Reader Sandra thinks Feeny Dodge in Elgin, IL should rethink this advertisement, which is disguised as a traffic ticket.
Sandra says:
I received the following advertisement in the mail today. It comes from a Feeny Dodge dealership in Elgin, Illinois. However, it came in an envelope marked “Traffic Division – Department of Ticket Disbursements” from Carol Stream, IL. I thought it was a traffic ticket so I opened the letter. I was surprised to learn that it was actually an advertisement for a local car dealership! Seriously, how low will a company go to get you to read their junk mail?
This is just sad. We were curious about the official-sounding stuff about consulting the F010 section of the DMM so we looked it up. It’s the section of the official domestic mail manual that deals with Nondelivery of Mail. Tee hee. How authentic.
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Google the return address. It returns as “MAN Marketing” – “The Alternative to Traditional Advertising Agencies.”
If by “traditional” you mean “not deceptive.”
@slickhop: No it’s not a genius strategy, it’s a bait and switch tactic and that’s all.
I personally guarantee I would never frequent or do business with a company that does such.
JetBlue sent me an ad that looked like a paycheck. Damn, that was annoying. Hey, moneyyyyy ohhhh noooo a frickin’ ad!
Well, it got you to open the envelope … but has anybody, ever, opened such a thing and said, “Oh, it’s not a ticket, it’s an ad — and I think I’ll buy a car!”
For me, I imagine the feelings I get would cycle from irritation, bewilderment, amusement, boredom.
@slickhop: Fair enough.
Ugh, we get stuff like this all the time for LLCs and corporations we’ve set up. There is a company that sends out official looking notices and mandatory filings – things you DO actually have to file, but can do easily with the secretary of state for about $20. This company makes you think their mailing is the official one by putting a bunch of business code citings on it and then charges you $100. It’s insanely deceptive and I could see many small business people falling for it.
@gergs: I just Google Mapped the address and saw the same thing. The address from satellite looks like a giant warehouse.
[maps.google.com]
@Nick1693: Link doesnt work… Heres the good one [maps.google.com]
It’s done by a company called MAN Marketing.
Their contact page:
[www.manmarketing.com]
@Trai_Dep: I’ve always wondered about this. My wife got one of these red-light tickets in the mail 2 years ago. The car in the picture was registered to my FIL. The driver was my SIL. My wife called the police department and told them that it wasn’t her in the pic. They said that they had to assume it was her based on the records they had (they knew it wasn’t FIL, so assumed it was the oldest of the 3 daughters). The ticket would go on her record unless we identified who was driving. Isn’t it their responsibility to identify who it is? Could we have just taken it to court and show the judge that it wasn’t her in the picture? Are we really compelled to rat out her sister? (BTW, she sang like a stool pigeon, the hell we were gonna take the fall for her sister!)
Gee, I hope you paid the $20,000 ticket!
I think it’d be fun to shoot back. Call the dealership and social engineer some contact info for their head of marketing. Then send snail mail addressed to their GM or their general counsel or something. Make it official looking from the FBI or some other government agency, claiming that the marketing head is under investigation for child porn. State that the dealership is liable because “our investigation has determined that some messages originated from your business’s computers”.
Worded properly, you could at best get the person making the shady marketing decisions fired, and at worst at least point out to the owner that fake government trouble notices are not amusing.
@FightOnTrojans: It doesn’t seem legal that the only out for a ticket that shows you’re CLEARLY not the one behind the wheel is to do the police’s job and find the real criminal. Especially when this wouldn’t be an issue if, y’know, you had a real cop giving the ticket. It seems that they (Boeing and our municipality, for me) is using you as an unpaid employee for them.
And, while a live police officer wouldn’t ticket for safe acts in violation (the reason my friend got his ticket was he was in the left turn lane behind another car, who took too long to turn. The car ahead was being conservative by ensuring a car careening ahead was actually stopping; my friend was being conservative by being only the second car out in the left turn lane, and by not freezing in the middle of the road when the light turned red). A real cop wouldn’t have ticketed it, or would have let them go upon hearing the explanation.
That said, I told them I had a friend visiting from Japan and I gave them a made-up name and address in Tokyo. I’d think your visiting Swiss friend (cough) might serve the same purpose?
The annoying thing is that it’s a system designed to falsely accuse as many people as they can, betting that they will miss the summons and be unable to appear in court. It’s unfair.
It’s also corrupt: the contractor (Boeing in this case) gets half the revenues, so they have an incentive to plaster as many people as they can to drive up their revenues. Every innocent, wrongly-convicted driver is extra cash for them. Delivered to them at the point of a (rhetorical) gun, our police. It’s rotten thru and thru.
Thank God it’s not a ticket! I think I’ll buy one of their cars! NOT.
Just report it to the Postmaster General as mail fraud, that’ll fix their wagon.
@Trai_Dep: Tickets like these are permitted on this idea (these are Absolute Liability offenses, that means no Mens Rea required):
- Was the car within your possession at the time?
– If no, did you willingly allow someone else to use it?
– If no, did you report the vehicle stolen?
– If no, why? (At this point, you’ve lost. Even if you’re in a coma in hospital at the time. You’d need to prove you are such a hermit with ZERO friends to beat it at this point.)
Yes to any of the above means you had control of the vehicle, or you legally assumed the liability of the use of the vehicle while it was under someone else’s possession.
Now, since the government can only prove your liability for the offense, and not that you actually directly committed it, your insurance isn’t affected, and you don’t personally lose any points. But, in the same way that if you let someone else walk your dog and they bite someone in the ass you’re on the hook for it, you’re on the hook for the ticket.
