Just Cancel the @#%$* Account! 483
An anonymous reader writes "PC World Senior Editor Tom Spring signed up for 32 online accounts. Then tried to cancel all of them. The most difficult to cancel: NetZero. The easiest to cancel: Consumer Reports Online and The New York Times TimesSelect. His experience was rated on a number of criteria, and highlights the hoops that commercial enterprises put in place to keep their 'customers'. From the article: 'I had a hard time canceling my $5 monthly Gold Classmates.com account, too. I couldn't find any information on how to cancel until I entered the word cancel In the site's search engine. Classmates.com spokesperson John Uppendahl confirmed that there is no other way to find cancellation information. But that was only the first hoop I had to jump through to cancel my membership. Classmates.com also forced me to click through several Web pages reminding me of the benefits I'd lose. Finally my clicking ended at a generic Member Support e-mail contact page containing a blank 'Your Question' field. Though the form said nothing about cancellations, I used it to request that the service cancel my subscription. The next day I received an e-mail message confirming that the service had accepted my request.'"
Virtual Credit Card Anybody? (Score:5, Interesting)
This is precisely why I use virtual CC numbers. My bank (MBNA, now bought by B of A) allows me to set a limit on the amount of money that can be used, and the expiration date is usually two months in the future. A few companies (most recently Time Magazine) have tried the old trick "Submit a new card number to ensure uninterrupted service", but the truth is, they know that as long as they have a valid CC number they are in a much stronger position.
On a different thread, I personally found Paypal to be the hardest to cancel. The link is buried deep in the Options menu, good luck finding it, aunt Mary.
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I just went to Paypal.com, logged into my account, and clicked on the "Profile" link. At the bottom of the "Account Information" window there is a link for "Close Account". From there it asked for the checking/credit card numbers linked to my account for verification. I didn't actually go through that process, because I don't want to cancel my account,
Re:Virtual Credit Card Anybody? (Score:5, Informative)
They say "you knowingly signed up and agreed to XYZ unless you canceled, so just because your credit card has expired, doesn't mean you don't owe us." And when you put it that way, I think they're right.
At least legally.
Re:Virtual Credit Card Anybody? (Score:5, Interesting)
Order a free copy of your credit report from the Big Three (you can do it easily from http://www.annualcreditreport.com/ [annualcreditreport.com]). When you receive the three reports, dispute the debt on each of them following the procedures outlined in the credit report.
The company reporting the negative information is then required to submit supporting documentation, which often doesn't happen.
Sounds like you may have already tried this, but if not, it's not too time-consuming.
Re:Virtual Credit Card Anybody? (Score:4, Interesting)
For example, in the past year two relatives called and asked me why are the reports $39.95 when it's supposed to be free ("freecreditreport" was burned into their brains). I had to point out the blue on blue text that looks like legalese on the left side. They totally missed it.
Can't blame Experian for trying to hijack the process, but it's scummy enough where folks like us just need to spread the "correct" link.
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They send you CDs through the post then bill you unless you send them back. Fair enough.. try cancelling.
Wrote. No response. Phoned. Said they'd cancelled... CDs kept coming. Wrote again. No response. Got a solicitor to send them a vaguely threatening letter (also mentioning that any further CDs would be treated as unsolicited mail). They stopped! Woohoo.
*18 months later* CDs started coming through the post every couple of days. Phoned.. no record of my account
New Year Credit Report (Score:3, Insightful)
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This happened to me. I tried to open a checking
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Anyone have any ideas? How do companies match records in a credit report?
Re:Virtual Credit Card Anybody? (Score:5, Interesting)
This is not a bad outcome (assuming you're in the right and don't owe the debt). As soon as it goes to the collection agency, you can send them a letter asking for any and all evidence the collection agency has to back up their claim they have a valid debt so that you can begin your lawsuit against them. Once you do that, they are legally obligated to furnish you with the information within 30 days, and they are not allowed to touch your credit report until after the lawsuit is finished. Unless it's some huge debt, they'd waste more money trying to prove it then it's worth to them, and so they'll fail to respond within 30 days and you're all done, credit report intact.
I've done this on several occasions after companies tried to bully my into paying a fraudulent debt. Works like a charm. They only annoying part is that it's the innocent collection agency who loses here, as they've already paid the original company for the debt. But I guess that's a buyer beware situation for them.
