You've heard the expression you'd better get your waders on, and you really do need them with the violet wand vendors to try to wade through their bullshit.  There's a lot of it.

Now Im not talking the manufacturers.  That's different.  Im talking vendors, those people who resell.  They are a hungry bunch because their markup has to be so steep, and they are as hungry as hyenas.  There's a group of 5 of them that always have so much drama going on in their group that they are worse than Housewives of Orange County.   On any given day you can find one of these 5 posting gossip about another one, but they all largely remain 'frenemies' and have long phone conversations with each other about each other.

Don't let them kid you, they'll sound so nice trying to make a sale.  They'll tell you anything to make a sale.  This week, we've seen this bunch talking about how they are a 'community' of vendors in a thread where someone asked where to buy a wand.

But the reality is---

• They talk an incredible amount of smack about each other behind each other's backs.  (Emails don't go away).
• They've been known to try to sabotage each other's ability to vend at events.  (event organizers just shake their heads.)
• They steal each other's ideas, copyrights, names, and trademarks.  (Browse a few websites, you'll see this in action.)
• Some of them outright lie. 

They have a lot of competition among each other to try to undermine.   The most they can do is copy, copy, copy, steal and oh, often lie. (sounds like the badger, badger, mushroom song, doesn't it?)

The badgers sabotage and undermine.  The mushrooms grow only in their bullshit.  And the snakes lie and steal.

If your vendor is not backed by, supported by, or a member of the International Violet Wand Guild, (who works to set some standards among the violet wand vendors) then I'd remain clear of them, or at least highly suspicious.  Because the Guild doesn't get along with violet wand vendor badger, badgers,  it wont accept the violet wand vendor mushrooms, and it outright bans the violetwand snakes.