Lonely Tylenol
First Post
Today in the mail, I got a pair of advertisements, addressed to me, trying to sell me a D&D chess set. To be clear as to what this post is about, I hate ads. I hate them with a burning passion. I think that marketers are the lowest form of scum you could scrape off the floor of a certain cantina on Tatooine, and I have gone to the trouble of affixing a sign to my mailbox to ward off the flyers and pamphlets that it would otherwise be filled with on a daily basis.
Anyway, I'm getting mail, addressed to me, that is attempting to sell me things that look like they fell out of a Franklin Mint ad from the back of an old Reader's Digest ("guaranteed to increase in value!"). This sort of thing offends me, not just because they think I'm the sort of person who will shell out USD $200 on a friggin' chess set, but because they have somehow located my address, cut down a tree, and mailed it to me with the expectation that I will appreciate the gesture enough to buy their stuff. Not only is the cardstock that they used to send this thing a disaster from an environmental point of view, but the cost of sending out "personal" mass-mailers like this is probably driving up the price of things I might actually want to buy.
The only way I can think of that WotC would be able to get my address is from someone who knows that I might buy one of their products. It might be my credit card company, although I told them specifically not to sell my name to marketers. It might be Amazon, but I doubt I've established a strong enough pattern of buying there. I suspect it's Paizo. The main reason why I suspect this is because I suspect they're mailing all these ads out to people with Dungeon and Dragon subscriptions: the dedicated D&D crowd. I have a subscription to both magazines, and so I got two ads...on the same day. Also, I'm registered with the Canadian Marketing Association's "do not mail" list, and Canadian companies are pretty good about checking this list before sending out advertisements, to make sure they don't send any to registered addresses. Paizo, being an American company, probably doesn't even know such a thing exists. I know WotC is supposed to be an "affiliate" of Paizo, but it's dirty--shameful, even--to pass on my info without telling me that they're going to do so, and giving me the opportunity to opt out. I am vigilant about keeping my address out of advertisers' hands. I have not received a single piece of junk mail in over a year, and now WotC has broken my streak.
Does anyone know who's been selling my info to WotC? The company that sent the mailer is on the return address as "Astromail, Inc." and lists an American address in Kent, WA, so I assume that WotC uses this company for their direct-marketing crap.
Bloody ad-men. Cutting down trees to throw into landfills.
Anyway, I'm getting mail, addressed to me, that is attempting to sell me things that look like they fell out of a Franklin Mint ad from the back of an old Reader's Digest ("guaranteed to increase in value!"). This sort of thing offends me, not just because they think I'm the sort of person who will shell out USD $200 on a friggin' chess set, but because they have somehow located my address, cut down a tree, and mailed it to me with the expectation that I will appreciate the gesture enough to buy their stuff. Not only is the cardstock that they used to send this thing a disaster from an environmental point of view, but the cost of sending out "personal" mass-mailers like this is probably driving up the price of things I might actually want to buy.
The only way I can think of that WotC would be able to get my address is from someone who knows that I might buy one of their products. It might be my credit card company, although I told them specifically not to sell my name to marketers. It might be Amazon, but I doubt I've established a strong enough pattern of buying there. I suspect it's Paizo. The main reason why I suspect this is because I suspect they're mailing all these ads out to people with Dungeon and Dragon subscriptions: the dedicated D&D crowd. I have a subscription to both magazines, and so I got two ads...on the same day. Also, I'm registered with the Canadian Marketing Association's "do not mail" list, and Canadian companies are pretty good about checking this list before sending out advertisements, to make sure they don't send any to registered addresses. Paizo, being an American company, probably doesn't even know such a thing exists. I know WotC is supposed to be an "affiliate" of Paizo, but it's dirty--shameful, even--to pass on my info without telling me that they're going to do so, and giving me the opportunity to opt out. I am vigilant about keeping my address out of advertisers' hands. I have not received a single piece of junk mail in over a year, and now WotC has broken my streak.
Does anyone know who's been selling my info to WotC? The company that sent the mailer is on the return address as "Astromail, Inc." and lists an American address in Kent, WA, so I assume that WotC uses this company for their direct-marketing crap.
Bloody ad-men. Cutting down trees to throw into landfills.
