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rewards every 3 months. Visit ???? for details."
Wow, thanks T-Mobile. So if I give you loads of my money, you'll give me
a little something to say thank you?
...alternatively, how about I just ignore you're generous offer
completely? :-P
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Invisible wrote:
> rewards every 3 months. Visit ???? for details."
>
> Wow, thanks T-Mobile. So if I give you loads of my money, you'll give me
> a little something to say thank you?
>
> ...alternatively, how about I just ignore you're generous offer
> completely? :-P
Credit Card Company Rep: "Congratulations! You've been pre-approved
for our Titanium Card."
Me: "Sorry, but your Titanium Card has been pre-rejected."
Regards,
John
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John VanSickle wrote:
> Credit Card Company Rep: "Congratulations! You've been pre-approved
> for our Titanium Card."
Congratulations! You've been approved for a Nobidium Paladium Card.
Please fill out the PRIORITY APPLICATION FORM below.
> Me: "Sorry, but your Titanium Card has been pre-rejected."
Gee, really? :-P
Also,
WTF? Why would I want that?
Did you hear the story about the guy who sent back an envelope full of
dimes, just heavy enough to put it into the next postage class, so the
advertiser had to pay extra duty on it? And when they complained that he
sent a bunch of dimes rather than a form, he said he did it by mistake,
and demanded that they *return* the money to him, so they sent him a
cheque for $0.18 or whatever it was.
Of course, it's probably 100% balony, but it's an amusing story none the
less.
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Invisible wrote:
> Wow, thanks T-Mobile. So if I give you loads of my money, you'll give me
> a little something to say thank you?
>
> ...alternatively, how about I just ignore you're generous offer
> completely? :-P
Hmm, yes... Just recently T-Mobile seem to have sent me quite a few text
messages about various "hey, if you spent a certain amount of money in a
certain way, we'll give you some free stuff that you can only use under
certain conditions" type of offers.
There's some interesting psychology in there. I mean, like, "buy 1, get
one free". Sounds great, right?
So how about "buy 1, pay for 2 even though you only bought 1". Suddenly
it doesn't sound so great, does it? :-P All they're really doing is
doubling the marked price of the individual item.
Some poor saps will buy just one, and get stung for the cost of 2 even
though they only bought one. And everybody else will buy 2, and pay the
normal price for them anyway. And the shop gets to crow about how their
"brilliant offers" save you money. <insert cynical remarks about the
manipulation of the population here>
Apparently it's a well-known fact that whether something is presented as
a cost or a discount has a large effect on consumer behaviour. If you
say "buy 10 and get a 10% discount", people think that's great. If you
say "buy less than 10 and get a 10% surcharge" it's not so great.
(Glossing over the small fact that the two 10% values are percentages of
different numbers...)
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> Hmm, yes... Just recently T-Mobile seem to have sent me quite a few text
> messages about various "hey, if you spent a certain amount of money in a
> certain way, we'll give you some free stuff that you can only use under
> certain conditions" type of offers.
Luckily for me I guess they realise that sending those sorts of messages to
people on business tarifs is pointless :-)
> Some poor saps will buy just one, and get stung for the cost of 2 even
> though they only bought one. And everybody else will buy 2, and pay the
> normal price for them anyway. And the shop gets to crow about how their
> "brilliant offers" save you money. <insert cynical remarks about the
> manipulation of the population here>
When I was living in the UK I got a message from Vodafone telling me that I
should sign up "for free" to their "passport" service, which meant while
abroad I got cheaper calls or something. Anyway I thought why not if it's
free, so I phoned up to activiate the service (as it instructed you to do
so) and was told I needed to upgrade my account first (obviously this new
tarif cost twice my current tarif). After a few back-and-to arguments about
how this wasn't actually free for me I hung up :-)
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>> Hmm, yes... Just recently T-Mobile seem to have sent me quite a few
>> text messages about various "hey, if you spent a certain amount of
>> money in a certain way, we'll give you some free stuff that you can
>> only use under certain conditions" type of offers.
>
> Luckily for me I guess they realise that sending those sorts of messages
> to people on business tarifs is pointless :-)
It seems business people get all the best stuff, yes.
It's like Norton Antivirus. Install that, and watch your PC slow to a
crawl. It now takes 20 minutes to boot up, and every time it does you
can a dozen popup windows telling you that your virus definitions are
out of date and you haven't run a full scan yet this week, yadda yadda yack.
