Monthly Archives: September 2010

Stop sending me spam!

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I received the following email from my old insurance broker. To protect their identity, the ONLY thing I changed in the email is the company’s name. I changed it to “Dumbass” instead of their actual name.Otherwise, this is the exact email they sent me.

My response is below…

Dear _______,

At Dumbass Insurance Agency, our clients are our favorite people!

We always value the opportunity to serve your insurance needs and we greatly appreciate the trust you put in us. You have our sincere promise to always do our best to provide you with the insurance you need at the most competitive price.

Now….Can we ask a favor? Referrals are our best source of new business. We would greatly appreciate it if you could spread the word of how Dumbass has customized a solution for your insurance needs and how we can do the same for your friends, family, and co-workers.

Please ask those you refer to make sure they tell us that you referred them to us so we can send you a great gift as a token of our appreciation.

Your referrals not only help us grow our business, they make us feel good too!

Thank you for your business.

Stay safe!

Here is my response…


Dear _______,

As an individual, since you won’t even take the time to put my name in your marketing emails or filter out email addresses with which you don’t have names, how can I be sure that you’ll take the time to serve my insurance needs?

I prefer to stick with organizations who take the time to ensure that their customers needs are met, and don’t try to take shortcuts in an effort to earn a quick buck instead of doing the right thing.

Please remove me from your mailing list. Thank you.

Sincerely,
_______

The Fate of the Bookstore

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My wanderings tonight brought me to consider the fate of bookstores. I ended up at a local Barnes and Nobles and managed to find quite a few books I was interested in. Particularly, three books on varying aspects of computer programming. The books ranged from $35 to $45 and no doubt would have tax added to them costing me over $120 had I bought them at the store.

When I returned home, I searched on Amazon.com for the same three books. Sure enough, one was $18. one was $4.00 and one was actually $0.01. Each one was coming from a different Amazon affiliate so they each cost $3.99 for shipping. The total of my order was $33.98 which was less than the cost of the cheaper book alone at the bookstore.

With deals like this, there’s few arguments I can make for patronizing local shops. If they don’t conform their pricing structures, I don’t see how it’s beneficial for them to remain open which brings up a personal conflict. I love bookstores!

I enjoy having the ability to pick up new books and peruse them. When purchasing books (with the exception of fiction) it’s critical that the book contain the information I’m looking for and be written in a manner that I can understand and follow. When introducing myself to a new language or technology, It’s good to know if the book is geared towards the beginner or an expert. Sometimes I’ll even read a chapter or two to see if I like the way the author(s) presents the materials. While there’s some provisions to accomplish this online, nothing beats the real thing.

Could bookstores such as Barnes and Noble survive if they cut their in-store prices? Perhaps one solution would be for publishers to send out more new books to public libraries so that people can sample them prior to making any purchases, but would this help sales or hinder them as the book would be “rented” for free.

I’m a big fan of technology, but in addition to the great privileges we get from innovation, there is also a cost associated with advancement.

Enough Wasting Trees.

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How can I get the past hour of my life back? Can I write on all my junk mail, “RETURN TO SENDER. PLEASE RE-SEND VIA EMAIL”? I’ll make a rubber stamp and mark everything this way as I place it back in the outgoing mailbox. I can go through 20-30 peices of junk mail in about 5 seconds on the computer, but it just took me an hour to go through my past month’s mail.

I pay all my bills online, with the exception of a few that still charge additional fees for paying this way. Despite not bothering to open the few that I could identify as bills, it still took me an hour to go through credit card offers, checks with low or promotional rates, subscriptions to magazines I don’t want, thousands of pages of advertisements and coupons, and even a few local pennysaver-type magazines that I can do without. After all was said and done, I kept 5 envelopes I opened, and ripped or shredded and threw away the rest. In fact, I filled a 13 gallon kitchen bag half-full with my unwanted junk mail!

I don’t know if there’s a solution for this, but if anybody has one, I’m all ears. I like my return to sender idea. Or perhaps I could fill out an address change form at the post office and write my email address on the line that reads “Street”. It’s really not worth my effort to go through my mail daily, but likewise, it’s a horror to have to do it all at once.