When Kristi went to her car the other day, she saw this mysterious note stuck to her mirror. “PLEASE CALL ME ABOUT YOUR CAR!” Immediately, she thought someone had run into her car—she walked all around it looking for damage, but couldn’t find anything. Worried, she called the number from the parking garage.
I get put on hold for 4 minutes! I hang up. I call again. After 4 billion rings, some dude answers. I say, “hey, are you the person who left a post-it note on my car?”. The dufus on the other end basically tells me that one of his guys probably did. I’m like, “who are you?”. He tells me he is from some auto glass repair place and they would like to fix my cracked windshield.
Okay, we’ll admit this is a pretty sweet use of social engineering to drum up business. But hey, Smart Glass, you freaked out a stranger and tricked her into letting down her guard in a parking garage and walking around her car in a distracted state. Ever heard of business cards?
(Thanks to James!)
“SMART GLASS DENVER SUCKS.” [KristiCannon]
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the glass company probably acheived what they set out to do. i’d be willing to bet that even though a bunch of consumerist readers would have nothing to do with them, they still increased business.
@qwickone: Agreed. I would have chewed them out for the “let’s force women to take their guard down and therefore make them a bigger target for crime” failure to think. And then not only not gone there but told everyone I know about this stupidity, and told them I was doing it.
Um don’t buy anything off the streets, simple as that. There are enough places to shop online where you shouldn’t have to worry about purchasing merchandise from the streets. If you read articles on here often you should know that even buying electronics in retail stores has many risks now such as people putting tiles in the box of a computer hard drive. I don’t know why anyone would be stupid enough to buy something from a street vendor.
I hate flyer spam, first of all I am a girl and such a note would surely freak me out. I would definitely take action because if no one does then they will just keep doing it. If anyone puts a flyer or other spam on my car I do what many people do here and put it in a pile of places not to order from or contact for service.
@mac-phisto:
You sound like a winner. A kid who was getting a few extra bucks flyering cars.
Get over yourself. You windsheild wiper and you are not the most important things in the world…
@mrbiggsndatx:
uh they ARE responsible. Just because someone has a sign stating “Not responsible for broken windshields” doesn’t mean that they aren’t responsible.
A sign isn’t a legal contract.
this is an old sales trick. its called foot in the door. put an ad that is soooo crazy/tricky/questionable, that the reader will almost always call in. that’s the point is to get you to call opposed just throw away a flier. the guy on the other end of the phone is supposed to be a great saleperson who already is aware you might be pissed but has a quick way to dis-arm your anger (as he already is anticipating it) and then pitch you. sounds to me like their salespersons is a too weak though.
you know when i tell people i sold vaccuums door to door, they are always like “i’d kick your ass if you ever knocked on my door”, …..hmmm. funny thing is, i’ve knocked thousands of doors, never had anyone get rude even but maybe once a month. i find it is all in the approach. you HAVE to be a champion salesperson to pull it off though.
@theblackdog:
The reason this works is that in a number of states there is no allowable deductible for glass and nearly any damage qualifies for the replacement. It’s much more profitable when the consumer doesn’t have to come out of his pocket. Kinda like some of the medical insurance scams.
TO ALL OF YOU CLAIMING YOU’LL BRING OUT THE CAN OF WHOOP-ASS:
what if if was a little high school girl just trying to work a part time job? i bet you wouldn’t chase HER down the street with a crowbar.
or what if the dude is like waaaaaay more buff than you? you’ll probably back down like a puss.
Lighten up … guerrilla marketing at its finest
DNRTFA, but I think the woman’s a little exciteable.
@Mr. Gunn: Just because she thought someone damaged her car? Wouldn’t most people assume that’s what happened if someone left a note on their car that only said to call them?
@jamesdenver: a parked car =/= open invitation to solicit. i don’t know why someone came up with the idea that it was.
let’s look at it from a little different perspective…you know all those flier boys that stand on street corners in the city & pass out fliers? what if they just stuck their papers in your pocket instead of holding it out for you to grab? would that be acceptable?
maybe to you. i would throttle anybody invading my space like that.