I mean, seriously, the actual malware might be less of a problem than
this product!
Now try installing Symantec Antivirus Corporate Edition. (Which, by the
way, you can only purchase in license units of 50 or more. And it's
*steep*.) Once it's installed, you would never know it's there. By
default there isn't even an icon in the notification area. The only clue
it's even there is an entry on the start menu and in add/remove
programs. There is no noticable affect on system performance, except for
extremely file-intensive operations. (That's file-intensive, not
I/O-intensive. Working on 10GB files is no problem; just don't try
opening and closing 50,000 files per second.)
I guess they figured business customers will switch to an less annoying
product unless they make it really minimal.
Another nice thing is that you can control it centrally; set whether end
users can control any of the settings, decide when it should update,
when (if at all) it should do full scans, etc.
Similarly, my company has just started using something called WUS. It
seems to allow you to centrally control which Microsoft updates get
installed, and on which computers. Guy in America presses a button, all
my PCs lock up for 4 hours, and when they finish they all have service
pack 3 now. Pretty mental, really.
> When I was living in the UK I got a message from Vodafone telling me
> that I should sign up "for free" to their "passport" service, which
> meant while abroad I got cheaper calls or something. Anyway I thought
> why not if it's free, so I phoned up to activiate the service (as it
> instructed you to do so) and was told I needed to upgrade my account
> first (obviously this new tarif cost twice my current tarif). After a
> few back-and-to arguments about how this wasn't actually free for me I
> hung up :-)
Hmm. So it's "free" if you spend lots more money first?
Yeah, nice try. ;-)
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Invisible wrote:
> There's some interesting psychology in there. I mean, like, "buy 1, get
> one free". Sounds great, right?
>
> So how about "buy 1, pay for 2 even though you only bought 1". Suddenly
> it doesn't sound so great, does it? :-P All they're really doing is
> doubling the marked price of the individual item.
Uh..."buy 1, get 1 free" doesn't mean "buy 1, pay for 2". it means buy
one, pay 1/2. at least, that's how it works at the local grocery store.
> Apparently it's a well-known fact that whether something is presented as
> a cost or a discount has a large effect on consumer behaviour. If you
> say "buy 10 and get a 10% discount", people think that's great. If you
> say "buy less than 10 and get a 10% surcharge" it's not so great.
Except that's not the same thing at all. Things *cost more* in small
amounts. When you buy in bulk, you can get a reduced price because the
cost of production *really is* less.
--
Tim Cook
http://empyrean.freesitespace.net
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Tim Cook wrote:
> Uh..."buy 1, get 1 free" doesn't mean "buy 1, pay for 2". it means buy
> one, pay 1/2. at least, that's how it works at the local grocery store.
I think that's actually a law in many US states.
> Except that's not the same thing at all. Things *cost more* in small
> amounts. When you buy in bulk, you can get a reduced price because the
> cost of production *really is* less.
Or "we'll forego some of our profit to get rid of this stock we're paying
rental space to hold, so we can put something more popular there."
--
Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
There's no CD like OCD, there's no CD I knoooow!
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On Tue, 26 May 2009 12:31:26 +0100, Invisible wrote:
> And when they complained that he
> sent a bunch of dimes rather than a form, he said he did it by mistake,
> and demanded that they *return* the money to him, so they sent him a
> cheque for $0.18 or whatever it was.
That's *great*. I actually have a cheque around here somewhere that's a
refund from a pay phone. I was making a local call ($0.25 at the time),
used my last quarter, and the damned phone ate it. I called the operator
and asked for credit, and they asked for an address to mail me a cheque -
and then I had to place my call *collect*.
Cute, eh?
Jim
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On Tue, 26 May 2009 13:31:26 +0200, Invisible <voi### [at] dev null> wrote:
>
> Did you hear the story about the guy who sent back an envelope full of
> dimes, just heavy enough to put it into the next postage class, so the
> advertiser had to pay extra duty on it? And when they complained that he
> sent a bunch of dimes rather than a form, he said he did it by mistake,
> and demanded that they *return* the money to him, so they sent him a
> cheque for $0.18 or whatever it was.
http://bash.org/?127039
Follow-up:
http://bash.org/?743595
--
FE
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