Cheap or cheap?

My dictionary lists 11 major meanings of the word "cheap", though not it's middle English sense of "a market", from whence street names like "Cheapside" are derived. The primary meanings are "low cost" and "shoddy", the potential confusion between the 2 causing airlines to call themselves "no frills".

So when KLM e-mailed me saying they were doing a spring offer of S$850 return flights to Europe, I thought I'd have a look since I paid S$1,600 only in February.

And sure enough, if you find an unpopular day (typically Wednesday), you can get the advertised S$850 fare, excluding tax(es) and surcharges. Of course, those taxes and surcharges are not optional; the all inclusive price? S$1,548.

What other industry allows the sticker price to be advertised with an arbitrary but mandatory element (totally 50% of the value) only added at the till? All KLM achieved was to sucker me to their website with a lie, thereby reducing brand trust and loyalty.

Junk Mail Deliverance

Long time readers know that last year I collected then analysed a 3 month sample of the junk mail flyers that clog up Singapore's mailboxes. It's mostly real estate related with agents or (claimed) buyers looking for people who are selling up. A smaller set of junk is delivered direct to one's door where 3 or 4 different items are rolled up and stuck in the security gate's scroll work.

I find this more intrusive, but no more effective. My current use of the glossy flyers is as disposable plates when feeding the white cat downstairs but we are getting ahead of ourselves. Some people install a basket outside their flat door for newspapers (or other deliveries such as bread) so their flyers get thrown in there as well.

I wondered if the students delivering this stuff would leave less junk if I displayed a explicit lack of interest in reading it and devised a simple experiment. I took anything left in the gate and pushed it into the gap between the gate's frame and the door jamb. There they stick out as flags of indifference, a totem of ignored junk mail. At the experiment's peak, I had 5 vertical feet of junk mail and had to scrunch the early stuff up together to make room.

The proposition to be tested is whether turning junk mail into trophies of contempt would discourage further deliveries. I've been running this experiment for a couple of months now so it's time to write up the results: it makes very little difference, maybe 1 in 5 times I see other houses with new junk and mine without.

There's definitely a sense of shame on the part of the students. With my door open, I see them come round and at my door they stand to one side and quietly sneak it into the edge of the gate, trying not to be noticed. But mostly, they still deliver. They'll be on piece work and their motivation is to complete the job without hassle from the paymaster. What care to them the attitude of the householder: extreme indifference or total indifference?

Spam.sg

A new anti-Spam law came into effect at the beginning of June which tries to give consumers better rights when receiving unsolicited commercial e-mail (UCE). It applies to e-mail and phone text messages (SMS) and requires that the text ADV be placed at the beginning of the Subject Line (or the beginning of the text if, like SMS, there's no subject). And secondly, that there be an Unsubscribe mechanism clearly included.

I've seen these ADV things for a while and completely ignored them. Duh. The first SMS I received had the ADV misspelt (double duh!) and to reply with an unsubscribe costs me money. So, that's not working out too well then.

Then I read of a story about the only Singaporean working on Beijing Olympics who has a local mobile but kept his home one also and is racking up roaming charges on received SPAM, so much so he's going to have to cancel his SG phone.

It's a tough nut to crack for sure, and it's easy to criticise, but these rules only apply to the responsible, local, law-abiding originators. In my case, that's maybe 0.1% of what clogs my Trash folder everyday.

Junk Mail

It is the sheer volume of bits of paper stuffed into mailboxes that amazes. Little printed squares of paper arrive daily, sticking to the insides of the boxes and statically attracted to plastic so that it is impossible to extract letters without scattering this confetti. And scatter it does so by 6pm, the floor is strewn with the little blighters even as consciencious people try to get them into the bin.

They are pushed through the array of mailbox flaps with robotic precision using a small wooden stick tipped with a rubber ferule, at the rate of 2 per second. This ruthlessly efficient activity is piece work, performed by people riding their bikes around the blocks, quite uncaring of the consequent litter or (likely) futility of the marketing.

For no better reason than idle curiosity, I collected all the non-addressed mail for a few months. Truthfully, I expected the result because the high-runners stand out very early on but in true scientific fashion, here is the breakdown:

Estate agents - 67
Flat Wanted Ads - 55
Replacement doors - 8
Electricians - 8
TV services - 7
Private Tuition - 6
Furniture - 5
Food outlets - 4
Plumbers - 3
Car sales - 3
Manicure / Pedicure - 3
Replacement windows - 2
Video Hire - 1
Employment agencies - 1

The 'private' ads for flats wanted, often promising $20k over market price show considerable creativity, ranging from the factual "we have just married, need flat" to the more emotional "young family with 2 young children need more space". They appear handwritten but are actually mass printed from an original. Actually, I'd consider selling my flat to someone who took the trouble to hand write out 3000 notes and posted them but the copies just join the other mass of impersonal junk mail.

There is also the monthly leaflet from the local MP regarding local activities, open houses, developments and other updates on their hard work as public servants. But that's another story...