Re:Virtual Credit Card Anybody? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Virtual Credit Card Anybody? (Score:5, Informative)
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I've dealt with these blockheads when nonexistant accounts were turned over to collections, and to a toad, every one of them gave me explicit permission to record the phone calls by stating that "this call may be monitored for quality assurance". Since no one seems to remember the difference between "may" (which includes granting permission) and "might" (which is what they probably meant), record away!
Re:Virtual Credit Card Anybody? (Score:5, Informative)
Read the following thread:
http://www.fatwallet.com/forums/arcmessageview.ph
And follow the link to the creditnet.com message board. That forum is VERY good at helping to get credit reports cleaned up. Getting invalid derogatory info off you credit report is usually a piece of cake, and if it is difficult they can tell you how to get a quick $1K out of the company that reported it (there are government regulations they have to follow, and if they don't you get free money). If the debt reported is valid, there is still a decent chance to get it removed (either because the company doesn't maintain proper documentation or fails to follow government mandated procedures for responding to complaints/inquiries).
Re:Virtual Credit Card Anybody? (Score:5, Informative)
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NetZero... (Score:3, Informative)
Vonage (Score:5, Funny)
Back when I canceled my Vonage account some 2 years ago, it took a 2 hour hold time, plus mailing their hardware back at my expense to cancel.
Plus now I get monthly "Come back to Vonage and save!" letters in the mail that I can use for kindling. I guess he hasn't gotten his first letter yet.
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I still have it.
funny-ish (Score:2)
Irritating as hell (Score:5, Insightful)
Whenever I encounter a situation like this (where cancelling is made a pain in the ass), I vow to never again use the service, and to tell anyone I know about what a crappy company it is.
I have actually returned to companies that did not make my life difficult in this way. Sometimes, you just don't need the service. Maybe you will be a return customer. But when they do this crap, they piss people off. They ensure that you will NEVER return and that you will do everything you can to spread the word about what a worthless company they are.
Re:Irritating as hell (Score:5, Insightful)
It's just that when you're cancelling the service, chances are you're not interested in coming back. And even if you against the odds do, you're still a fickle customer, who have cost them extra work. Getting rid of you as painlessly as possible for them when you first cancel must be the first priority.
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*Art
Re:Irritating as hell (Score:5, Informative)
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There used to be a saying along the lines of 'a happy customer will tell five people, an unhappy one will tell fifty.' In the age of the Internet, that number is a lot more; I've written articles about bad customer service that have had several thousand unique readers.
If I cancel a service, it can be for any number of reasons. It might, for example, be that I am moving house, or going away for a while and will want a similar service when I get back. If it's hard for me to cancel, then when I want a sim
Re:Irritating as hell (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:Irritating as hell (Score:5, Insightful)
Unfortunately, by the time a company realizes that acting like a jilted ex is bad for business, the guy who thought up the "Psycho Girlfriend" policy has already moved on to another company. Probably with a nice bonus, since all those unwilling customers were adding to the bottom line while his policy was in effect. And at his new job, when he explains his success to his new boss, it sounds like a great deal, and they too implement the policy, and he gets a raise. Lather, rinse, repeat.
In fact, I think this might be an analog of the "single particle universe" theory, in which one particle zips back and forth through time, constituting all physical matter. In a similar fashion, this one goofball is jumping from company to company, making each one into Jennifer Jason Leigh in "SWF". If we could just find that guy and "cancel" him, the world would be a better place...
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that reminds me of a similar situation (Score:4, Funny)
Re:that reminds me of a similar situation (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:that reminds me of a similar situation (Score:4, Insightful)
Unlikely to be shenanigans. Since the normal wank speed of an adult American female is 3-4 strokes per second (SPS), Larry's best effort only lasts for 25-30 seconds. That's well below the US average of 7.9 minutes.
It's definitely not something most people would brag about on the internets, and it does explain his /. trolling style. Let's face it, if Larry was a real performer in the sack, he wouldn't need to be seeking the approval of a pack of pasty-faced blog trolls.
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Consumer Reports (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Consumer Reports (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Consumer Reports (Score:5, Funny)
Well, it'd be pretty weird if Consumer Reports was a pain in the ass company.
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Netflix (Score:2)
Of course, Netflix provided absolutely no customer service contact information. I believe there was a customer support web form, but that was only available to members with an active acount.
Actually, true.com sounds like the worst offender (Score:3, Interesting)
.Mac & iTunes (Score:3, Interesting)
iTunes is the more entertaining one. When I set up my iTunes account, it filled in my
(This is why I laugh whenever some MacHead tells me about how they "buy" their music rather than "rent" it. Cancel your iTunes account and see what happens to those songs you "bought".)
