~ryanlowe/blog: Urgent My Foot!

Urgent My Foot!

So I get a letter in the mail from "AppleCare Warranty" in Markham, Ontario. On the outside of the letter, just above the destination address is: Urgent! Open Immediately.

Of course a person would be curious by such an envelope and I open it immediately. So what was it? My AppleCare Protection Plan Certificate and the AppleCare Terms and Conditions. WTF? How is that urgent? I already have the warranty, I don't need a piece of paper confirming it. And of course my Dad was in a mad rush to give it to me: "You have urgent mail here from Apple! Your iBook will explode if ...!"

Reminds me of people misusing Outlook's urgent mail flag: !. I have a short attention span, just like everyone else. The envelope worked. But why, dear Apple, must you exploit this vulnerability?

Soon every piece of mail will be labeled Urgent! and I'll never be able to tell which mail is really urgent (none of it) and which mail is actually ... well, not urgent. Can you imagine the anarchy this will cause? I might actually have to open every piece of mail I receive.

Apple's warranty department probably uses the same envelopes for new warranty certificates and warranty expiry notices. Having a warranty expire on you might be urgent. But can't a company like Apple afford two different envelopes? :)

Wow, I think I actually wasted half an hour thinking about this. I need a hobby .... oh, wait.

Posted at March 25, 2004 at 09:09 AM EST
Last updated March 25, 2004 at 09:09 AM EST

Comments

With the price they charge for their products, they really should be able to afford 2 envelopes :) he he.

I got something like this the other day. It was from the credit card company. Envelope said important account information, or something to that effect. When i opened it, all that was in there was cheques, to the credit card account, and some information about low interest rates, so i could take money off my credit card. Yeah... important account information my a$$.

» Posted by: Kibbee at March 25, 2004 09:47 PM

It's probably "important" because if someone stole something like that they could "steal your identity". That happens more than you'd think. How often do you check your credit rating? Could someone else be pretending to be you and applying for other cards etc. and running up debt? I think that's why it's "important"

» Posted by: Jim at March 26, 2004 03:30 PM

How could they steal my identity from a warranty certificate? And even if they could, wouldn't labeling it as "Important!" or "Secret!" just tip bad people off to what mail was sensitive? :)

» Posted by: Ryan at March 26, 2004 03:50 PM

I think Jim was referring to my credit card information. I don't think it's really much of a problem since this mail didn't contain any of my actual credit card information. I think just the last 4 numbers of my account, nothing else. Anyway, yeah, as ryan mentioned, it's probably a bad idea to make these things look important, at people will be more likely to open something up that looks like it may have information in it. I think it's probably a good idea to make things look inconspicuous.

» Posted by: Kibbee at March 26, 2004 04:17 PM

There are far easier ways of stealing credit card information. Err...or so I've heard.

» Posted by: roy at March 27, 2004 02:34 AM