I utilize a lot of online services. I buy my groceries, order takeout, schedule car maintenance, miscellaneous shopping, etc. As a result, I’m bombarded with “please rate your service / purchase” emails. For some, if I don’t respond, those messages don’t stop until I do. I find this quite infuriating.
I took my car in for an oil change this past weekend. An oil change. Not a major car repair or detailing – a simple oil change. When I got home, not only did I have an online service survey to take, but an email from one of the service people. I rolled my eyes, completed the survey and ignored the email. The next morning when I checked, I had another email from the service person. I guess the star rating was inadequate as what they really wanted was a novel about how great they are. I responded that I completed the survey and left it at that. Within 15 minutes, I received yet another email. Arrgggh!
I was immediately reminded of one of the latest episodes of the X-Files. Mulder and Scully eat at a restaurant that is run by robots. No humans present whatsoever. Scully’s meal was delivered as ordered, but Mulder got a Blobfish. When he paid with his credit card, he chose not to tip and the machine ate his card. It was downhill from there and all of the tech in their lives came after both of them. Throughout the adventure, Mulder’s phone would remind him he had X minutes to tip the restaurant. Scully’s phone would remind her she needed to leave a review for her terrifying driverless car ride. It wasn’t until they finally acquiesced to the tech nagging that the attacks ended.
I completely relate. It’s getting as annoying as robocalls!
11 replies on “Nagging Tech”
My personal peeve is that when I shop on line, which is almost all I do now, when I next visit some other website that has ads on the site (Twitchy e.g.) all the ads are for the item I bought last night. It drives me absolutely batty.
I just bought that thing, show me an ad for something else I may want not the thing i just bought. Stop spying on me and my habits and treat me like you want a customer.
My advice is to create an email address that you use only for this sort of thing–and then just go in once a month or so to delete everything en mass. And then I have another email address that’s solely for people I actually know. Seems to work pretty well….
I have 4 email addresses for that very reason. However, since I use one of them for shopping / services, I do check it just to make sure all is well with purchases, et al.
I am also generally disgusted with the way vendors want to intrude into my technology. I realize that this was the promise of silicon valley: free wundertech that would turn us all into commodities that everyone selling anything could use to target us with an endless Customer Relations Management. Yes, CRM is a thing. It’s actually a big, big business. What on earth possessed the marketplace to believe the information about our purchases has greater value than the purchases themselves? For me, it was when I was at Pets Mart trying to buy cat litter, and they were trying to get my email address to contact me about it. I wanted to scream, “I just want some f___ing cat litter!”. Honestly, what kind of social experience do you want to have regarding cat excrement? Maybe this is just how kids live these days, and this is all targeted at them.
So glad I’m not alone. I also hate that every store you walk into has a loyalty card or they pump you to take their store credit card. If you want me to come back, then get rid of all of the costly loyalty cards and gimmicks and just simply give me the sale price. And I don’t need more credit cards so stop pushing them like a bunch of drug dealers. I’m quite happy paying cash for everything without the 20%+ interest rate.
Yes, but I guess there’s more profit to be made marketing the customer than the product….
I used to buy a fair amount of stuff from Newegg, some years ago, for several businesses. One day I browsed to check the price on something while logged in and shortly after that received an advertising email for what I’d been looking at. I’ve bought virtually nothing from them since then. They have a nice website for selecting features so I tend to use them as an online showroom and buy elsewhere even if the price is a bit higher.
Even when you turn your phone off, they’re still tracking your conversations so they can spam you with ads for whatever you were talking about the next time you go online.
I’m with you. I refuse to give out my email or phone number where possible. I opt out from notifications wherever possible. I only just got my first smart phone a few weeks ago and still only use it for calls and texting. My email overflows despite years of trying to get off mailing lists. I just hate it all, want to go live in a cabin in the woods.
Don’t we all.
LOL – I have a cave picked out at Pismo Beach.