My local Humane Society won't get money from me after I captured a stray cat terrorizing my outside pride, and they wanted $60 to take him. I almost reminded them that cinder blocks are only $2.00, but in the end I drove him ten miles away and let him loose.

My local SPCA, however, are amazing folks.

Please, think of the kittens.

@NutToNut,ByMyBastard!_GitEmSteveDave: 'Humane society' is a generic term, like 'grocery store' or 'coffee shop.' The HSUS (which is a horrible organization, and which does not operate animal shelters) doesn't have any official relationship to your local humane society.

If they both suck, that's a coincidence.

And the article is a pretty good read.
"Cinder blocks"???? OMG! That's harsh :)

"6. Giving away the product makes it less desirable"

Firefox would like to have a word with you.

51. Prevent them from using your product.

"You must have Javascript enabled to view this site."

Some of these could possibly use more clarity, or else I'm just cynical. For example:

17. Writing things down improves commitment. Group A was asked to volunteer on AIDS awareness program at local schools, and was asked to commit verbally. Group B was asked for the same kind of volunteer project, but was given a simple form to fill in. 17% of volunteers from Group A actually showed up to their assigned local school. From Group B 49% of volunteers showed up.

My question is, what were the actual numbers from each group? Does requiring a written commitment reduce the number of overall volunteers, so you end up w/ 49% of a much smaller number - making the actual number of attendees from each group not as disparate? So you end up with, say, 17% of 100 volunteers vs. 49% of 25 volunteers?

Some of these are interesting, some seem obvious. Yes, if you show me an ad where a pearl bracelet is being given away for free, then I'm going to assign it a lesser value.

If you want to punish cats the humane society is still worth a donation, since they kill a lot of them. Personally I find such "gifts" self-defeating since I know that most of money would go towards buying stickers.

@KarateMedia: Whoops, I meant 49% of 35 volunteers. Trying to come up with equal figures...

@Red_Flag: Since all browsers are free now that wouldn't really apply.

Remember when people actually had to pay for browsers? I was in college at the time and thought it was a great deal that they gave us the basic versions of browsers free.

@spanky: It's the Associated Humane Society in Tinton Falls, NJ.

@doctor_cos: I would never actually do that, but I was thinking of times when I wanted to tell vets that kittens are free. Like when the local emergency vet wanted 2,000 to work on an abcess under my one cats tail. I ended up going to my local vet the next day when I couldn't afford that and including the emergency vet visit, paid a total of $450.

@OMG!ToOMG!,ByMyPonies!_GitEmSteveDave: you could have just left him in a box outside their doorstep & sped off...that's what most people do.

my local shelter won't get any money from me b/c they're uber-snooty in who they deem "animal-worthy".

People like the sound of their name, and that defines their vocation. There are three times as many dentists named Dennis as any other names. Number of Florences living in Florida is disproportionately high, same goes for Louises living in Louisiana.

There's a correlation-causation thing going on here. Wouldn't it be at least as likely that people who wanted their kids to grow up to be dentists might name a son Dennis, and that people might name their kids something in homage to the state they live in?

Never mind that Florence is an old lady name, and Florida is where old people go.

I have to confess that it's the Kitteh stickers on every other Consumerist story that keeps me coming back. It feels so good to be taken advantage of so badly.

@OMG!ToOMG!,ByMyPonies!_GitEmSteveDave: Although, from their perspective, there are a lot of people bringing in Fluffy after their nine-year-old gets bored. Trying to get these crappy owners to reconsider (and possibly pay their own way) makes sense.
If your case, it's different. But I can see the shelter figuring this fee structure not based on good samaritans rescuing feral cats but irresponsible owners.

i fell for #9 - i joined the sierra club b/c i was a hippy treehugger. next thing i know, NRDC sent me some labels, the nature conservancy sent me a t-shirt with the god-awful ugliest bird you've ever seen on it & WWF sent me some stickers. i caved. big mistake.

i ended up on every left-leaning donor list in circulation. at first it was organizations whose missions i support, but then i started getting crap from ecodefense, earthjustice, PETA, those wackadoos at greenpeace, the "save the wild horses in east bajip, NM foundation", & on & on & on. one day, as i wrestled with mail jammed into my tiny PO box, i realized there was probably an entire forest being leveled at that very moment just to get me to donate $50.

lesson learned: if you want to donate to a good cause, by all means, do it. but don't be a whore. or at least be an expensive whore. you want to sell my name & address to a hundred of your friends? fine, but it's gonna cost you more than a silly t-shirt.

@mac-phisto: They have cameras, and someone on duty. Not that I thought about it....

@Trai_Dep: It was an obvious feral, and not the one who knocked up my Mama Bear in the first place, but the one who kicked him out of the territory. Mine were all fixed by then, but the fights were bothering me, and I had no clue as to his shot history.

