Underdue bills and overbearing marketers
By Bernard Jacks
I have more than once received a letter demanding payment for an overdue bill. You know the drill: second notice, please remit, collection agency, credit score, don't mess with us... the usual.
These notices have often been justified, thanks to lapses in my online banking skills, but here I want to stress a different kind of dunning letter, the ones I get from the magazines I subscribe to. They constantly harass me with underdue bills.
How can a bill be underdue? Perhaps the situation is best illustrated by a conversation between a fictional mother and her daughter, a sweet young child innocent of magazine marketing techniques:
"Mommy, I just got a bill from Flea and Tick Junior, the kids' magazine I subscribed to so I can learn how to take care of doggie and grow up to be a beloved animal doctor. Didn't I just pay for that? Out of my modest allowance?"
"Yes, you did, dear. This is a bill for a renewal."
"But I thought my subscription doesn't expire for a whole year?"
"It doesn't, sweetheart, but magazines like to send renewal notices every month for 10 or 11 months before a subscription expires. They think that annoying us by sending 10 letters, all of which you and mommy are going to tear up until the last one, is good marketing."
"What's marketing, mommy?"
"Hmm, let's see, dear. I'd say marketing is what companies do to try to get people to like them so they will buy their things."
"But they're making me not like them."
"Also, the magazines are trying to get money out of your piggy bank sooner so they can put it into their piggy bank."
"Will they charge me less for next time if I send money early?"
"No, dear."
"Mommy, that's silly. You're teasing me."
To deal with such a marketing attack, assuming I do want to renew the magazine, I play the game of renewal chicken. As the expiration date of my subscription heaves into view, the letters become ever more urgent, from the penultimate, YOUR SUSCRIPTION IS ABOUT TO EXPIRE! DON'T TAKE THIS LIGHTLY! to the final assault, the red envelope that screams, YOUR LAST ISSUE HAS BEEN MAILED! YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED!
Ho hum. I'll get around to replying maybe next week. And I eventually do return the renewal form and get my next issue, which I add to the pile of unread magazines next to the couch, because who has time to keep up with reading all one's essential magazines? My principal one is Today's
Then, when there's nothing on the TV, I settle onto the couch and flip through my copy of "TMM" (cool guys call Today's Manly Man by its initials), and I am subjected to another example of perverse marketing brilliance: the avalanche of loose cards that fall into my lap or flop onto my shoes. These are called blow-in cards, because they are literally blown into the magazine on puffs of air by satanic machines. The irony of these cards is that they are trying to get me to subscribe to a magazine I already subscribe to.
Even more annoying than the blow-in cards are the bind-in cards. These are rooted in the binding and can't fall out, and they force the magazine to fall open to pages you have no interest in seeing.
Yet, perhaps the cards that cause the most trouble are those that have been scented with some overpowering perfume. You might handle the card before tossing the magazine back on the pile and going up to bed:
Wife, testing air: What's that? Perfume? What's with the perfume?
You: It was a card! A perfumed card in a magazine!
Wife: A perfumed card in that stupid manly magazine of yours?
You: Well, actually it was in your womanly magazine. By the way, they have a great new recipe for barbecued meatloaf....
To deal with all the excess card baggage, you can simply flip through the new arrivals and shake or tear out every card (unread), and toss them onto the pile of junk mail to be thrown into the trash. This process is sometimes called "deboning" the magazine. True. Maybe the ultimate solution is to just cancel your magazine subscriptions and keep up with the world via the Comedy Channel.
Bernard Jacks lives in Marlboro.