a few days later, I find out that this girl has had the TikTok shop program since it came out in the US and she’s made no sales in almost a year. So I’m like, okay, like, you know, I don’t have anything to go on. Like I didn’t have any reference video. So I was like, okay, like, we’ll see how this goes.
Every single day after she shipped it, she sent me a message, very upset and asked me where the video was. She accuse me of stealing products from her. She told me that I was gonna end up getting blacklisted and that she was basically gonna say that I like took the products and didn’t make the video for her and I had to literally physically send her a screenshot from the tracking code that she sent me saying that it had been delivered.
Besides the point, three days before it comes to my house, she starts sending me messages, starts asking me for more content. She basically starts telling me that she wants me to make a separate video with every single one of the products, right? There was like a mug, most of them were t shirts, and then there was some like stickers or something. And I tell her like, you know, I’m just gonna wait and see till the package comes. Just, you know, hang on. Basically, package code delivered to my s doorstep like 8 p. M. And I don’t know if she had like notifications on her phone, but she literally text me at like 8:05 and she’s like, the package was delivered. Where is the video? Oh my God. Fortunately, my daughter was with her mother in law this time. So I go outside, I see the package, which it’s this small, you guys, a thing with like 11 t shirts, a coffee mug and stickers shouldn’t be this small. So I take it inside my house and I realize that not only is it not the products that we agree to, the products that she sent me, I can’t even promote because they aren’t even on her TikTok shop, which means I can earn commission for doing that. And because of the way that the TikTok shop works, I have to use the links that she sent me. Like I have to promote those products, but I didn’t have them. So I sent her a message and for the first time in a few days, she doesn’t respond.
I give it an hour. I go shower and I’m like, you know what, I’m just gonna record this video. I just wanna get this over with, done. Like, I’m just tired of dealing this woman and I just don’t really want to read her like super mean, nasty text message to me tomorrow that I know is coming.
I don’t like filming videos at night, especially not unboxing videos. The lighting in my house is terrible at night time. So I’m like, I don’t really care about this anymore, to be honest. So I start filming this video at like 11:30 at night. I basically do like a blind unboxing of all the products and I very audibly say, I don’t think that I can show this on TikTok because I take the stickers out and they have ariolas on them, nips, nip tips, if you will. And I take them out and I’m trying to make it look like, oh, wow, like cool, you know, like I just didn’t know what the to do. And the supplement she sent me had nothing to do with breastfeeding. They were just like general supplements that somebody would take. I don’t hear from her. And I’m like, you know what, I’m just gonna post the video. I’m gonna be done with it. She can leave me alone because I posted the video and things are done. I hear from her the next morning and she basically messages me and she tells me that she wants me to go back in and make more new content and she wants me to make YouTube videos. She wants me to make separate videos about the supplements, the ingredients and the supplements and all the stuff that I never agree to.
I have a hard time standing up for myself. And I know that. But I had to, you know, like, I was like, hey, like, no, like, I was like, you know, I agree to the unboxing video. I’m not making more videos. I’m not require to do that. We didn’t sign a contract. I don’t hear anything from her. And I thought that was the last that I would see this woman. But a month later, she messages me and asked me to do another partnership with her. Because she says that she needs somebody to promote her website. And just ask if I, out of the kindness of my heart, we’ll collaborate with her again and we’ll just promote her website name. And I just tell her that, you know, I’m just not interested in that right now.
I think I did stop breastfeeding at this time. So I wanna say that was like the reason that I gave for, but oh my God, I’ve never had an experience like this one. I did end up blocking her after the second time because I realized that she was gonna reach out multiple times because she was always commenting on my videos, always like liking my videos, which I appreciate as a creator, right? And like as a brand, I’m sure she appreciates me like making her videos, but it was to the point where it felt like she was kind of trying to make the relationship like more of a friendship with me, which was frustrating because she wasn’t reciprocating anything on her end. And it was just her demanding things of me and then getting mad when I didn’t do like whatever she asked when it wasn’t what we agreed to. Oh, my God.