Curiosity Over Pride (FYI: To comment, send an e-mail to scifidink@gmail.com)

Monday, January 25, 2010

Mail Order "Business"

I'm going to do a little empirical gig, here.
Like Newton with the apple, right ? (Well, I'll try to be a little more modest in the future ; it's not one of my strong points...)
This morning I received a fancy personalized letter in the mail, informing me that I had WON a FREE tv, to the tune of 600€, and all I have to do is to claim my gift before 72 hours to receive it.

Sigh...

I received this FREE FREE FREE GIFT from a mail order business that I ordered once from, to the tune of 25€ worth of bulbs.
So, it's not really like I'm a tried and true customer, right ?

I have figured out that one of the reasons why I am increasingly a drop out from our fast paced, gimmicky society, is precisely because of the sheer volume of crap like this I get in the mail.
It tires me out. (I have stopped looking at it attentively, and immediately tear it up for the trash. Sometimes I have to be careful and make sure that nothing REALLY important escapes my attention in the mountain of STUFF.)

So... maybe YOU would like to explain to me just what is the... LOGIC ?? behind these kinds of mass produced campaigns which must cost a fair amount of filthy lucre to put together ?

In the meantime... the mail order companies are behaving like our political parties (particularly the LEFT political parties...).
Like... why BOTHER keeping your base happy (like rewarding your faithful customers...) when you can salivate over pie in the sky future "customers", and try to WIN them from the opposition ? (Yeah, the bird in the bush is ALWAYS more valuable than the bird in the hand, right ?)
Why worry about the fact that you are sinking your ship with bloated advertising costs that you rationalize over with the idea that you HAVE to incur them, or you will disappear in the face of the competition ? Lies, lies, and more damned lies.
The gravest lies are the ones that we tell ourselves, anyway...

In Grenoble I regularly shop from businesses where people are still doing... business, and not something else that looks suspiciously like... the finance game.
Businesses still exist. You just have to look a little bit to find them.
And in the next few years, I am willing to bet that they will be making a BIG comeback.

(Sorry for all those capitals. I am a little... hyped up this morning, and feeling more absolute than usual... I can already hear Dinky " WHAT, more than USUAL, HELP !!!!)

I hope that you are surviving your heavy work load, Thai. I sympathize.

8 comments:

Thai said...

This week should not be so bad.

RE: advertising overload

Classic tragedy of the commons issue

Debra said...

So... tell me, Thai.
In the classic commons issue of Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus, how does MRS Thai deal with tragedy of the commons responses ? ;-)

Thai said...

In the end we cooperate ;-)

Thai said...

+ she doesn't tolerate any blog talk in the home ;-)

Debra said...

That good ole splitting.
It works wonders.
My husband lets me do almost ANYTHING I want...

Thai said...

Deb, thoughts?

Dink said...

"+ she doesn't tolerate any blog talk in the home ;-)"

Yes, compartmentalization.

If Honda or Toyota will make a hybrid model of this I will spend untold amounts of money buying a fleet.

Debra said...

Cupcake cars... Geez, dinky thanks for that cute clip from the Letterman Show.
Now... HOW can this be that David is toppling a SYMBOL of our Judeo-Christianic heritage by knocking over that Christmas tree ? :-)) And with a cupcake car, and not a sling ?
David needs driving lessons before we let him out on the road in that car... He tore apart his studio.
Thai, the burqa issue is a tempest in a teapot, but has the unfortunate capacity to make things tense and hysterical in France.
The partisans of the Republic (all capital letters...) RIGHTLY see in the burqa a challenge to Republican values, particularly over women's condition.
But they don't understand that a truly secular society is one in which... secularity is NOT a religion. Tough, huh ?
The Socialists are smart, for once, and are not touching this one with a ten foot pole.
Even the UMP party is divided on this issue.
France really doesn't need anything else to rile up its Muslim population, particularly as ugly discrimination against them has existed for quite some time now, and is nowhere near disappearing.
Something along the lines of... they are the LAST immigrant population to arrive in France, so, they get all the heat, right ?
The burqa is the expression of (Muslim) women's dissatisfaction with the idea that... EQUALITY means that EVERYBODY "gets to" slave to bring home the bread. Men AND women. All of us happily trotting off to the factory, or the office in the morning, in the best of all possible worlds.
Yeah, well, democracy DEFINITELY has its totalitarian face. Definitely..

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