Gunn: I was pretty far back and had the pleasure of watching that hunk of metal bounce not once but THREE times off the highway before it hit my car. It bounced twice up my hood and embedded itself in the windshield. How do you think I was able to return the object to their place of business?
Although on a lower scale the satisfaction levels at the crash it made was completely and totally worth it after getting burnt for my deductable.
@mac-phisto:
I don’t care for flyers either – but it doesn’t turn me into a rage filled dick.
Plus it’s a car, not your personal space. If your car is that precious perhaps it should remain in your garage.
@jamesdenver: i’m with ya.
it’s the things like this your mother was talking about when she said to “take things with a grain of salt.”
it takes a lot more than a post it note ad, to ruin my day, and take time to chew someones ass who’s only doing their job.
i can’t believe you people can even surf online with all the ad’s there are here. here’s a little secret……..THE ECONOMY SUCKS!!!!! everyones feeling the pinch, and are now trying different ways to bring the business to you, opposed to waiting for it to come to them.
This reminds me of the carjacking hoax perpetuated by e-mail spam: [www.snopes.com] The fact that it is false doesn’t mean that it couldn’t actually happen because it will give a criminal the idea that maybe it would work. I think this was a stupid move on the part of the company because it elicited the kind of response they probably weren’t thinking about (panic, fright) rather than a chuckle and a new customer.
@mac-phisto:
@shrtcrt:
People really, really, REALLY don’t like it when you touch their car. It’s actually perceived by many (most?) people as an invasion of privacy / personal space.
Whether or not the feeling is rational, it’s there among most of the car-owning populace in (at least) the US.
Don’t touch someone else’s car.
Good, quality outfits know this and don’t do that kind of stuff. People should avoid the ones that do.
@jamesdenver: Yeah, I thought about putting a sign on my car that read “Not responsible for pedestrians hitting my bumper” and see how far that got me.
@jamesdenver: well, to be fair, i really didn’t turn into a rage filled dick until i told the kid to take the flier off my car & he told me to go fuck myself. that’s pretty much the point where i wanted to beat his head in.
but touching my car was definitely the catalyst. as far as i’m concerned, it’s my personal space.
oh, & i don’t have a garage.
I greatly prefer that people not approach my car, as I am often loaded with extremely spendy electronic equipment that mostly isn’t mine.
You can touch it all you want when I’m not in it. Touch it or knock on my window about anything that isn’t police business or someone I know, though, and yer getting doored.
@qwickone: I doubt tailgating is always the culprit. My car once got hit with a rock that had come from the tire of a pickup truck passing by in the other direction. It happens.
Echoing what another commenter wrote earlier: if a company is that sneaky to begin with – and resorts to that kind of deception to drum up business – I’d think twice about patronizing them. Better to use a service company you seek out than one that seeks you out.
It’s like the call I got 2 days ago about my car. Just purchased it last april. I get a call saying its about my car and its important that I call and heres the number ask for this guy. I don’t know whos calling or why I just get nervous. I call and the guy is kind of rude. I ask who they are and why they are calling me. He suddenly gets nice and says they are the insurance company that the dealer gave me for the 12 hours after I bought the car until my insurance company opened. They wouldn’t let me drive it off the lot otherwise.
Scared the crap out of me at first, I thought it was the bank calling about my loan.
I just have a personal disgust for anyone advertising by leaving what I refer to as their “trash” on my car or on my mailbox or inside my door. I can accept junk mail through the mail but anything else pretty much guarantees I wont ever use your business for anything.
the best thing about this practice is that it totally eliminate douchy customers that wine and complain about everything!
@snoop-blog: and a great deal of us who don’t whine and complain often but also don’t like people leaving their garbage on our property.
There’s a huge market for this type work where I’m from. If you’re good at what you do in this field, word of mouth is about all the advertising you need. That being said, this would have really, really pissed me off if it happened to me.
@Primate: my comment hit close to home on ya? i didn’t gear it towards you but you sure got defensive.
@Primate: garbage? uh they DID have a cracked window….. its not like EVERY car got a post it. maybe he ran out of business cards, saw the cracked glass and so left a note. call it garbage, but i think the same of your car that has a huge spider crack in it.
@snoop-blog: It wasn’t being defensive, merely pointing out that this form of advertising isn’t all positive as you suggested.
