A COLLECTION OF ESSAYS

Ramblings about things done, seen, or remembered.

An Inconvenient Charge

Spin is everywhere and it’s wonderful.  I’m fascinated and entertained by advertising and communication, but I do have huge issues about a worrisome trend of labeling something the exact opposite of what it is so as to make it sellable.

This morning I went to order theater tickets online ($45) and got slapped with a $17 convenience charge.  Now, who’s that convenient for?  The “processing” charge I can understand, you pay to have it processed, but a charge just for convenience, which is anything but?  I found it so inconvenient I clicked away without purchasing.

Equally worrisome is the fact that we, the trusting purchasers of such services, seem to accept it as okay, partly I’m sure because it’s given a label that sounds okay.  Labeling the charge truthfully, “superfluous fee” or “cash-cow portion,” would cause uproar, but it’s okay when labeled the exact opposite.

“Why are you charging an additional 40 percent above the

 ticket price?”

“It’s an idiot charge sir; we’re taking you for all we can.”

“I’m not paying that.”

“Well, we could call it a processing fee if it would make it easier.”

“Well that’s certainly more believable but still…”

“A convenience charge then.  We are, after all, providing a service for you, the customer.”

“Oh.  Oh fair enough then.  If it’s for my convenience here’s my card number. What service is it you conveniently provide exactly?”

“We itemize the charges sir.”

The bigger the lie the easier it is to believe, and our day-to-day lives have some whoppers.  According to several dictionaries a gentleman is a man who is “polite and behaves well toward other people, especially women.”  A gentleman would offer a lady his jacket if she were cold.  Unless he’s at a so called “gentlemen’s club,” where he not only keeps his jacket on, but encourages the lady to remove hers, along with any other coverings she may have about her person.  Any man behaving like a gentleman in a gentleman’s club would be requested (by means of a half-ton bouncer’s knuckle sandwich) to leave.

If you and your spouse want to start a family you discuss car seats and buggies, research local schools, start a college fund, and so on.  In short, you plan for a family.  Of course, if you don’t want kids you use…family planning.

“We don’t want children.”

“Well, you’ll need to plan for that.  How many don’t you want?”

“Well, we don’t want any to be honest.”

“None! Well, that’s a lot of children not to have; better start planning right away.”

Okay, so we all do it to some extent.  In polite company we say “Yes, I am a bit hungry” when we are famished enough to eat the back end of an unwashed hedgehog.  But calling a product or service the opposite of what it is and having society at large buy into it is quite the marketing coup.  I can’t help thinking it gives us a false picture of our own society.  “Family planning” sounds responsible, but  population decline as a serious problem in many countries, not all of them emerging.  A neon sign reading “Gentlemen’s Club” looks far more respectable than if it read "Lascivious, Objectifying, Dirty Old Men’s Club," and so gets less community complaints.  A sizeable chunk of research however, suggests a neighborhood goes down the tubes pretty quick when they do.

The Opposite Label Theory (as it isn’t known, yet) does seem to apply to concepts rather than tangible things, which, for marketing purposes, are named as bluntly for what they are as possible.  When we buy a Big Mac or Whopper we instinctively know from its name that it’s a sizeable chunk of dead cow.  You can hardly expect your cardiac arrest-inducing, three and a half-pound, bacon-wrapped, steak-in-a-bun to appeal to a man’s man if you affectionately christen it Dinky Burger.  Perhaps we’re so used to “things” being labeled correctly that opposite labeled ideas just blend in.

Anyway, I stopped at the theater on the way home and got the tickets from a live person at the box office.  The extra charges amounted to less than $2—how convenient is that?

Copyright © Lincoln Thomas  2007