Your Letters Can Make A Difference
You, too, can be rich. Here’s how: Rip off lonely, elderly people. They don’t get much personal mail from people who actually care about them. But you can make them think you care. You can send them computer-generated junk mail, inserting their names in big black letters and announcing they’ll win millions if they will return an enclosed sweepstakes form.
It’s a scummy way to make a living but it works.
This week, the U.S. Senate held a hearing on legislation cracking down on the direct-mail sweepstakes business. The legislation would outlaw misleading statements and require that the fine print be displayed more prominently.
Maybe the legislation would help.
But there’s a better way to shut these predators down: Never, ever, send them money. Don’t buy magazine subscriptions you don’t need from junk mail you didn’t request. Above all, if some has-been TV star you’ve never met sends you a personal note congratulating you on your new status as multimillionaire, don’t be a sucker. Dick Clark and Ed McMahan aren’t trying to make you rich. They’re trying to make themselves richer. They want your money.
The stories the Senate heard this week were tragic. Witnesses told about elderly parents who spent tens of thousands of dollars buying magazine subscriptions in a futile attempt to win direct-mail contests like the Publisher’s Clearinghouse sweepstakes. One 86-year-old bought 32 subscriptions to U.S. News & World Report. Another poor fool said he’d spent $20,000 on sweepstakes products, hoping to win enough to put his daughter through law school. Why didn’t he just invest that $20,000 - in tuition?
Direct-mail sweepstakes firms send a billion pieces of mail a year. More than 2 million people receive 36 mailings per year and 400,000 people buy at least 30 products a year from these firms.
Get-rich-quick offers are just like casinos, which do in fact make someone rich - the owner, not the customer. These schemes rely on a universal instinct: greed. Both victims and perpetrators long for easy riches.
The deeper longing, however, is for the intangible wealth of human friendship. If those phony personalized letters are sucking people in, it’s a sad commentary on the isolation of our culture. Send McMahan packing. Write your grandmother a real letter, using words of real comfort.