Actually, if they have their act together, they are saving you disk space, assuming you ever install any of their other programs. Each installation of Adobe programs, for example, has many shared files that all Adobe programs need. By installing them all to the Adobe directory, each of the programs can use the files it needs, rather than having their own copy of it.
The one thing that really chaps my ass is the school fundraiser scam. I love my kids school, and I will gladly help them out whenever they ask. Wanna have a school ‘fair’ and sell me ice cream for fifty cents an ounce? Where does the line start? Need two dozen candy canes? No problem. I’ll make cookies, and volunteer to sit and sell them too. But they don’t have bake sales and such anymore.
Instead, the last five years or so the trend has been to do these fundraisers run by school fundraiser companies. That in itself seems wrong to me but I could live with that as I’m sure that they do make accounting simpler, etc.
But man, when they send the kids to the cafeteria for the ‘presentation’ and they hustle my kids that they can win ‘fabulous prizes!’ if they just sell X many geegaws, it flys all over me. The prizes are cheesy, and those that are not require them to sell an impossible amount of gift wrap to win. But they really give these kids the hard sell, and get them all fired up about all the neato stuff they are gonna ‘earn’.
This year on the lowest tier was one of those guns that shoots foam discs. My son would have to sell 16 items (a guess, I don’t remember for certain) to earn that gun. The least expensive item in his catalogue was $5.00. So that little gun essentially would cost $80.00. Eighty bucks! I just happened to have an Oriental Trading Company catalogue with the exact same gun in it for 12.50 at home and I was able to show him the problem.
We decided I would buy one item from both catalogues, and order the gun from OTC instead of trying to force family into buying enough stuff to ‘earn’ it.
When I was in grade school we had a little suitcase to carry door to door with samples. I never managed to sell enough to get even the lowest prize but there was always some kid who ended up with the bike or whatever the big prize is… wonder how many reams of gift wrap his parents bought?
I wish they had bake sales or school carnivals instead of this. Who wants their kids going out to strangers homes to sell stuff??
I will be having this arguement with my daughter’s school in a few years I think.
I dunno…I dislike school fundraisers because they foster the illusion that schools are adequately funded by pimping out the children to be little salespeople.
“We don’t need any more money allocated for the educational system! Now buy some gift wrap! Popcorn! Candy bars! Or else you don’t love your children!”
“All-natural, so it’s good for you!”
This is some of the worst of the mis-information in ads, but ads in general are full of myths and lies. IMO, the advertising industry is the real enemy in the fight against ignorance.
This should be classified legally as desceptive advertising, unless the advertiser is willing to sit down to a meal of castor beans and oleander tea.
Transvestite prostitutes. I swear, the next time I cruise one by mistake I’m going to quit picking up whores entirely. It’s just that I really think that they actually listen to me…until I cut off their heads. Then I think they start talking to me.
I remember those Tom Watt kits. That kid was a plant.
Whenever I’m confronted with one of these school fundraisers, I always offer to donate $5 directly to the school instead of buying the overpriced crap.
Yep, I remember Tom Watt (Watson?) kits, too. I had to sell that crap for Cub Scouts. They didn’t even give any prizes, the bastiges!
“Outperforms all other vehicles in its class” With ‘class’ so narrowly defined that there are no other vehicles in it.
Deceptive graphs. One of the car companies ran magazine ads with graphs showing how many of their pickups vs. competitors’ pickups were still on the road after ten years. At first it looks like the company blows away everyone else, until you see that the y-axis of the graph goes from 97% to 99%. IOW, they’re all almost exactly the same, but the ranges have been juggled to make the differences look huge.
I don’t think they do this anymore, but in the early years when Hyundai cars were available in the U.S., they would crow that the Excel was the biggest-selling import in the U.S. As if that somehow was supposed to give it cachet. It was only the biggest seller because it was the cheapest, plain and simple.
I especially hate these in magazines I already subscribe to! What, I’m supposed to subscribe SIX MORE TIMES?!?!
