Fine Print

The U.S. Postal Service, our government supervised postal service that receives no tax money to run itself (it gets revenue to operate from selling delivery letter and package postage to customers) is in financial trouble. This past year the post office lost so much money that Saturday mail delivery may have to be canceled. And it's all your fault for sending E mails and texts to people instead of writing letters. The post office need you to buy more stamps. Nonetheless, I will miss receiving all that junk mail that comes if the post office decides to give it up completely one day. No mail means no junk mail. The thought of it is almost unbearable.

I am amused by junk mail. The average piece of junk mail is the equivalent of one politician...wordy, confusing, and dishonest in its offers. What I like to read most before throwing away all my junk mail is the "fine print". That is usually the only text that is truthful among the myriad of offers to sell you the junk the rest of the mailing makes sound like is the Hope Diamond. For legal reasons, the advertisers who use junk mailings must post a modicum of truth in their sale offer letters....but it's so tiny and hard to locate one might as well be on a scavenger hunt when trying to find it. I doubt magnifying glasses would ensure that you can read all of the fine print verbiage in fine print statements. But I can tell you about a few now.

"CERTAIN RESTRICTIONS APPLY" is my favorite fine print disclaimer. They never tell you what the certain restrictions ones are, but I think it means they can place any restriction on their offer they wish, to the point that all false claims made about the product in the rest of the mailing are assumed to be truisms. And what does "VOID WHERE PROHIBITED" mean? Is it prohibited for me, and if so, why even send me the junk mailing at all?

When I see a "QUANTITIES LIMITED" fine print remark I know they want me to think I should buy the product before they run out... but then..if they really are low on inventory why are they sending 10 million junk mail offers to buy it? Maybe they think I want to buy all 10 million copies of the product they are selling.

Most junk mail sale offers come with one of two disclaimers that are hidden away near the bottom of the text. They are "PRICE SUBJECT TO CHANGE" or "SUBJECT TO CHANGE WITHOUT NOTICE". This means you have no right to expect the price offered in the junk mailing to be the one you will actually pay, or items you buy from them could be changed later if they decide to do that. I wonder why no one ever challenged this in court. It would be unconstitutional if I wrote "SUBJECT TO CHANGE WITHOUT NOTICE" that on my income tax form that I send to the government. They might put me in jail without notice if I did say that.

But what fine print baffles me the most is the "SHIPPING AND HANDLING CHARGES" claim. I know the shipping costs are the postal fees the business pays to ship the product. But what is handling? Who handles it? Do they wash their hands when they handle? Why should a business charge me for the normal cost of putting the item in postal packaging? And how do they compute that charge. I notice the "HANDLING" charges are always huge. I should write to one of those businesses and offer to do their HANDLING for half of what they charge the customers. I doubt they would want me to though. The HANDLING charge is to good to them to contract it out to me.

In writing this I thought it might be appropriate to add my own fine print warning. How about "STUPID RANT MAY BE ENCLOSED"