Dear Retailer,
I browsed your online catalog and found something in it I wanted, so I ordered the item, paid for it, and received it. That should have been the end of it, I naively thought.
But noooooooooooo. From your customer-stalking point of view, it was JUST THE BEGINNING. First came the follow-up catalog in the mailbox. Then a week later, another catalog. Then catalogs from your “sister brands” began to arrive (and if you think that stupid name for “other subdivisions of the same corporate conglomerate” sounds graceful and charming, I want you to know that all it makes me think of is the Witches from Macbeth).
Every week I’m throwing away POUNDS of glossy paper that I can’t even be bothered to glance through on the crapper. WHY DO YOU DO THIS TO ME? I was a reasonably satisfied customer back when our relationship began, but now I hate you and all your Weird Sister Brands with the blazing fury of a thousand suns.
And when I went hunting on your website for some procedure, any procedure, for a beleaguered customer to use to MAKE THE CATALOGS STOP, I found a 1-888 number that you said would do the trick. (Oh, and by the way? I simply love how you coyly refer to this procedure as a way to “stop receiving duplicate catalogs”, as though it never entered your pretty little head that anybody could POSSIBLY want to stop receiving ALL your goddamned motherfucking tree-slaughtering catalogs, not just duplicate ones.)
So I call the 1-888 number.
Nobody answers.
Twenty rings. Oh wait! Somebody is answering!
It’s a prerecorded answering machine message.
Stating that this number is a Gun Confiscation News Tip Hotline, and I should please leave my news tip about gun confiscation after the tone.
You cretinous fuckers. My transaction with your company and the catalogs that YOU KEEP ON SENDING ME have NOTHING WHATEVER to do with guns. You just couldn’t be bothered to keep the catalog-canceling procedure information up-to-date on your website.
Well, you know what? Where I live, as it happens, no guns are being confiscated at all. And you may one day be very sorry that you put that idea into my head, IF YOU DON’T STOP SENDING ME ALL THESE FESTERING CATALOGS.
Thank you for your attention to this request.
Very truly yours,
Kimstu