I Thought I Had Real Mail, But It Was Just A DirecTV Ad

I do most of my communicating with loved ones electronically, which makes it a rare treat when I get actual mail that isn’t a bill. Who doesn’t like a nice card? When Justin’s wife received this envelope resembling a greeting card from someone named “Chris Thomas” in California, he didn’t dismiss it as junk mail. It seemed legit.

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Yeah, disguising advertisements as real mail is a trick as old as junk mail, but this one is impressive. The real masterful touch has to be the pink, lighthouse-laden address label, which looks like something that your favorite aunt ordered 10,000 labels of back in 1994 and has been using for every piece of mail since.

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Of course, his wife didn’t know who Chris Thomas was, either. “It was clear that he knew her because the address was hand-written and the return address was a personal one . . . but neither of us knew,” he wrote to Consumerist. That is a pretty convincing faux-handwriting font. “We opened it and found a promotional offer from DirecTV made to look like a wedding invitation or friendly card.” Well, at least you don’t have to buy anyone a present.

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Who lives at that address in El Segundo, though? Well, we know who “Chris Thomas” is, so let’s look up that address on Google Maps…

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Ah, I see. That’s Uncle Chris’s bungalow…or DirecTV’s corporate campus. It all makes sense now.

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