Re:.Mac & iTunes (Score:5, Informative)
There's nothing to cancel, iTunes isn't a subscription service. All the songs you purchase are linked to a Apple ID, which doesn't expire.
Also, you could've continued using the Apple ID created with your
As for the ID being "buried" within OS X, try opening up the
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What happens if you forget the important details like password and username/email address because your computer remembered them for you, and then your hard disk crashes? Is the info to re-access your "Apple ID" recoverable from the music files themselves?
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Netzero.. the worst by Far (Score:2, Informative)
Unbelievable. It probably cost the company $50 in salary, social security, benefits, and phone usage to delay me canceling the service, all for possibly me getting frustrated and waiting 1 more month to cancel the $10 service.
I learned my lesson though. Next time I had to cancel an insurance policy, I simply told them "I've talked to you for 10 minutes. You have confirm
credit card merchant agreements (Score:5, Informative)
Clearly no one is within their rights to dispute authorized charges. That's the whole point of a chargeback -- it's to charge back unauthorized charges.
You can't sign away your right to dispute unauthorized charges. For example, VISA's Chargeback Guidelines [visa.com] (PDF) specifically address this:
BTW, reading the VISA document above is well worth time. It's useful for those checkout line arguments you invariably find yourself in occasionally. (minimum charges, ID checks, etc.)
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Of course, if they want to ding me for this, then they're gonna have to go after me in court, because if they try TO (improperly) charge that $1000 to my credit card, I'm gonna dispute it bigtime.
The main reason for having that clause is to scare people into not disputing unauthorized charges. In other words, If
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Ge
Heh.. he did not try to cancel Tivo service (Score:2)
To cancel TiVo service, contact Customer Support
The "Contact Us"/Customer support page does not mention anything about where to call to cancel, just "Activation" and "Problems". I suppose inability to cancel online (activation is easy) is a problem. Calling them brings up morbid "voice activated system". Getting through it is not that bad, as it underst
Tell your credit card company to cancel it. (Score:2)
There is an easy way (Score:5, Funny)
Cancelling Woes (Score:2, Interesting)
efax sucks! (Score:5, Informative)
- We try to go to their site, looking for "cancel subscriptions". We search "cancel" and they have 2 links in their help page. But when I clicked on it, it shows nothing (both Firefox and IE 7)
- Then we try their web chat. First when I tell the web chat we are cancelling, they give me ANOTHER link for their support chat. Fine. AND THEN, when we try to use their chat, it's broken.
It starts to sound fishy to me up to this point...
- We then try to call their support line. It takes forever just to go through the phone menus, and then we were put on hold for 20 minutes. Finally, a guy with distinctly Indian accent answered the call. He did not speak English that, I have to guesstimate what he said. I have to basically just keep saying "I just need to cancel my subscription, no thanks." repeatedly to get him stop repeat the scripted answers.
Anyway... in the end this support guy said he'd give us a refund, but he'd put us on hold again to talk to the billing department. And finally he claimed the support department will refund us "in a few days". Oh yes, takes less than a day to charge the credit card, but a few days to refund...
In the end we spent half an hour to deal with the cancellation. You are free to call their support line, and then see how much time to get to their billing "department". Here is more efax horror stories [typepad.com]. Don't ever try to use efax in your life time. You have been warned. How these companies manage to piss their customers is beyond me.Re:efax sucks! (Score:5, Informative)
no comment on efax... but... some companies (and the one I work for is one of them) trust the general customer service agent to charge your card but not to give money back.. because they dont want extra fraud going on by employees.. such as putting money back onto their own cards out of the company accounts...
Its a hassle because then the companies typically only have one or a small number of people authorized to put money back on to a card and thats part of what delays the refund.
True, but the corporations still win... (Score:5, Insightful)
Sadly, I think that it will remain like this for a very long time. These corporations know that if they retain their customers, they'll have more customers in the end. These companies don't care about bad reputations; they rely on their overly cheap and "amazing" deals to attract new customers. The Slashdot crowd is an intelligent and computer-savvy group of people. But the average consumer which signs up for these services might not be, and he might not care about the cancellation process, and he might be influenced by these exit interviews to stay.
Remember, corporations have access to great analytical data. If they continue to make hard cancellation processes, it means that there is profit to be made. That there are people who will stay because of the amount of labor required to cancel.
