Show HN: Send Coal to Congress

[ScottWhigham]

Heck, at least half the people on HN won't get why coal was chosen. Perhaps an answer as to "Why coal?" would be appropriate on the home page.

Also, there is no call to action (or it's not clear enough). I clicked through to the cart and it gives me a three-step explanation but no links or buttons that say "Click me to get started". I was on the cart page and, at the bottom, it just says "It appears that your cart is currently empty!" This could be massively improved if you just sit your mom (or someone non technical) down at a computer and watch what they click while trying to accomplish a given tasks (or just exploring).

[jamescun]

As someone who does not get why coal was chosen, I was hoping you would explain why coal was chosen in lieu of waiting for the website to update.

[showerst]

FWIW packages sent to member offices get scanned by a mail processing center off site, I'm not sure if they'd actually deliver the coal on to the office or not =P.

[coal2congress]

I looked into that some and it didn't sound like coal was an item that'd get flagged

[_stuart]

What does sending coal to a congress member do? Why not donate the money to the candidate you think you should be in congress?

[dragonwriter]

> What does sending coal to a congress member do?

Makes money for the person selling the service of sending coal to members of Congress (and, secondarily, for the coal industry.)

> Why not donate the money to the candidate you think you should be in congress?

Because there is no way for someone to throw up a quick service to make money off of that.

[SoftwareMaven]

Please sort the list of states in the filter. Reading each of 50 entries to find my state is suboptimal.

[BigTuna]

This plan crashes and burns at Step 3. Hope you make money though.

[jrobertfox]

this is pretty awesome, do you make a profit off of this? how many orders so far?

[coal2congress]

I'll make a small margin if I get I bunch of orders, but haven't had many orders yet. Any improvement suggestions?

[thrillgore]

Christmas has come early!

[madaxe]

But... by buying coal, you're supporting their interests. Much of congress has an incentive to blow up Appalachia.

[coal2congress]

But maybe they'll get so much coal they never wanna see another piece again?! ;)