Quote:
Originally posted by Mike AI@Feb 29 2004, 08:21 PM
Drav, do you get the feeling that cell phone carriers are like this business? Looking for ways to small print a profit?
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Totally, Mike!
Over the years I've had at least one friend in particular who keeps harping on "how horrible and cheating" adult online is, and that I shouldn't be doing it. LOL! So for years I've always argued back with examples of companies and industries who make us look like saints in comparision. I have never had to "look" for examples, they come to me in everyday business.
Reader's Digest preys incredibly on people, senior citizens in particular, with their "American Clearinghouse" type contest scams. I was always reading the fine print for my deceased father in law and mother, figuring out the catches for them in things that came in the mail. Over a period I of time I figured out Reader's Digest contests last 18 months each. They make each mailing (every 45-90 days) SEEM like the contest is just about to conclude, then they add a new "part" to it, and you have to participate in each part. They make each "part" VERY precise and very complicated with at least a dozen strange things that must be done. You do one thing wrong -- don't put the green sticker in the lower left hand corner of page three, don't put the pen mark X-ing out a word in the middle of page two, etc -- they won't tell you, because they want you to purchase, but you become ineligible to win.
They never say if you don't buy something that you won't win, they just IMPLY it with carefully chosen wording about 40 times every mailing. Then they mess things up brilliantly by having a second concurrent contest, also 18 months long, always starting 9 months into the first, so that they overlap purposely to confuse people even more so. Oh, it is diabolical!! And I do not use that word lightly!
That is what a "good name", rock-solid, American-as-apple-pie company like Reader's Digest does. So imagine what everyone else is doing. That said, hell yeah, the cellphone companies are the most in your face ones out there right now, no question about it. But there are tons of "reputable" companies everywhere you look pulling things, unethically and totally legally, upon consumers.