Let me begin by saying I’m a fan of making money. However, just as with free speech (you can’t yell “fire” in a crowded theater), I think there are some limits as to what a person can do in order to make that money. I was reminded of what those limits should be this week when I received what is not, unfortunately, an atypical letter in the mail.
I recently registered my business in a new place. I also purchased a car. In both cases, I received letters in the mail that seemed incredibly official but which were, in fact, full of deceptive language and claims. In the former case, I got a “Labor Law Compliance Notice,” that informed me I was required by Federal Law(!!) to hang a poster in my place of business. While that might be true for most businesses, because I have no employees, my business is not required to hang anything other than the 250 pictures of myself I keep around for inspiration. A little research by this company would have saved them the stamp. Still, this notice is extremely official looking, cites Federal Law, and looks like a bill for $84. Had I been required to hang these posters, there are numerous other vendors who will sell you the same thing for a quarter the price.
The same sort of deceptive crap followed the car purchase. Notices about activating my warranty came from a few sources, none of which had anything to do with the car manufacturer, and who were looking to sell me a superfluous warranty (the car will be under the manufacturer’s warranty for quite a while). Obviously, since these folks can see what year the car was made they know that, but they sent the letters anyway.
You’ve probably received phone calls from the “service department” or “IT support” telling you your computer is full of spam. While the aforementioned companies don’t fall into the outright scam category that the computer scammers do, they raise a serious issue for us all:
How far will we go to make a buck?
Charities that give tiny percentages of the money raised to the causes they serve, enriching the folks who run them instead. VW and other manufacturers rigging emission tests. Kellogg‘s claiming Rice Krispies boosted the immune system or Mini-Wheats made you smarter. It’s a long list, one to which I’m sure you could add just by opening your mail.
There are people behind these deceptions, people with minimal ethical principles. Did they at any point ask themselves how they’d feel if their elderly parent bought into a scam they were enabling?
I’m all for making a buck, lot of them in fact. But as with almost everything, there is a right way and a wrong way. You decide.
Consult Keith 