Have you been getting incessant phone calls lately about your automobile warranty expiring? From the tone of the message you’d think they were warning you about your imminent death. The first time I received one I replayed the message only to become irritated when I realized it was a telemarketer. Obviously they’ve found a way around the do not call list…quite annoying. These generalized warnings easily fits everyone’s situation, and it makes me wonder how many gullible folks have fallen for the scam scare tactics. Boy am I glad I'm not one of them!
Then today in the mail I received a letter and scrawled right across the top of the page in big bold letters it said, VEHICLE WARRANTY REMINDER. Hmmm, do I need reminding? I drive around in a beat up 2001 VW that has 103,000 miles on it, the warranty expired in 2003, this notification is six years overdue. If it died tomorrow I’d push it off a cliff and buy something else, instead of paying monthly payments for a worthless warranty that probably doesn’t even cover the tire nuts.
Getting an onslaught of messages over the phone is one thing, but to get junk mail as well is just icing on the cake. I harbor a lot of ill will toward junk mail, and it's due mostly to the whole process I have to go through just to get rid of it... you can’t just throw it out, you have to recycle the paper [sneering]. So its no longer punishment enough just to I receive it, I now have the painful task of disposing of it correctly...it’s like rubbing salt in a wound. And of course recycling junk mail has become complicated due to a sick twist we’ve seen in our society over the past few years. With the advent of dumpster divers I’ve got to shred it so no one will steal my identity. Well at least I feel like I have some kind of power over the voice mail message when I jam my finger down on the delete button, recycling is lame retaliation and falls short of the heady delight I get when I man-handle my phone.
The only junk mail I ever enjoyed receiving was from the credit card companies. Andy Rooney did a commentary on junk mail a few years ago and he recommended that you simply stuff everything (making certain to include all junk mail) into the pre-paid envelope that comes with the application, and send it all back to them. I followed his advice quite often, it was fabulous, I'd found a new way to recycle!! Unfortunately they’ve ruined my fun, because they now preprint a “tracking number” on the back of the envelope, cite some federal code and state that its an offence to tamper with banking mail. BANKING MAIL?!??!? Its junk mail! Who’s kidding who?
Sigh, I hope Francis Scott Key will forgive me…
Oh, say does that star-spangled banner yet wave,
O'er the land of the free [from junk mail] and the home of the brave [who continue to fight against it]...
CD
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
My warranty expired a while ago, too. Of the last guy that called I simply asked, "So you're calling to tell me that your company will pay for all of the things that are wrong with my 10 year old car that would have been covered under the original warranty with no strings attached?" When we said, "Umm, no." I asked why he was calling. He hung up.
ReplyDeleteAs for the tracking code... I black it out with indelible pen and send it anyway.
Do you remember the Seinfeld episode when Kramer took all of his magazines back to the post office? CLASSIC...
Love Seinfeld and yes, that was a classic episode.
ReplyDeleteI think the next time I catch one of their calls I'll say, "hold on a second", and then just walk away. Wonder how long they'd hold on?