It's sad. I would really like these business practices to change. I, for once, will never make my hosting services hard to cancel because I believe in having a good reputation and I'm satisfied by the warm emails that I get from happy customers. I'm sure that other Slashdot users who provide some kind of service do the same.
Credit cards suck (Score:2, Insightful)
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Maybe you should try that too.
Blockbuster Online (Score:4, Informative)
From my experience; You can suspend billing of a Blockbuster Online account from the website itself. They won't bill you again, account remains open, and no futher dvds at sent to you. And you can reactivate billing to continue dvd mailings to you.
Vonage wasn't easy for me (Score:3, Informative)
Basically I had to wait a few weeks until we had some downtime due to an accident. After waiting almost on hour and a half on hold, the operator kept trying to talk me out of it. I finally convinced her when I said "I JUST WANT TO FUCKING CANCEL". It was silent for a moment and then she said "OK, its all done, have a nice day." I guess I may have just had a unique encounter, but Vonage for me was FAR from easy. They have 24 hour support, but can't have 24 hour cancellations... I wont ever be returning to them. Had it been painless, I probably would have returned to Vonage when I moved.
ServerPronto and Cancellations (Score:2, Interesting)
Hassle is the intention! (Score:3, Insightful)
Most people are lazy. They'll just say "oh well at least they won't bill me again" when they see a parting shot from something they cancelled. It's only $15, and my time is valuable i'm not going to sit on hold and talk to someone who doesn't speak english just for $15 right? So the company makes it as much of a hassle as they can, in order to keep an extra $15 here and there. I imagine if you tried 200 companies, at least %75 of them have a policy in place to do the exact same thing. They also have a policy to own up and apologize for it whenever they're caught, by explaining that it was a one-time thing and they're very very sorry and it won't happen again. AOL did it to me several times (it's like I'd have learned my lesson once, but noooooo. Never use AOL as temporary internet access while you're out of town. Free trials are rarely free).
The first place I heard of shady deals like this, of course, were the porn sites. You sign up for 30-days, but of course you're on a recurring billing immediately. If you're not careful, you're also sometimes agreeing to a multi-site pass that costs a lot more than you initially imagined! The porn sites are banking on the idea that you're not going to call visa and ask them to cancel a charge from a porn site at worst, and that you won't even notice the charge at best. If you find out, no problem they won't bill you again (but they won't refund you!). They still get 2 months of money from a one-month sub. It's genius, and it's no wonder "legit" companies have adopted porno site practices.
Consumer Reports WebWatch (Score:3, Informative)
They've also compiled a list of every site that's pledged to follow the guidelines. (PDF) http://www.consumerwebwatch.org/images/praisewort
MySpace won't cancel mine. (Score:5, Interesting)
Wanted to cancel, and the confirmation email never came.
Tried changing my email address (to something without a plus) and the confirmation email never came.
Wrote to privacy@myspace.com like MySpace says to in this situation... it's been 2-3 months and the account is still there.
For a couple of those months the account's name has been the uncensored version of "F*** MySpace" and its profile has been a description of how broken MySpace is in this regard. This hasn't gotten it canceled either.
Once I manage to move the account's few friends somewhere else, I think I'll have to update its publicly-visible goodness with some choice commentary on "Tom," Rupert Murdoch, barnyard animals, drugs, Al-Qaeda, minors, and whatever else, to see if that helps.
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My solution was to upload as much pornographic material as I could then add people as friends. Those people who blindly authorise add's without checking your profile certainly complain fast enough when xxx material appears in their friends list. I also started filling out the 'report offensive material' on my own account.
I got the idea from The Consumerist [consumerist.com]
As my blog on the issue notes:
"I can confirm this method works. I can also confirm you cannot achieve this by uploading videos - the
That's nothing. (Score:3, Interesting)
Why did I want it cancelled? Fraud. Obvious out-and-out fraud that I wasn't the victim of, but saw happening, and when it was brought to their attention the silence was deafening. Ebay's utter lack of even basic business honesty really offends me. Microsoft looks like a shining paragon of righteousness standing next to them. Even thinking of it now, more than a year later, a pit of anger is forming in my gut.
I can only think of one reason why they make it so difficult to delete accounts: that it inflates the user base fraudulently. Inactive accounts count as "members" and they make it that difficult to cancel hoping that the user just gives up, which is probably what happens most of the time. It really was insane how much effort I had to put into getting an empty account nuked.
