redundant dead tree mail
I've noticed that there are more than a few businesses that contact me via both email and physical mail to tell me the same thing.
I've tried to turn these features off, and in some cases, it's not actually possible.
The company the held my 401k would send me mail every time I changed my contribution amount. That is, every time I went online myself to deliberately change it. And they insisted on telling me I did. They would also send me mail every quarter when my auto-rebalance kicked in. Couldn't make them stop.
The car dealership where I bought my car frequently sends me mail to remind me that my car has a 'maintenance minder' that will tell me when I need an oil change. WTF? Why is this necessary? There's not even any actual information in the letter. My car provides me with all the information I need, and in case I forget to check it, when the meter gets down to '15% oil life', no matter what setting the display is on when I turn the engine on, it'll flip to the maintenance minder and the 'check engine' light will come on. Kind of hard to miss.
The Washington Post sent me a card and an email to tell me that the credit card I use for my subscription was about to expire.
And while it's less of a big deal because it isn't wasteful (except of time), every time I order a sandwich at Quizno's, they ask me if I want things on it that the menu clearly states the sandwich comes with.
So why the redundancy?
Is it because people ordering a sandwich are expected not to have read the menu and they don't want people complaining that they got something they weren't expecting? (Instead they confuse me because I suddenly wonder if the thing they're asking me about actually comes with the sandwich of if they're asking me about options I could add.)
Do car owners really avoid paying attention so much to the automatic features of their car that they need to be reminded they're there?
And so on. Is this country just so into accommodating the stupid and the ignorant that people who are neither just have to accept that we'll be irritated by all the pointless redundancy?
I've tried to turn these features off, and in some cases, it's not actually possible.
The company the held my 401k would send me mail every time I changed my contribution amount. That is, every time I went online myself to deliberately change it. And they insisted on telling me I did. They would also send me mail every quarter when my auto-rebalance kicked in. Couldn't make them stop.
The car dealership where I bought my car frequently sends me mail to remind me that my car has a 'maintenance minder' that will tell me when I need an oil change. WTF? Why is this necessary? There's not even any actual information in the letter. My car provides me with all the information I need, and in case I forget to check it, when the meter gets down to '15% oil life', no matter what setting the display is on when I turn the engine on, it'll flip to the maintenance minder and the 'check engine' light will come on. Kind of hard to miss.
The Washington Post sent me a card and an email to tell me that the credit card I use for my subscription was about to expire.
And while it's less of a big deal because it isn't wasteful (except of time), every time I order a sandwich at Quizno's, they ask me if I want things on it that the menu clearly states the sandwich comes with.
So why the redundancy?
Is it because people ordering a sandwich are expected not to have read the menu and they don't want people complaining that they got something they weren't expecting? (Instead they confuse me because I suddenly wonder if the thing they're asking me about actually comes with the sandwich of if they're asking me about options I could add.)
Do car owners really avoid paying attention so much to the automatic features of their car that they need to be reminded they're there?
And so on. Is this country just so into accommodating the stupid and the ignorant that people who are neither just have to accept that we'll be irritated by all the pointless redundancy?