“…Failure to Respond…”

 

It might be one of my favorite lines from unsolicited mail. Better than a change of color to a portion of text. Better than font that changes size, goes bold, gets italicized and has an underlined segment.

What happens if you don’t respond? What happens if you toss the materials into the shred pile? What happens if you do nothing? That bold-letter warning of impending doom for failure to respond carries so much weight for the form letter.

What happens as a result of your failure to respond?

And the answer is… nothing. Nothing happens. You do nothing, and nothing happens. Nothing at all.

That’s obviously not completely true. The sun rises. The sun sets. Then it comes around and does it again. If you do nothing, the sun will set tonight and then rise tomorrow. So, sure, things will happen. A more specific answer would be to say that nothing will change. And that’s… well… that’s interesting, in the most curious and potentially sarcastic meanings of the word.

When it comes to junk mail, the realities are simple. Doing nothing means you may have—I said “may have”—avoided a scam. And if not a scam, you may have—again, I said “may have”—been presented with a questionable scenario that is completely legal but neatly wedged right up against problematic with a laundry list of scam-like elements.

(I told you. Curious and sarcastic.)

I would suggest three words for your consideration: time share presentation.

In general, I have nothing truly against time shares or the presentations for such investments.

I absolutely get why people make fun of them, and have heard plenty of horror stories that deserve every joke that can possibly be created at their expense. But I also have friends that enjoy their time share units. I’ve even attended time share presentations (usually in order to get some theme park tickets at a great rate).

What I am attempting to present it that there is a balancing act about time shares. I understand the skepticism about them. I also know people that love them. The trouble area is that many people have absolutely no clue what a time share presentation involves. Many people have absolutely no idea what a time share is. And that zone of missing information is the trouble spot.

When you don’t know what is happening… and don’t understand what is being shown to you… the very best advice is also the simplest: stop, step to the side, take a deep breath and collect yourself. Or even more simply, stop. Don’t act. Don’t think. Just stop.

Back to failing to respond.

When you don’t answer a bill or an official envelope regarding jury duty, there will be consequences. But those aren’t the envelopes we’re looking at here. Instead, this is a mailer delivered by shotgun approach, hoping to attract one or two inquisitive folks and move them to responding. The letter basically highlights and warns of repercussions for failing to respond. But when you actually read the fine print, you see that failing to respond means nothing especially noteworthy in this case.

I like the business approach that says an honorable deal today should be an honorable deal tomorrow. While not perfectly true since there are things that do need to be decided more quickly than others, I tend to get really suspicious about companies that can’t offer me something because that deal ended last week or that offer wasn’t for my particular situation. I like to believe that both sides of a deal can be happy and that a handshake should mean something. I like offers that stand by the details.

But it would appear that nothing works better than pressure and threats. And to that end, I suppose, there needs to be consequences for a failure to respond. (Even when those consequences mean absolutely nothing to you, and actually could be a wise move for you in the long run.)

As a friend of mine put it, doing nothing is still doing something.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

This essay joins a few others I’ve tried to write over the years, attempts at investigating the intersections of ideas that swirl and duck and dive and swarm around scams, junk mail, marketing and a few others.

Why? Well…

I find it interesting that mail arriving at my house, where someone was able to have my name placed on it as the addressee, still needs to add “or current resident” on the label. (Why would a “current resident” necessarily be interested in something where they weren’t named specifically but someone else was?)

I find it interesting that many of the scams that seem so obvious and stupid are actually designed to be obvious and stupid. After all, someone that can’t figure out that the approach is dumb makes for a pretty good target to lead further down the hole.

I find it interesting that people act, often with significant investments of time and money, on what they don’t understand.

Three days ago, an e-mail arrived. If we take the contents as true, it was from a manager of a company that produces outdoor products, including backpacks. She said that she knew I was in the market for sports products, with backpacks an important accessory. All of which tells me that the possibility exists—again, face value of the e-mail—that some programming code was developed, picked up on the title of my web site, and the word backpack created both a hit and an assumption. But it’s pretty darn obvious she never looked at my web site for a second, because I’ve got no need for any of that stuff.

And that’s the joy found within most of this junk scam contact stuff. It doesn’t take a lot of research to eliminate most of it as misplaced and wrong. But the reality is, it isn’t going away. It’s like the old idea about radar detectors. As soon as one technology is developed, another is designed to overcome it, leading to a redesign of the original technology. To appropriate a phrase from a different area… lather, rinse, repeat.

“…Failure to Respond…” isn’t the first time, and likely won’t be the last time, I wander along this road, examining where the Venn diagram takes me. The real question is whether the next motivation will be an offer to sell me backpacks, yet another threat that nothing will happen if I do nothing, or something entirely different that’s really more of the same.

 

If you have any comments or questions, please e-mail me at Bob@inmybackpack.com