The latest sleazy sweepstakes offer to arrive at my home via U.S. Mail is from an outfit calling themselves ‘National Awards Commission.’ They list a return address of P.O. Box 219800, Kansas City, MO 64121-9800.
As you can see their deception starts with their name, as they are obviously using a name like that to make potential customers think they are an organization that awards prizes.
There is a generous helping of nonsense printed on the envelope, such as: ‘SENSITIVE MAIL’ and ‘DO NOT OBSTRUCT DELIVERY,’ which I must admit, made me laugh out loud. Like postal employees are going to find some reason to prevent their garbage from landing in my mailbox (sounds like a good idea, actually)!
It’s kind of like handing a kid a candy bar with ‘PLEASE MAKE SURE YOU EAT THIS’ printed on the wrapper. I suppose they expect it to make it look a bit more ‘official’ or something.
Although they do their best to create the impression that you have already won something, the real story is that they are just trying to extract $11.89 from you. This amount, as far as I can tell, is for a ‘valuable dollar-saving, dollar-stretching Premium Booklet filled with over $2,500.00 in personal discount certificates.’ In other words, a coupon book of some sort.
I don’t know who they hire to come up with crap like this, but this is essentially a one-page letter with lots of exciting-sounding language which all boils down to: ‘Please buy our coupon book for $11.89 and we’ll enter you in this nifty sweepstakes. And, by the way, you don’t have to buy it to enter.” And of course, the part where they tell you that you don’t actually have to spend the $11.89 to enter the contest is at the bottom of the page.
It’s one thing to send out a direct mail piece and try to sell something. I get that stuff all the time trying to sell me magazine subscriptions, or cheesy power tools or memberships to garden clubs or whatever. And that’s just fine with me. Most of the sales pitches are pretty standard and they make a point of highlighting all the benefits of their product or service without trying to deceive.
These sleazy offers from outfits like ‘National Awards Commission’ or ‘National Magazine Exchange’ are another matter altogether. The stuff they send out is clearly intended to deceive and that’s pretty sad. I guess the crap they are selling is so worthless that they are unable to come up with a sales pitch convincing enough to snare a sufficient number of buyers.
There is one place I can think of where these deceptive mailing pieces belong and that is in the trash.
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