Re: the BOGO free sales. At our store the prices are actually jacked up that high all the time, so you actually DO save money, lol. I actually think our store is diabolically clever with its endcaps though. They do the usual, which is to put the sale pasta on the endcap, along with the most expensive spaghetti sauces, most expensive cans of parmesean, jars of garlic salt, etc. But they also fill either sides of the endcap with the name-brand, most expensive pasta that’s NOT on sale, so that when the cheap stuff sells out people will either see the signs from it on the front, or vaguely remember “Hmmm, yeah, pasta was on sale this week” and buy that instead. I love noticing stuff like that and thinking “Heh, heh. You didn’t fool me this time either!”
An idea close to this, that, uh hmmm, would be fun to do is to take all the literature from a credit card offer (minus anything that identifies you) and stuff it in the envelope for the company and mail it to them in their prepaid envelope. I bet if enough of this happened we would get fewer credit card offers. Not that I’ve ever done this.
In Australia, you can currently get Age of Empires completely free with a large packet of Nutri Grain.
Fair enough. The game costs $15, and a large packet of Nutri Grain costs $6 - and of course you get the Nutri Grain that’s woth that much as well, which I eat.
Sounds like a great deal. Old, free game. Go me!
Except…
The entire promotion seems to revolve around getting me to buy Age of Mythology.
I can handle the ad for it on the box of the Nutri Grain.
I can handle getting a $10 discount on the box, because it doesn’t really force you to buy it and it is a nice gesture.
I CANNOT handle the fact that before you can install your free game you HAVE to watch a trailer for Age of Mythology.
AND the install program advertises it.
AND every time you boot up the game there’s an option there to check it out online.
It’s just overkill!
Ahh yes… Speaking of credit card offers, NoSubstitute, I get three or four a day, and I have an Ollie-North Special shredder that consumes all of them – unopened. Recently, they have began enclosing a thick cardboard card in the shape of a credit card. You feel the envelope, think “Hmmm. must be a new credit card”, open it, and then gaze in disgust at the dumb cardboard “sample card” they have provided.
Not that the shredder couldn’t gobble these whole either, but I don’t have the courage to toss these without verifying that they aren’t a real card.
Shred 'em anyway. Chances are they are real cards, in your name, and all you need to do is activate them. At gigantic rates, of course. Oh, and with a big monthly charge for “membership.”
Speakers and airline tickets.
They advertise speakers for $200, and the fine print says “each, must be bought in pairs.” That should be illegal because nothing costs $200. If they sold them separately, I’d accept that, but the product is $400. The same with airline tickets when they say Florida for $200 (each way based on roundtrip purchase). It’s the same thing, there’s nothing you can buy for the price they quote!
I hate recieving Junk E-mail, like get your Boobs Enlarged, get a Bigger Penis, All Natural/Herbal Diet-Fat Reducing Pills, Hair Restorative Tonic and SEE Teenage Girls or Celebrities Nude.
If the Computer Manager has to check my Computer before I have a Chance to delete this CRAP, he’ll think I need to get some part of my anatomy augmented, lose weight, loosing my hair, and that I am a Perv, which I do not need.
I went on a stint a while back, filling out forms for “free stuff” on the internet. Things like aspirin samples, shampoo samples, etc. In the box requiring my phone number, I listed a fake. Most of the companies did send the samples, and most, surprisingly, removed my email address from their mailing lists in a fairly quick manner.
One company, however, not only sent their free sample, but also sent two more of their product and a bill. My choices in this matter were to either pay for the items that were already in my possession, or go through the hassle of returning the products to them.
When I chose the third option, i.e. keeping the products AND not paying for them, this particular company proceeded to spent approx 80% above the cost of the product in an attempt to get me to pay for it.
If their promotion had disclosed that they would be sending, along with the free sample, a number of other products requiring purchase, I would have skipped that freebee and gone on to the next. But they did not. Their deceptive advertising cost them the price of manufacturing and shipping their stuff to me (which they will no doubt pass on to their other customers somehow).
As I understand it, U.S. postal law doesn’t require you to pay for anything mailed to you that was unsolicited. They can dun you until they’re blue, but you don’t have to pay. Eventually they will cunt the cost of messing with you and remove you from their list. Good for you for blowing the bastards off.
Geezer
I’ve always wanted to be somebody, but I see now I should have been more specific.
– Lily Tomlin
YIKES!!! It’s coUnt the cost!
Geezer