The fact remains that she didn’t want to do business with them and now she has to throw that post it in the trash. Just like I have to do with all the flyers that end up on my car and inside my front door.
Hence, the term trash.
I got a post-it like this in Denver once but it when I looked closely it was printed by a computer, not handwritten. It could be the same company
@irid3sc3nt:
The guys in the little tents in the grocery store parking lots all over Colorado on Saturdays will do it for free in a few minutes & I’m already there when I see them, so no travel.
My insurance pays 100% to have it fixed that way, so it costs me nothing & my insurance company pays the guy $50.00 after he fills out the paperwork for it (which he does before he does the work – he calls it in to get approval).
I go out of my way not to patronize anyone who puts an ad on my car. It’s illegal and usually turns into litter when people throw them on to the parking lot.
Same thing for stores that hire illegal aliens to put hangers on your house door.
smot
In Orlando there is some sort of new trend to combat a law where instead of companies putting up signs they pay people to stand on the side of the road and hold these shoddy pieces of wood and plastic up for passing cars to view. The only problem is the people that they hire to do this are ones you really don’t want representing your store. Take for instance CompUSA, they have this older man that stands on the corner near my house that holds this sign up that says 20 – 40% off sale. Only problem is that this is the same guy that two weeks ago was holding up a sign that read “hungry please help,” on the same corner… Great image CompUSA, HR is really working hard.
vdragonmpc: Fair enough. I may have done the same it that were the case.
I still think it’s a little much to get worked up over a post-it, but I will admit the possibility that being that worried about things IS appropriate in Baltimore or other northeast cities. FWIW, I live in New Orleans. There’s lots of crime here as you all know, but I wouldn’t get worked up over a post-it left on my car because I can easily imagine some guy actually wanting to fix the ding in my windshield and only having a scrap of paper on him. People are kinda lazy here. They might think up doing something like that as a marketing stunt, but it’s far more likely here that some dude was out of business cards or whatever.
I guess what I’m trying to say is that if I had to live somewhere where I had to worry about some nefarious design behind a damn post-it, I’d end up an alcoholic.
Scratch that, I wouldn’t, because I couldn’t afford it. I think I’d just slowly go crazy.
@Mr. Gunn: *sigh* Women. Do not like. Being scared. In a threatening location.
Parking garages are dangerous. To women. Maybe not to you. But women do not want anyone approaching them in a parking garage.
@Mr. Gunn: guess what I’m trying to say is that if I had to live somewhere where I had to worry about some nefarious design behind a damn post-it, I’d end up an alcoholic.
And that, ladies and gentlemen, is why no man could hack it as a woman. EVERY approach by a stranger is suspected to have a nefarious design.
Assholes.
Just plain Assholes. Nothing more. That is all.
@noquarter:
It isn’t legal. They’re liable for any damage caused.
If you don’t follow up, however, they’re not liable. If no one notifies the police, they don’t care about whether or not it is legal.
@yoursupervisorplease:
Paying the homeless guy? Hiring the homeless guy for a job? What a stupid idea. No one should ever hire the homeless.
We should expect the homeless person to go to a shelter or apply for welfare, no respectable business wants some homeless person applying for a job.
Then we should bitch and moan about the people who are homeless and/or on welfare. They need to get a job.
If I was a windshield glass repairman, I’d have business cards that said “Crack is wack” with my business name and number and I’d put them under the wiper blades of cars in the area with cracked glass.
nardo218: I’m missing the part where the person got approached in a parking garage. I thought this was a story about a post-it note on a car.
If someone came up to me in my car in a parking garage, I’d be pretty damn suspicious of them, too.
@Mr. Gunn: They did approach – whether this person was there or not, their property was approached. If I saw a post-it note on my car, what would go through my mind was that someone inspected my car, might have looked inside it, might be watching me at that very moment, may have written down the license plate number and model, might be looking up my address or preparing to follow me home. It’s called stalking.
Sound paranoid? This is the life of a woman.
Men cannot grasp these concepts, because they don’t have to worry about them. We do. So trust me on this, something tiny and insignificant like a post-it note on a car can scare a lady s***less.