@Trai_Dep:
You make sense.

@KarateMedia: We really don't care how large the sample size is, we care about the level of commitment of those that respond. The costs to reach 1,000 vs 5,000 are a small part of a campaign when what we're seeking are tangible, likely prospects.
And, statistically, when differences are that vast (over 2x), assuming that the sample was roughly adequate (say, a random 100 people for each group), increasing the size would improve the confidence interval but wouldn't detract from the findings: coaxing respondents to commit (even in an ephemeral fashion) drives up the success rate.
Does that help?

@morlo: Stickers are dirt cheap. You won't be bankrupting anyone by spurning their promotional material.
And the only reason they euthanize their animals is because they can't find homes for them. Hard to blame them for something out of their control, isn't it?
Save your ire for something that is more worthy: owners that don't fix their roving animals, for instance. That'd do more to stop shelter animals from being "slaughtered" than throwing stickers in your recycling bin.

This is a really fun list. Thanks for the article, snarky, black-clad guest-bloggers! :D

@OMG!ToOMG!,ByMyPonies!_GitEmSteveDave: I know, and it's frustrating.
I had to bring a dog prone to biting (by prone, I mean he'd draw blood at least once a week from the family (including kids)) to be put down, since the family couldn't handle it. I was honest that it wasn't mine and oh my GAWD did they give me the third degree, even making me sign things saying I wasn't a canine Jeffrey Dahmer. I liked the dog (when he wasn't insanely trying to tear chunks of flesh from my leg) and it was emotional enough without the shelter lady treating me like a potential criminal.
But I understood why she was doing it. They deal with a LOT of crappy owners and people like us, doing the right thing are unfortunately a minority.
It's okay though: they have a rough job, emotionally taxing and they are paid next to nothing. So I cut them some slack.
THAT said, I prefer local private rescue operations better. It's where I get my kittehs from when ours need replacing (old age, not banquets).

@Cletus: I think digital/online products may be the exception. Most newspapers have a free online version, and there's a lot of free software available, and people are very resistant to the idea of paying for either. And because the user often has to choose to visit a site or download the software, it may have the same effect as paying a dollar for it - we have to think, however briefly, about whether we really want the stuff.

@Trai_Dep: Once, while an Ex of many moons ago was on vacation, I received a call from her Mother. Their newly adopted dog had killed my Ex's beloved cat. So I went with her to the Humane Society, and I swear they were baby talking the dog going, "Were you a bad boy?" as they lead it off "out back". It bothered me to no end that they had just lost a cat they had for years, and these people were acting like it went on the floor. I only just realized that this was the same Humane Society I called for this cat, as in my area, what town you live in decides if you get the Humane Society or SPCA.

I've adopted 6 cats from people who had barn cat litters, and one from someone who was moving, and she feared the neighbors, whom this cat would torment by sitting outside their houses and making their animals inside freak out, would put the cat down. I gave two of the barn cats away, and had three meet their end way too soon, so I was left w/Ms. Personality, and my Mama Bear, Ash Lee, who had a litter of four of her own:

"Too many options necessitate selection, and hence frustration,"

I remember after I studied abroad in London and got used to shopping at corner Boots stores, then came back to the US and went out a day or two later to get some toothpaste at my hometown Walgreens where I've been shopping since I was, like, born, and it isn't that big ... I stood there in front of the toothpaste display for so long that clerks kept asking if I needed help.

I was just totally bemused by there being AN ENTIRE WALL of different toothpastes instead of a smaller endcap or whatever. I could barely begin to process the display, let alone make a decision.

(The next day I went to office depot, spun in a circle five or six times trying to re-orient myself to a store that ginormous, and gave up and went home.)

@spanky: Yeah, that's just weird, but I do know this one woman who married three different men all named Brian. I'm trying to think of other correlations. :D

@KarateMedia: Group B was a sample size of two, and the one who showed up was missing an arm.

Malcolm Gladwell has a different take on the New Coke thing, though, which is that blind taste tests--a small sip of a liquid on its own--are very different from drinking a glass of beverage with food, and even people who preferred the sweeter New Coke for the former liked old Coke for the latter.

@OMG!ToOMG!,ByMyPonies!_GitEmSteveDave:

OMG SOOOO CUTE!
Second from the left - that's my favorite. It's the face.

@Trai_Dep:

Hear hear. I tell people that all the time. Spay and neuter, spay and neuter. Sometimes people ask me if I'm a shill for Bob Barker.

@Eyebrows McGee (now with more baby!): in my own unofficial studies as an electronics sales clerk, i learned that giving a customer 2 "best options" in a particular category almost always netted me a sale, vs. explaining all the options we offered.

people like choices, but too many choices definitely scares them.

