Worst Business Reply Postcard Ever
Can you spot what's wrong with this Business Reply postcard? That's right, The Huntsville Times wants you to write down your full contact information and credit card number on a postcard and send it through the mail where anyone can see it. Hellooooo, identity theft.
Here is the email tipster Clinton sent to the newspaper:
Dear Huntsville Staff,I purchased the Sunday Paper today and began reading it. In amongst the paper, was a Business Reply Card from the Huntsville Times with a subscription special. I was considering the offer when I noticed that response asked for a Credit Card Number, Exp Date, and Signature. While this is not uncommon to be sent for postal purchases, I have never seen it on a business reply card that has not even the security of an envelope. Anyone who picks up the BRC now has your credit card information and can go shopping.
In these days of personal ID theft, I think you should case requesting CC information on Business Reply Cards and write a notice in the paper not to use the BRC in conjunction with your CC information.
As good stewards, I think this approach is only prudent.
And here is their response:
Mr. Wylie,First of all let me say a personal thank you for purchasing a Sunday paper and voicing your concern on the rack reply card. Your points on credit card thief are VERY valid and over looked on our part. You are correct on the issues. In creating this form we did not intend to be so careless on protecting our future customer's information. I am looking at re-working our forms now. I would like to offer you a two week free subscription of our everyday delivery and ask you to consider subscribing to The Huntsville Times. After the two free weeks, you can pay $20 for 20 weeks delivery of the Sunday paper, which will save you $.50 per Sunday copy, not to mention the time it takes you to go buy on out of the rack. Just let me know and I can get it set up for you.
Thanks again for the insight; I promise I will get it taken care of.
Thanks,
Darren T. Mack
Sales and Promotions Manager
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"I would like to offer you a two week free subscription of our everyday delivery and ask you to consider subscribing to The Huntsville Times. After the two free weeks, you can pay $20 for 20 weeks delivery of the Sunday paper"
Isn't that the same deal that's on the card? LOL!
He'll just need your credit card and exp date sent via email instead.
It's Alabama for cryin' out loud. That explains a lot.
(Just joking... people from Alabama need not post hate comments. Go Tide...whatever).
I'd take them up on the second part of the offer if they actually reported things like they happened. Silly HTimes. At least they aren't owned by NYT anymore.
I digress... Good find especially since the only place in America with more spies is Washington D.C. Lock down your credit cards Huntsville! (source: Redstone Arsenal)
So you can either get two days for $20, or one day for $20. Gosh, what a deal, I think I'll get Sunday only.
@topgun: Oh, come on. Have you ever been there? Alabama sucks. Hard. And I can say that, since I graduated from UA.
What I don't understand is, it says EVERYDAY for 2 weeks FREE, 2 WEEKENDS or 2 SUNDAYS FREE. And all for the same price of $20 for 20 weeks. So if I lived in Huntsville (god help me) I would not be sure what I exactly I could get for $20.
(a) the odds of someone stealing your credit card info off the postcard, are about the same, as them stealing it anywhere else.
(b) congratulations, you just got sold a subscription... please be sure to make your payment via a secure method.
I was looking at the 2 weekends free/2 sundays free.. before I thought of the identity theft thing. Aren't 2 weekends better than just 1 day out of the weekend (Sunday)? Confusing advertising.
@royal
I'm pretty sure the odds change from when your showing your number out in the open for any mail clerk to read v/s not showing it out in the open for any mail clerk to read.
I've seen this sort of thing often before, such as FedEx paper forms My answer is to pay online when I can for most such purposes, and if I can't, put a one-time card number on the form that has a limit of exactly the amount to be charged. (But usually, I'll go to the competition if the competition has a more-secure payment system, or pay by phone if I have to).
What I think is also horrible about this thing is the awful eye-stabbing red color.
I can't believe he tries to sell him a subscription in the reply.
The offer was obviously engineered to have people call back angrily and give the company an opportunity to apologize while making a sale at the same time.
There is a lot wrong with that postcard.
Do they even have credit cards in Alabama, or is someone just going to tape a $5 bill, some change, and a guitar pick from a Skynard concert to the card and mail it back?
I KID! Because that's how it would happen here in Pgh.
Am I the only one who found it annoying that the response from a newspaper was full of sixth grade grammatical errors? I hope their editorial staff is smarter than this guy.
How about the space for the CHECK NUMBER, and of course nothing else related to paying by check. Of course paying by check on a BRC makes about as much sense as putting your credit card number on it.
How did the Sat & Sun or just Sun error not get caught somewhere in producing that card? Then again, after seeing the primary school grammatical errors I think I know.
And then after the admission that they are clueless about handling customer data he tries to sell him a subscription again, the same deal.
@omerhi: Actually, you might be surprised by how many people want only the Sunday paper and don't want the clutter of extra newspapers they don't expect to read.
@Jon Parker: Thank you! No wonder he's in Sales & Promotions!
@DeanOfAllTrades: I thought everybody caught that, guess it was just us. To be honest, I never would have put the credit card or even enclosed check thing.
That would be a neat trick, trying to include a check with your return postcard.
@bohemian: I get some rebate checks back in the form of BRC's. I actually just got two from Staples yesterday. If that's not inviting theft, then what is?
@omerhi: Oddly enough, I did some newspaper delivery work and some people only like to get the Sunday paper. Even if the Friday and Saturday is offered free, some people actually call to make sure they DON'T get Friday or Saturday papers.
"I would like to offer you a two week free subscription of our everyday delivery and ask you to consider subscribing to The Huntsville Times. After the two free weeks, you can pay $20 for 20 weeks delivery of the Sunday paper"
Hahaha!!!! It sucks that the guy just doles out the same offer, but it's funny that he's so deadpan about it.
