Monday, April 12, 2010

Who Are These People, And Why Do They Want To Give Me Stuff?

Several weeks ago I received a letter from my bank--with which I've done business, in one form or another, for over 30 years. Inside the envelope was an offer from a "separate entity not affiliated with" the bank, some travel-type agency. The deal was this: sign up for this travel service, get great deals on vacations, and pay only about $14/month for this service. Oh, and get a free portable DVD player! And if I cancel the service within 30 days there is no charge to me, but I get to keep the portable DVD player as my free gift.

You might imagine that I entered a reminder on my calendar, and called to cancel after about 27 days. A couple of weeks later UPS showed up at my door with a portable DVD player.

Today I received a letter from my bank--with which I've done business, in one form or another, for over 30 years. Inside the envelope was an offer from a "separate entity not affiliated with" the bank, some home improvement company. The deal was this: sign up for this service, get great deals on appliances or home repairs, and pay only about $14/month for this service. Oh, and get a free GPS! And if I cancel the service within 30 days there is no charge to me, but I get to keep the GPS as my free gift.

You can imagine what I'll be marking on my calendar.

7 comments:

Eric W. said...

What about the Bahamas? Don't you want to get a FANTASTIC ONCE IN A LIFETIME DISCOUNT!?

Darren said...

Their deals were no better than I can find on the internet.

Eric W. said...

All hail Google.

Anonymous said...

A couple of years ago I received an envelope in the mail from the CTA marked "Important member benefit". Inside was nothing but an advertisement for magazine subscriptions. Not professional magazines or trade journals, just "Rolling Stone", "People", and other fish-wrappers.

Steve USMA '85 said...

Make sure it is less than 30 days from when THEY shipped it to you, not from when you received it. Normally they use a method that takes 10-14 days to arrive to you but the clock already started ticking.

Doug said...

I wish my bank (which is actually a credit union) would start stuff like that. I could go for a free Portable DVD player and GPS unit.

Cameron said...

That is awesome! I did that when I was about eight with "Get 10 CDs for a dollar!!" or something like that, but, being eight, I didn't grasp the fine print, so they ended up charging me about $40 a couple of months later. My mom was not pleased.