Woolworths sent me some crap

And I’m not happy about it. I decided to email them the following letter listing my grievances.

[edit]It seems I made a typo in the email address. Could this be a sign from a higher being that it is inadvisable to send the message in its current form? You tell me. Perhaps I need to tone down the language or something?[/edit]

Do enjoy:

Dear Customer Services Manager

I’ll start by quoting from the letter that you sent me on 19 October, 2005. The same letter that included my Woolworths Store Charge Card.

“Your world of difference Store Charge Card is your key to a wonderful new world. A world created especially for you. A world where membership is free. A world where you will always have the inside track on everything happening at Woolworths. A world where you don’t need to wait for what you want, just hand over your card to pay for whatever your heart desires.”

Now let’s run that through a little de-obfuscation, and closely analyse the statements you have made.

1. “Your world of difference Store Charge Card is your key to a wonderful new world. A world created especially for you.”
What a blatant load of crap. I’ll be generous in my criticism and let the ‘wonderful new world’ metaphor slide. You’ve created a supposedly wonderful world of shopping, and I’ll accept that. What I refuse to accept is that you’ve created it especially for me.
That statement insults my intelligence. It even insults the intelligence of people with below average IQ’s. If this world you created was created especially for me, that implies that I am the most important person in that world. Surely then my account number shouldn’t be 6007 8501 0196 1967? That’s an unnecessarily long number when I’m No.1.
But I’m not really 1st in line, am I?

2. “A world where membership is free.”
It is incidentally also a world where membership is unwanted. Membership is free, but buying stuff isn’t, and ultimately you want me to go into debt so you can charge me interest. Will the interest be free?

3. ‘A world where you will always have the inside track on everything happening at Woolworths’
This doesn’t seem nefarious, but the next line…

4. ‘A world where you don’t need to wait for what you want, just hand over your card soul to pay for whatever your heart desires.’
Note the alteration I’ve made to the above quote. Less deceptive now, in my opinion.

Your annoying letter goes on to tell me that the best thing of all is that I don’t need to apply and that I’ve already been pre-approved for R5500 credit. Plus, you gave me a R25-off voucher if I spend R150 or more using the card of evil.
Thanks. That’s very generous and accommodating of you. Helping pave my road to insolvency. Standard Bank is already doing a fine job without your assistance, but I specifically asked them for a credit card so they get a state pardon.

Ultimately, what I’m trying to say in my very long-winded fashion, is that sending me unsolicited mail pisses me off. Sending me unsolicited mail that tries to tempt me into taking out credit pisses me off a lot. Pissing me off tarnishes my perception of your brand and makes me think twice about shopping in your store.
Pissing people off is not something you want to do, because you never know how influential or powerful someone you piss-off might be.

Good day