Lying to your customers – Rant

I subscribe to a few different magazines and there’s one thing that they do to their subscribers that pisses me off so I’m going to have another little rant if you don’t mind.

Once your subscription is about to expire, these magazines will mail you the standard renewal notice. In the letter they send, they always say the same thing in big red letters.

“RENEW NOW OR PAY MORE LATER”

Well guess what?!

The last time I received that letter, I didn’t renew now! Oh my goodness, I didn’t renew. What to do, what to do? I was going to burn in hell because I didn’t lock in at that special subscription price. Life as I knew it should have been over right?

Luckily for me, my life was spared when I received another letter a few weeks later. This one was especially interesting because it was essentially the same as the previous one, but with a lower price.

A Lower Price!

Those bastards lied to me. I’m not happy now.

I could have believed them with that initial letter and renewed my subscription and fork over 20 big ones. Instead, I called their bluff (cause I’m smart like that) and ended up paying only 12 bucks.

Now, while this was beneficial to me, I can say that I’m not too thrilled with this magazine’s ability to blatantly lie to their loyal customers.

I know this is a marketing tactic from the days of old but is it really ethical?

Whatever that answer is, it doesn’t really matter. The whole point here is that I may not be a loyal customer for long. I would bet there are others who feel the same way. (I hope anyway, or else I’ll feel like giant tool.)

I’m sure you can apply this type of tactic to many online endeavors as well. I’ve seen a lot of things similar to this in email marketing where people offer a program or product for a certain price, then lower it for future customers. (In some cases they’ll even give it away for free.)

What a great way to lose credibility and trust.

To make a long story short, just don’t do this. Be honest. Stick to your word. It’s worth it.

RT @cassiegermsheid: "Lying to your customers – Rant"