The New York Times covers annoyances at the hands of marketers and how people respond. It covers stuff like Starbucks’ sizing lingo (tall/grande/venti instead of small/medium/large) or those annoying subscriber cards that always fall out of magazines. The article mentions one guy who stacks up the subscriber cards and mails them back blank so the magazine will have to pay the postage but not gain a subscriber. The story also talks about people returning weighed down junk mail so the companies have to pony up for the extra postage.
It’s kind of bizarre and the article doesn’t really go anywhere with it, but it’s still fun. The Ad Freak blog disagrees–but oh yeah, they’re run by Ad Week, who has their own subscriber cards. What’s the most annoying thing you put up with?
(link via Kottke)
My previous post about Cities 97 probably more than covers my allottment of complaining, so I’ll take it to the comments!
I think credit card offers are annoying. I get at least one or two every day. And I’m not exaggerating. If I wasn’t worried about my credit I think it’d be funny to sign up for every credit card you were ever offered. Someone should do a Supersize Me-esque documentary with that premise.
Back in the day my roommates and I would microwave AOL CDs and then send them back to AOL. Unfortunately, we later learned that the type of postage that they use doesn’t include “Return to Sender’ functionality, so the post office just chucked them.
Cool, I’m told that microwaving CD’s makes for some cool pyrotechnics if you place them shiny side up. Does it?
Hmmmm, credit card offers are pretty stupid. Seriously, how could anyone have the 300 or more cards I’ve probably been offered thus far? If you ask me, there SHOULD be some kind of law limiting it or something (just kidding). It does get so dumb, and plays into identity stealer’s hands, imo. Heck, my Grandpa, who had Parkinson’s, a known gambling problem, declared bankruptcy, etc. was still getting credit card offers the few months before he died. How screwed up is that?
I was going to try thinking of something else that’s annoying, but that probably takes the cake. I always say medium at Starbucks, anyways, and some little card in the middle of a magazine isn’t all that annoying or dumb to me.