Trivia: November 2005 Archives

I’ve noticed this trend in several marketing pushes, to state a value for goods given away for free. Now, the wording in the title (e.g. ‘A $10 value’) is mainly American, but it’s a pretty universal phenomenon. But I have to ask myself, how can this be so?

Well, let’s pick a single example here, Click Facts advertise their free service as a ‘$150 value’, so, if it’s really got that value then somebody somewhere must be selling quite a few very similar services for that amount of hard currency (because, well, that’s pretty much the textbook definition of value, right?). An admittedly brief search of the web turned up exactly zero competitors for this service that were managing to charge serious cash for what they do.

There really should be a law about this, let’s call it zero-bullshit and lobby for it in all elections from now on…

According to this article by the BBC it seems that people are now suing Sony over their (admittedly appalling) tactic of infecting their customers PCs with shoddily written viruses. You have to ask yourself though, how many people are going to sign up for the class action if it means admitting to purchasing CDs by such great names as Celine Dion and Ricky Martin?