The offer isn't the same... the guy offered two weeks fo their EVERYDAY service, and the postcard offers two WEEKENDS (or Sundays).
Anyway, if you're like my dad, he would prefer just to pay $20 for Sunday only because he knows he won't read the Saturday one and it's just wasted paper.
@iamlost26: Actually, it's kinda ambiguous what the postcard is offering. The checkbox says everyday, the headline says weekends and sundays, and the box on the right says everyday.
@jimv2000: Maybe the Sales Manager thought he wanted to sign up for the offer on the card and sent the letter because it was unsafe to use the card.
I don't think he was trying to trick the OP into thinking he was getting something extra. I think the manager just wanted to let him sign up for the offer by contacting him directly.
Update. I purchased another paper while waiting for my wife's surgery to be completed. There was another business reply card for the Huntsville Times. It has the 2 weeks free and the offer is 4 months for the price of 3.
And yes it does request the Credit Card number, expiration date, and your signature.
I don't know why this example is surprising. Up until recently (maybe in the past year or so), I've seen lots of magazine subscription cards similar to this that have the option for you to enter your credit card information on them. Even now, many provide a check box - bill me later or payment enclosed. It might not list a line for credit card info, but I'm willing to bet people just enter the credit card data on the card and send it back (saving an envelope and a stamp!). FWIW, I'm a librarian - so I probably see a lot more subscription cards than most people.
Things have changed a lot since the internet came along. We found an old "Spell & Say" at the thrift store (mid-70's, maybe?) a couple weeks ago and someone had engraved the child's name in the plastic along with her social security number.
In talking to a friend, she said that her dad used to engrave his SS# on everything.
It has only been fairly recently that anyone thought anything about identity theft.
That said, it is pretty dumb that the paper would put the information on a postcard, and even dumber that it probably worked, because they would have changed it before now if it hadn't.
@LikeYourFace: Hang on. This is Huntsville we're talking about, not Alabama. If you've ever been to the Huntsville "Metropolitan Area" (more like minor city and suburbs) you'd understand. NASA plus Government Engineering/Contractor Hub equals smart people who know what they want... with funny accents that make you ask for repetitions (and sometimes definitions).
I have seen this before, but that was about 10 years ago, when I first got a subscription to Wizard Magazine. I filled out the postcard and stuck it in an envelope. (My comic-collecting days have ended, so I don't know if they still have this problem.)
Other than the problems everyone else has mentioned:
- The "Business Reply Mail" block is too high, too far right, and too far away from the address block
- Punctuation is not permitted in the address block (except for the hyphen in the nine-digit zip code), nor in the "FIRST CLASS MAIL PERMIT NO 9696 HUNTSVILLE AL" line.
- The horizontal bars below the postage area tell the automated scanners where to find the start of the mailing address. They stop too soon, and should be repeating all the way down to just above "PO BOX 1487"
- The right side of the face of the postcard is missing; I assume that wasn't on the original, though.
- What if your delivery name or address is different than the credit card name or address?
- Because of these other problems, I doubt they got approval from the Huntsville post office to use this shade of red ink. It's probably safe, but the USPS scanners can be picky.
- On the form side of the postcard, why did the typesetter decide to start using colons after the field captions halfway through the form?
- What's the difference between checking the first box, checking the second box, checking neither, or checking both?
- The fine print says this isn't valid for mail subscriptions, meaning that if I lived in California and sent this in, I wouldn't be getting a free daily subscription for two weeks. Is Huntsville close enough to Tennessee to need to ask for the state; wouldn't the state always be Alabama? If so, then why ask?
/ forms geek
// postal regulation geek
/// slashie geek
(Add: at least they got the barcode right)
@DeanOfAllTrades: You obviously have never lived HERE! Huntsville has been my home for most of my life (and yes, being a former Army brat have lived all over the U.S. and Germany so I know what I'm talking about). This is a GREAT place to live! Outside of Washington D.C. Huntsville has more retired officers than any place else in the country.
Having never lived in Huntsville, I really can't judge about the paper itself. But, they have absolutely the best sports writer in the state, Phillip Marshall. Guy's a veteran with encyclopedic knowledge and great storytelling skills. I read both his regular sports stuff on Alabama Live, and his blog.
Besides the personal security issues of the damn thing... it makes no sense at all. I read it three times and can not figure out what the hell they are trying to sell. Is it weekends only? Sundays only? Daily paper? There seem to be multiple choices, all for the same $20. WTF? And this is from a printed news source, with journalists and editors?
And I thought our local fish wrap was bad.
It looks like they just want $20 and don't really care how they get it. This silliness is an example of why newspapers are being outmoded by the Internet.
Why did Mr Wilie even send this in to Consumerist to begin with? Is he still angry even after the magazine apologized profusely and promised change the card copy? He should have just let it drop. Arse.
"Security of an envelope"?!
Yep, those things are pretty darn inpenetrable! No way to see what's in an envelope without specialized equipment like fingers or a strong light source....
At least they didn't say they are "taking it seriously". that means they might actually do something about it. Right? :-)
@Optimus: Thankyou, someone understands what it's like to live here. All you people making jokes about how stupid we are...well, Alabama is stupid, but spare the city. It has the highest PHD per capita in the nation.
Also, my stepmother works at the Huntsville Times. I can't say the brightest people work there, but that card is probably a couple years old before the big identity theft craze, and ...well, this is the South. People tend to assume theres trust and to trust other people a little better here.
good on him. Case dismissed.