Recently I received a piece of advertising in my PO Box from, who else, The United States Post Office. The advertising espouses the advantages of using P.O. Boxes, with bulleted comments...

 

· There is always a Post Office nearby

(Postal officials now have noticed this fact)

 

· Use for important documents.

(letters maybe? or is this a good place for my last will and testament?)

 

The function seems to be to persuade me (by chopping down trees and sending me, now, Government junk mail) that as a PO Box user, the USPS (discounter to other junk mailers) believes that....

"I am more that just a number".

Of course, the address that USPS used was "P.O Box Holder", (no name or number added) providing a clearer understanding of the new oxymoron "Advertising Intelligence".

 

We bought a can of "NoTouch" spray on tire cleaner with a $2.00 refund. We claimed the refund but "No Touch" wrote a letter back saying "we are unable to process your request because:

We cannot mail your order to a PO Box. Please resubmit with street or rural route address.

The letter, for some reason, was sent to our PO Box. - Maybe they will be using UPS to ship the $2.00 refund in the original "pieces of eight" form.

 

Johnson & Johnson - 1-800-526-3967

 

Hyperbolé: Reach^® Floss - Cleans hard to REACH^® places

 

Factual check: Johnson & Johnson have included the word Reach^® in front of the word Floss for all "Floss" packages, but the product has not changed.

 

This whole thing started out when I was working on a '62 Land Rover. The label at the base of the can read...

"Net weight 20 Oz. (1 LB 4. OZ) 567 g. EB-1SP"

(the measures 7.3" long by 2.875" dia.)

 

I had almost run out of the stuff, so I bought more, it was in a newer design of can. A can that had a wide red band on the top 1.3" of the can. The yellow writing said "20% MORE FREE". The label at the base of the base can read...

"Net weight 19.2 Oz (1 LB 4 OZ) 543 g. EB-1SP"

(the can measures 8" long by 2.625" dia.)

So, by my calculations the "new" can contained 4% less, if you believe the metric values.

But they were right the yellow print was "FREE" and the red band covered almost 20% of the top of the can, give or take 2%.