@Trai_Dep: My confusion stems from a lack of clarity concerning whether *all* members of group A and group B are considered volunteers. Are we dealing with two groups of 100, and then talking about 17% and 49% of each?

Or is group B made up of 100 people, but only 35 of them agreed to volunteer in writing, and of those 35 people, 49% showed up? Yet in group A, all 100 people gave a verbal commitment, yet only 17% showed up? Thereby giving you the same number of volunteers regardless.

Sample size is important if you're trying to compare and contrast two groups. In this example, it would be very important to know if asking for a written agreement encouraged people to weed themselves out on the front end, reducing the number of written commitments to begin with.

I've read that "Yes!" book. In a lot of ways the advice seems pretty common-sense, but I also kinda feel like it should be required reading. As a socially-awkward engineer, it has helped me a lot in my dealings with some people.

While much of this is true, it's important to remember the difference between statistical averages and individual behavior. These are things that apply to GROUPS of people, not all individuals, necessarily.

Eyebrows McGee (now with more baby!): I had a similar experience at Wal-mart last week. I just wanted another tube of the same toothpaste I'd been using and, like you, it took me forever to analyze the giant wall and determine where the product I wanted was.

Are we reaching a "too much competition" threshold on some products I wonder?

@Eyebrows McGee (now with more baby!): I'll take "Women Embarrassed By Screaming the Wrong Name During Climax", Alex.

@KarateMedia: The former.
One could also track the participation rate, which might be useful (say, if there were costs associated with reaching a demo economically, then you'd be concerned not to have too great a drop-off so you'd probably do a preliminary survey to see which techniques achieved buy-in without making too many people turn away). But in most cases, this isn't much of a factor.
I'm assuming that because it was an academic study, the sample sizes were more than adequate. Usually a 95% CI is the standard, which isn't too hard to reach when you have a campus full of subjects and nearly unlimited free labor to conduct the poll. The instructors would thus construct it so this CI is met.
If their findings weren't so disproportionate, or if the accuracy levels at a higher standard, then sure, the methodology could be tightened. But given the circumstances, it's safe to assume it's valid for the purposes given.

Total fail!

You must have Javascript enabled to view this site.

@OMG!ToOMG!,ByMyPonies!_GitEmSteveDave: I believe you, it was just a humorous aside :) <--

@mac-phisto: that reminded of a friend who had two cats in succession, both dying about 13 years old.

Going to the local shelter, the people there needed proof from her vet of how her prior cats died before they let one of their strays into the hands of a potential cat killer!

My friend bought a dog from the mall.

@HogwartsAlum: It's Angel, Dizzy, Cynder, and Skeeter. You, like everyone else, like Dizzy. She was an outside cat till she disappeared for 7 months. Once she came home, she joined me inside w/Cynder and Skeeter. Angel is outside in the barn with her mother, Ash Lee.

@morlo: I mentioned this upthread, but it bears repeating: Your local humane society--the one that runs the shelter--is a completely different entity from the Humane Society of the United States. The HSUS is the one that sends you stuff. They do not run shelters. They lobby.

Also worth mentioning: The HSUS is not really an animal welfare organization. It's more along the lines of an animal liberation organization like PeTA. In fact, their director, Wayne Pacelle, has similar goals to PeTA's when it comes to domestic animals, advocating killing healthy, adoptable animals to protect them from some future imagined abuse.

@mac-phisto: Even more so, leaving something open ended means that people will take forever in choosing. So I do the same thing when setting up meetings for computer work or interviews. By telling them what two days/times I am available instead of "any time", they choose, or give a quick third alternative.

@mac-phisto: I've donated to a couple of non-profits, and now a solid 70% of my mail is pleas from other organizations for money. I'm not surprised that my name and address were sold, but some of the mail is really disturbing. I used to regularly open plain or cryptic envelopes only to have photos of tortured dogs spill out. I've asked to get off many of these lists but NONE of them will desist. Now I chuck it all if I don't know the sender.

Another 20% of my mail is from those organizations I did donate to asking for more money. They also won't stop, and they send me the worst crap. Umbrellas that instantly break, hideous mailing labels, chintzy ornaments. I have BEGGED them to stop wasting resources by sending me this junk and they will. not. stop. It's such an offensive waste of money, raw materials, and the patience of those like me who now second guess donating any way except anonymously.

The other 10% of my mail is misc. All my bills and regular stuff are online b/c I don't want lots of paper coming to me that I just put straight in the recycle bin.

end rant.

@Red_Flag: No, I think that if Firefox cost money, people would be more inclined to use it and less likely to switch. The same sort of thing for online newspapers. If the New york Times is online I might read it on occasion, but if I have a paid subscription I will read it daily just to get what I am paying for.

@morlo: Or PETA. They kill an inordinate number of animals every year as well.

@spanky: What about people who name their kid Jesus?