Festerous Advertising
Posted: Thu 2 November, 2023 Filed under: Advertising, Cynicism, Festering Season Leave a comment »
“It gets earlier every year!”
We’ve entered November, and it seems like all the advertisers have gone “Fucking hell, Christmas is coming!“, so it’s all turned into a retail frenzy of fuckery. They’ve already thawed out Mariah Carey and Michael Bublé (Or “Mickey Bubbles” as I tend to call him) in ads, as well as a couple of other “celebrity-laden” ones where I know the faces and couldn’t give two shits about any of their names.
So by the time we’re on November 2nd I’m already sick of the entire bloody thing.
Bah Humbug indeed.
Insurance Renewal Fuckery
Posted: Thu 14 September, 2023 Filed under: 1BEM, Advertising, Domestic, Driving, Finances, Legal Leave a comment »This being the time I bought the current car, it’s also time for that annual festival of fuckery – Insurance Renewal.
I knew that this year was likely to be a pain in the arse – there’s been plenty of coverage about how insurance premiums have gone up massively as part of “the cost of living” (which in the case of insurance etc. seems to me to be just rabid profiteering – I don’t see how inflation and food costs have a knock-on effect to the car insurance industry!) so I was expecting it to be stupid. I just wasn’t expecting quite how stupid.
So – I got my renewal letter through from my current insurers, and they’d managed to double my insurance. For no changes – the address change happened before last renewal and the car hasn’t changed (other than in losing value for having been driven another 25,000 miles) But no, somehow they feel they can justify doubling the price.
Well, frankly they can fuck off.
So off I went to that site with the meerkats (because it annoys me less than the one with the opera ‘singer’, or the one with the weirdly confusing existential ads that make no sense) and looked at what was available.
As it turns out, I got a deal with a different insurer for all the things I wanted, and paying the same as I have been this year. Which I reckon is a total win, all told. So far it’s been painless – I’ve cancelled the renewal on the current one (while laughing on the phone at them, because doubling the quote is just fucking ridiculous) and the new one is in place to start in early October.
But it does make me wonder about what the business model is for so many of these insurance places. I have to assume that there’s a huge number of people who just blindly accept the renewal cost without looking elsewhere (and if that’s the case then they bloody well deserve to be ripped off, in my opinion) but that’s pretty mind-boggling, given the prevalence of these comparison sites and so on now.
Subscriptions and Stupidity
Posted: Mon 26 June, 2023 Filed under: 1BEM, Advertising, Cynicism, Domestic, Finances, I Don't Understand, People, Stupidity 3 Comments »Interesting to see that subscription things are now the latest target in the Government’s “How can we protect stupid people from being stupid?” process.
Now OK, some of the tactics used by subscription-model companies can be a pain – particularly the “sign up for a free trial and we’ll charge you after that” thing – but also (as that summary hints) they bloody well tell you what they’re going to do! I assume that people just get as far as “sign up for a free trial” and then stop reading/comprehending, but it really isn’t rocket science.
If you’re wanting to try it, then sign up for the free trial. But at the same time put a reminder in your phone for 25-ish days away that says “Cancel [x]”. Then when the phone says “Cancel [x]”, do so. Voila, no charge.
Yes, the model absolutely relies on people being stupid and not bothering to cancel the subscription. Similarly, most gym memberships expect/hope that the majority of people will sign up for the year and only use the place for two or three months. (although that one is a contract, so they can’t easily get out of it) But a subscription model paid month-to-month is an easy one to cancel – assuming even a vague level of competence, of course. The first time the payment comes out, if you don’t want it, it’s easy to go “Oh, fuck it. Forgot that – let’s cancel that now so I don’t have to pay again next month!” and just log in and get it cancelled.
Now OK, I accept that I’m probably not “normal” on this, but I keep a close eye on my money – I know when payments come out, I know what I’m expecting to pay, and I check my bank account every couple of days, minimum. I know where I stand on all of it on any given day. So it absolutely gobsmacks me to see things like this (from the story linked above) :
John, for example, told the BBC he had signed up to Amazon Prime video for a 30-day free period and forgot to cancel it when he had to start paying for it.
“I’m just gutted I spent £6.99 a month for 18 months for no reason”.
Now, I’d like to see Amazon’s side of that story, and see whether “John” actually watched Amazon video in that time, and/or whether he got Amazon deliveries in that time. It’s worth noting that Amazon is actually an oddity in this case, in that you pay for Prime delivery and get the video stuff as well – so if he’s paid for Prime to get things delivered next-day and made use of that then it’s not been a waste of money in the first place!
As for cancelling, John comes up with this gem…
“It was such a stressful ordeal and left me with a lot of anxiety. It ridiculous, these companies only care about the money not the person”.
I mean…. A) Welcome to Capitalism. And B) it’s a simple process. Yes, they’ll say “Are you sure? Here’s what you’ll lose out on” and so on, because they do want to keep your custom/money. Of course they do. But it’s not a challenging thing to just say “Yep, cancel it”. Certainly most (if not all) of the online companies make it easy – a couple of clicks and it’s done. Even the dating sites don’t make a big thing of the people leaving – they know they’ll have plenty of other people signing up or staying on.