Most parking tickets are absolute liability offenses, for the same reasons above (Unless your car was stolen, or some act of god caused it [eg: tornado deposited it there] you are liable for it being there. Even then you may have to either get the people that stole the car to pay for the ticket, or sue god for the tornado.
)
Most moving related offenses (apart form cameras tickets) are strict liability offenses. A strict liability offence requires more than just proving the offense happened, it requires that you made the conscious decision to commit the offense (whether or not you understood it is an offense, that’s part of what makes it strict). Eg: You cannot get stuck with a speeding ticket if you can prove your accelerator got stuck, since you made no decision for that to happen (well, assuming you have records that you keep your car in repair). But you certainly can get one for driving 80 km/h on a residential road, even if there are no speed limit signs and you genuinely thought that was okay, as there is no requirement to prove a guilty mind, just that it was within your reasonable control to prevent the offense.
ALWAYS fight an absolute liability offense by proving mistakes in the presentation of the offense (eg: camera didn’t put the correct information on the ticket [very few mistakes will actually strike the ticket, but anything is better than nothing], crown didn’t send you disclosure on that, you can prove your car wasn’t there at the time, etc).
The above goes for strict liability as well, but you may also prove that you weren’t under reasonable control of the (whatever).
Never try to fight absolute liability by saying you didn’t do it unless you can give your car an alibi (eg: It was in the garage, here’s the receipt), or you actually aren’t liable (eg: In hospital for coma, car was stolen).
I’m sure in the US there’s the exact same concept with more complicated words.
As for the idea of “beyond a shadow of a doubt”, that doesn’t apply to strict and absolute liability cases. They are judged on a balance of probabilities. If the judge is feeling 51% sure the fault is yours, you’re convicted. Next!
Yes, it really is this strict. I’ve watched in court as someone proved they had driven their mother to the MOT to get their disabled permit be convicted for parking in a disabled spot.
Your best bet, for absolute liability tickets you think are wrong, is to waste the city court’s time as much as possible, to make the ticket as painfully expensive for them as possible. It took two court days (one in which they had to actually hear my case separately, with no other cases on the docket) for them to get $20 out of me. I was convicted for parking on the street at 2:45 AM (I picked up my car & ticket at 2:50 AM). We have a law that says you have to take your car off the street by 2:30 AM so that the snowplows can plow. They never plow until 4:00 AM (the joy of working nights) and there was no snow that night. I figure that $20 cost the parking enforcement department $500.
Before you say I waste taxpayer money, consider this: The parking court and parking enforcement department have budgets. They don’t magically up your taxes if all the money disappears, nor do they take the money from the orphanage: Instead, they have to patrol less, and only choose “juicy” target. If they want to put more money into those budgets, it’s public info. Any serious increase will be reported in the newspaper and the mayor will get the boot faster than you can say “WTF”. And no, I really don’t care if the meter maids don’t have any jobs. And no, the regular police don’t police these things, even as punishment (at least here they don’t). Just dedicated meter maids.
Oh, before you fight tickets willy-nilly, check to make sure your courts don’t assess you court fees for losing! Where I am they don’t (I believe it’s illegal to do that, actually). The only thing you have to lose (here) is possibly the cost of the victim surcharge, which sometimes you can get knocked off your ticket if you don’t go to court (sometimes, not very often).
And another bonus rule: The crown/prosecution/DA/whatever is *never* allowed to testify. Ever, ever, ever, ever. If they were involved it’s conflict of interest and they have to get someone else to try it. If they just want to say “But there’s a sign on that road that says XXX” they *must* get a witness to prove it, or get official records to prove it. The crown here tried that (and got away with it!) in over half of the cases I watched. If you don’t object, it’s assumed you’re okay with it, though.
Gawd, sorry for the long post. It’s just after being in court and seeing the feeble attempts of others to get out of tickets (Out of the dozens I’ve seen, perhaps ONE person won, 90% just said “BUT I DIDN’T DO IT!”… LOL!), I realize *very* few people actually know these things! It’s really handy to understand them, if you don’t like paying high insurance rates or ridiculous tickets.
@shepd: That was an incredibly well-informed and helpful take on the logic of the two types of violations. Can’t say I agree with it (the idea of having to rat out a friend because the constable is too lazy to write a ticket himself repulses), but I can see where they’re coming from.
I especially like how you explain why the I-didn’t-do-it defense doesn’t work for absolute liability offenses. Before your explanation, I didn’t get it. Now I do.
Thanks so much!
Seems like the perfect thing to send to your local TV reporters.
The only thing to do in a situation like this is contact Robert Wall (publisher for The courier News) the local news and let them know what’s going on: jlee@scn1.com that is the community news email address.
And then give Steve Grady (General Manager) or Colleen Feeny (Customer Relations Manager) a call and let them know how low it is to do something like this: Feeny Chrysler Jeep Dodge 1010 E Chicago Street Elgin, IL 60120 (847)697-0900
I see these half-assed charities who show up at tailgate events all the time, they’re always women in security-looking uniforms holding ticketbooks who approach guys drinking declaring “Is that beer? I’ve gotta cite you-FOR HAVING A GOOD TIME!” Then they reveal the “ticket book” is donation slips for Save The Baby Seals or whatever, you’re so relieved it’s not a cop you pony up the $5 or whatever. I’m thinking it’s stupid-if they run into an itchy drunk guy on parole they could get shot
This is probably some stunt they won’t mail out a second time.
I sent them a long email telling them how much they suck.
“obviously their strategy worked” No, it did not work. WHO would open this envelope and then go buy a car from this slimy dealership who tried to trick them into reading an ad??? NO ONE.
If the dealership will pull this on you, can you imagine what else they’ll try. There are actually mailing companies out there who create these sneaky mailings for dealerships!
I roll my eyes at 75% of new car dealers ads. Who falls for this stuff?????