kjchapman@wateng.UUCP (Kevin J. Chapman) (12/14/84)
>
A company known as "Federal Testing Authority" has been in the news
recently in the southern Ontario region. In the packages they sent to
home-owners they purported to be a marketing research outfit of some
sort, and they included a survey card on TV watching habits. The survey
was to be filled in by the addressee or a member of the addressee's family
only. This seemed odd since there was no address on the envelope, which
came with advertising flyers (and not in the mail). The distribution
method they chose seemed to conflict with their assertion that the addressee
had been "COMPUTER SELECTED" to participate.
The survey consisted of about 12 questions such as "Do you watch sports
on TV?", "How much TV do you watch a week?", and "Do you own a home comp-
uter(PC) or VCR?". The questions seemed rather vague & pointless, and I
couldn't see how the responses would be of use to anyone, especially
since there were no requests for demographic information (advertisers do
like to know the sex/age/income of their target audience, don't they?).
Now here's the best part of the scheme: respondents were to receive
gifts for participating, including microwave ovens, free film, computers
and cash. "Shades of Gold Coast Distributors", thought I, "and yet they show
cash values for each of these prizes, none of which is lower than several
hundred dollars". All one had to do is send in $16.80 for postage & handling.
I didn't look at all of the 20 or so prizes listed, and I missed the equiv-
alent of Gold Coast's satellite dish - a membership in a "film club" which
offered free film for processing one's film with them. This was supposed to
be worth $720 in a lifetime. (I should point out here that your wary
correspondent was in no way fooled by the apparent generosity of FTA, despite
having overlooked the "free film" prize. I can assure you that I would have
examined the list very carefully had I decided to participate. I guess the
thousands who sent in their money were not as careful.)
The owner of FTA was no dummy, of course. Not only was he charging
seventeen bucks for a service many stores offer for free by cleverly
(or perhaps not so cleverly) disguising it, but he was actually using the
results of the survey! The names & addresses of those answering "No" to
the question on PCs & VCRs were sold to, you guessed it, a company which
sold PCs and VCRs.
Although some were fooled by the scheme, many more were suspicious.
The local Better Business Bureau received something like 1500 calls in a
week about this - quite a bit for a city of about eighty thousand households.
If I recall correctly, the owner of the company has returned to his
native Florida, and letters to the outfit will be intercepted & returned
to the gullible/naive senders.
As always - Caveat Emptor
Kevin Chapman
Computer Communications Networks Group
Waterversity of Uniloo
'Loo, Ont., Canadakfl@hoxna.UUCP (Kenton Lee) (12/16/84)
xxx You're lucky the results of the "who owns a VCR or PC?" survey wasn't sold to a burglary ring.