All told, if someone says they’re short of money (“Cost of living crisis” etc. etc.) and yet still ‘not knowing’ that they’re paying out for subscriptions, then they’re not actually that short of money. (Or are congenitally and irredeemably stupid)
On the other hand, I can absolutely see that it would be good/ethical for a subscription service to send a check-up message if the person using it hasn’t accessed that service at all in (for example) six months, and have them opt back in (or at least say “Yes, I want to keep going with this”) at that point. And if they don’t respond, then their account gets deactivated. Among other things, that would be useful in scenarios where the person has died or become incapacitated, and reduces the whole nightmare of trying to unsubscribe someone from something where you don’t even know their username/password.
Coming To A Close
Posted: Sun 18 December, 2022 Filed under: Advertising, Cynicism, Domestic, Media, News, Thoughts Leave a comment »Thankfully, we’ve come to the end of a number of things this weekend, and I couldn’t be happier.
- The Kickyball World Cup has finally fucked off. I don’t care a jot about the entire thing, and I’m just glad that we won’t have to hear about it all the sodding time.
- Strictly Come Dancing has finally fucked off. I don’t care a jot about the entire thing, and I’m just glad that we won’t have to hear about it all the time.
- The Festering Season has nearly fucked off. By now you can guess the rest of my sentiment on that score.
This time next week we’ll be done with the Festering Season too, and some form of sanity will return for a few months.
Oh, and also it’s going to be a bit warmer in the coming week. Which is nice.
Levels of Stupid
Posted: Tue 25 February, 2020 Filed under: Advertising, Cynicism, I Don't Understand, People, Stupidity, Thoughts, Weirdness Leave a comment »At the moment, I get a *lot* of spam about property investment – probably an average of five to ten a day. I don’t know why it’s suddenly this subject, but it’s definitely noticeable.
Student flats in Hull, Hotel rooms in Leicester, Apartments in Liverpool and Manchester, and even some overseas stuff. I don’t pay attention to it, but it does make me think.
Basically, what kind of idiot (or lunatic) is going to decide to invest in a property, based on receiving a spam/junk email? It’s a huge amount of money, however you look at it.
I mean, obviously people do fall for this crap – the spammers/scammers wouldn’t bother sending it out if they didn’t – but I can’t deny, I figure that the people who do so pretty much deserve everything they get.
Festerous
Posted: Wed 25 December, 2019 Filed under: Advertising, Cynicism, Domestic 1 Comment »Hurrah, the Festering Season is now over for another year nine months or so.
In fairness, I haven’t been quite as virulently anti it a usual. Well, that’s not true – I have been, I just haven’t been so *volubly* anti it.
It’s still gone on way too long, with the perfume adverts starting back in mid-September, and all the bullshit about Christmas ads and so on since mid-November.
But this time round it just hasn’t felt like it’s even worth complaining about, it’s just been one of those things.
Ah well, fun and games.
Environmental
Posted: Sun 20 October, 2019 Filed under: Advertising, Cynicism, Domestic, Driving, Green, Thoughts, Travel 3 Comments »On my post about mileage and so on, BW commented “No environmental conscience chez toi, then, eh? 😉” And I can’t deny, that annoyed me a fair bit.
So…
-
- That weekend, I hired a car that was supposed to have a better Eco-profile than my current car. Sadly, that turned out to not be the case – it got a lot less MpG than mine, and generally wasn’t very good. But the intentions were there, at least. Even though I should’ve stuck to my usual car.
- Where possible – in this case, the run to and from Oxford – I carried friends, rather than everyone driving individually
- Taking public transport was simply not a realistic option, for a range of reasons, including
- I’d still have to drive to my nearest station, and (as I understand it) shorter journeys like that are the worst environmentally, as most of the nastys happen on start-up/warm-up, rather than on longer runs
- The runs to Oxford and Chichester would both have been over three hours each way, and cost more than the fuel for the entire weekend
- The journey to Kent wouldn’t have been possible at all
- Also, knowing the mileage etc., I make use of a carbon offset programme – it’s not perfect, but (I hope) it helps
- The Big Cat Experience in Kent use most of the money from the experience days and so on to go towards ecological and animal protection/preservation projects overseas.
Outside of those things, there’s also the following other little bits
- I’m still using a car that’s now ten years old (and passes the MoT emissions test with flying colours) rather than using up a load of resources with a new vehicle
- My domestic waste/rubbish is absolutely minimal – indeed, if I didn’t have cats, I’d be easily able to get away with one domestic waste collection per month – and I recycle far more than most people.
- I rarely fly anywhere – the last time was two years ago
- Most of my electric/electronic devices are recharged via a battery bank that charges off a solar panel, rather than via the mains.
There’s probably other stuff as well, but anyway, it’s a pretty good start.
I fully accept that my environmental profile isn’t perfect – my main downsides are electricity and driving. And I balance as much of that as possible. However, I’m also pretty sure that it’s a lot better than that of most people.
Even more importantly, no matter what I do to improve my profile, it’s utterly irrelevant in comparison to other environmental things. For example, if the new phase of advertising on video screens (particularly the stand-alone street-furniture versions) were deactivated/turned off overnight it would save more in a week than I could contribute in a lifetime.
So – do I have an environmental conscience? I’ll let you decide – although I think the answer is generally yes.