Ebay, as a result, is on my list as "Not Recommended"
--
BMO
Try cancelling AOL... you can't get rid of them (Score:3, Informative)
I Worked At A Company (Score:4, Interesting)
True.com vs. Match.com (Score:5, Insightful)
Two tricks I use... (Score:5, Informative)
I also run my own mailserver, so every vendor I deal with gets their own address which just redirects to my main address. When I cease dealing with them, their e-mail address goes away and I never see another message from them. (This is also a handy method to see who's selling their customer databases to spammers)
~Philly
Re:Cost of cancelling (Score:5, Insightful)
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I had just moved back home from another state and wasn't sure how long I'd be here, so I specifically asked the salesperson about cancellation, I was told that it'd just be a $100 cancellation fee (even that is too much, but seemed reasonable at the time for some reason.) 6 months later, I tried to cancel only to find out that I have to show proof that I am moving more than X miles from any Gold's location, etc...
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Seeing as this information will be stored on a computer, it's not too difficult for a scrtpt to drag up the list of options and erase each one as appropriate. If you're doing this by hand in anything other than a tiny business with customer numbers measured in tens, the problem is yours, not your customers.
Re:Cost of cancelling (Score:5, Insightful)
Cancelling an account should never take more than a few keystrokes and a button click. Maybe two clicks, the second one being a verification -- but if you've ever watched support handle confirmation screens, you know they aren't going to look at them anyway.
This is what admins are FOR: writing the backend code in the DB (and elsewhere) which ensures that, yes, when a user cancels their account, all traces of them are either removed, or the account is put into a 'hold' status if there are things like (as you said) e-mail addresses to worry about.
And no, there should NOT be cancellation charges on ANY service. Ever. None. Zero.
That is what long term contracts are for. If I say I want one year of service, then I pay for one year of service. Even if I cancel after a month. If the company offers me PART of my money back, cool! I think we are on the same page there in a way - a lot of people see a 50 dollar early termination fee as hideous, even though they are actually getting out of, say, 9 months of a 40 dollar per month service. I just despise situations where I *have* to sign a contract, and I have no power to negotiate and nobody else offers shorter terms.
And yes, I've been an admin at a company that had to deal with such. No, it wasn't shockingly difficult to create the system for dealing with this. Though, I admit it was made easier by the fact that, by law, we had to retain most of the information, and thus didn't have to do much more than null out CC#s and put the user in the inactive bin.
Personally, I'd like to see a law that states 'Cancelling may not be any more difficult than creating.' Four clicks to create? Four clicks to cancel. Big bold 'Create Account' button?... You get the idea. If you can create an account via the web, you can damned well figure out how to cancel one.
Anway, enough late night rambling,
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Re:OMG that is annoying (Score:5, Informative)
Here is the Big Hassle list:
* AOL
* BlueMountain.com
* Classmates.com
* ESPN
* MSN Internet
* Napster.com
* NetZero
* Real Rhapsody
* Real SuperPass
* True.com
Re:OMG that is annoying (Score:5, Informative)
When I had to leave for college a year or two back, I couldn't bring my Xbox with me (because it wasn't even mine. It belongs to my brother. I brought my Gamecube instead) So when I decided it was better to cancel it rather than pay another $50 for a year of a service I rarely used (I only played a few games, and Splinter Cell taught me to hate 13 year olds like nothing else), for a system I wouldn't have, I went to cancel, but, surprise, Microsoft's web pages have no information on canceling. After a great deal of googling, I found out the only way to cancel is to call a special tech-support hotline. And of course, the operator asked about 15 times if I was sure, and listed so many alternatives ("Maybe someone else up there will have an Xbox."). Thanks to that, I don't think I'll ever play another Xbox (or more realistically, a 360, if I ever get the system) game online ever again.
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As a sidenote on the 13-year-old thing, it amuses me that Xbox fans will accuse Nintendo of catering only to children when it is their system that is played primarily by young Halo-loving teenagers while Nintendo caters to the mainstream adult crowd through their Touch Generation products and the Wii. I just find it funny.
Re:OMG that is annoying (Score:4, Interesting)
One other thing. People here keep trotting out that VISA Terms and Conditions which says the merchant is not allowed to bind you to XYZ terms (e.g., they can't penalize you for using virtual cc numbers) But if you contractually agree to the penalty, I wonder if the Visa T&C will be a valid defense? After all, just because they've breached their contract with VISA doesn't mean you (necessarily) get to breach your contract with the merchant. Presumably your defense would be fraudulent inducement? Any case law on this?
Re:OMG that is annoying (Score:5, Funny)
Just call them, press 0 about a hundred times[1], and tell them you want to cancel your account. If they ask why you want to cancel your account, just be honest. If that's not good enough, start swearing. (I'm fucking tired of your assholes charging me twice what the local ISP charges...)
[1] The old business man trick. If you do it, you'll get better treatment from just about anyone.
Re:OMG that is annoying (Score:5, Interesting)
I actually reported my card lost and had it replaced in order to get rid of an Earthlink DSL account a couple of years ago. Even though I (or anyone else) hadn't lived at the DSL location for 6 mos, and the phone line asociated w/ the acount had been disconnected for the same amount of time, they would not cancel the acount, so I did what I had to do.
Your credit card was not pwned by AOL (Score:4, Funny)
AOL did not reactivate your account, in your cardmember agreement it tells you that if upon closing if recurring charges still come in that the credit card company has the right to reactivate your account. And by just reporting your card stolen via the credit card you are still leaving AOL with authorization to maintain an account in your name, which means that when they do not collect money from you they can send it to collections.
Why not just cancel AOL, or of course the super-dooper-easy method get your spouse to do it.
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I actually did that with Stupidico "high-speed edition". They actually lodged a complaint for credit card fraud, saying I gave them a false credit card number. Nothing ever came out of it because, well, the credit card has been cancelled...
The most stupid thing is that I had no problem whatsoever opening another account in another city afterwards. Seems their marketing depart
Re:OMG that is annoying (Score:5, Informative)
In a related note, that very thing happened with me with Gold's Gym - my credit card lapsed and I had moved after college. I got a hold of them about the account after finding negative marks on my credit report. I paid the rest of my contract but they didn't tell me that after my contract was completed, I went to automatic monthly renewal. They also didn't tell me that I couldn't cancel that automatic renewal over the phone, neither could I go in person into one of their local locations. I tried to do both of these, visiting their gym when on vacation because I lived in another state at the time. For the phone cancellation, they said that they worried that some joker might cancel my account for me over the phone. I couldn't cancel at one of their locations because they just didn't cancel an account there...which was odd because a whole gaggle of tanned/manicured individuals were there to *create* accounts for people. I had to fax in a signed statement to their corporate offices (for that set of gyms) saying that I wanted to cancel my account.
So, not only did I have to pay for 6 months of gym "service" while living out of state because they had put me on automatic renewal, more bad credit stuff showed up on my credit report.
When I talked to them on the phone about the whole deal, they politely (sarcasm) responded that automatic renewal was in the contract so it was my own fault. So when I moved back to the state where the account was, I opted to avoid their gym like a basket full of snakes and spiders.
Let's give it up for self-serving companies who go to great lengths to sign people up but have to be threatened with legal action or with a public relations campaign to improve their practices in order to avoid destroying their own customers' credit. Btw, I know a guy whose credit was actually completely ruined by that same chain of Gold's Gyms - which btw is in the Salt Lake and Provo/Orem areas of Utah.
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Have you tried writing "return to sender" on it and stuffing it back in the mailbox? (Not that I've tried it...)
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Most junk mail is bulk rate. It won't be returned, it will just be destroyed. If you get junk mail at the first-class rate, that would be returned.
Grandparent won't be able to get the post office to not deliver the mail. It's a federal crime (18 USC 1701, 1702). Postal employees have lost their jobs [sptimes.com] over such action.
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You think this because you are a normal, intelligent person. Marketing people do not think this because they are neither normal nor intelligent.
All marketing people know is that N% of the junk mail they send results in sales. Therefore, in order to increase sales, all you have to do is send more junk mail. Dividing customers into groups like "Might buy from us" and "Won't buy from us" is simply too complica
Handling credit card offers: NOT return to sender (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Handling credit card offers: NOT return to send (Score:3, Informative)
there's a better way (Score:2)
With any luck, Capital One will get charged extra for having so much extra in the reply envelope. And the only pieces you have to dispose of are the ones with your personal info.
Re:please cancel slashdot subscription zonk is nut (Score:5, Funny)
Re:please cancel slashdot subscription zonk is nut (Score:5, Funny)
Splat vs Bounce (Score:5, Funny)
I imagine that a sufficiently fat person, if one were to observe from say, 3 feet, would make a quite satisfying "splat" as he hit the ground.
But no question that a surprising amount of bounce would be involved, too. And a great deal of thud.