The "Call in the next 10 minutes" & other dumb questions thread
 

Here is a chance to ask all those questions that you'd love love to have an answer to but considered the question too silly to ask.

Here's my first;

It concerns those TV infomercials when they get to the inevitable;

"But wait! Call in the next 10 minutes and we'll double your offer..."

If you call in 12 or 15 minutes time do you not get the deal?

My take would be that it's just a hook to get you to call before you forget about the Shamwow or whatever for a week. Therefore I'd guess that you do get the offer as I can't see that the phone operators have a list of all the air time slots for that commercial for every TV channel all over the USA and actually check. But I might be wrong...

I'm never going to buy anything from one of those adverts to find out for myself so does anyone have actual experience or the inside line?

"18% gratuity added to the bill" What? If you only have 16% do you have to wash dishes? What if the service is lousy, and you want to leave only 10%?

aerkuld, I'm surprised you're even wasting brain cell energy wondering about things like that.

I was in a restaurant recently that had the tipping calculations at the bottom of the credit card slip. It started at 18% for good, 20% for very good and 25% for great. As I only had average service, I left 15%. It annoyed me that they started at 18%. Place was more of a dive than a fancy place.

+1.

Of course it's all BS. But, if you call me in no less than 10 minutes, you can send me $19.95 + S&H ($39.90 total)

"But wait, there's more..." There's always more.
Other dumb things: anything listed as "Rare" on e-bay to bump the price.

It is totally wasted as I'll never use the information.

But here's the odd part. I'd love to be totally surprised to find that someone HAS called and been told the offer has expired.

Optimism is my Strong suit...

You normally only find the gratuity added to the bill for large parties. Even so, I'd like to be able to make up my own mind as to what the service was worth.

It's a popular story that if you eat your meal and don't have the money to pay that you'd be in the kitchen washing dishes. Anyone actually done it though?

how do they now when to start timing the 10 minutes????

That was the question. :D Send my money.

Exactly. They can't possibly know, which was the point of the question as Milt said. I would just love to find one person who has called to be told the offer expired 2 minutes ago, or finding someone who works in a call center that tells us there is a list of TV slot airing times.

It would just satisfy me to know that when Vince says "...because we can't do this all day..." I don't have to shout "YES YOU BLOODY CAN!!" at the TV.

Another thing, when people hear an advert for a product that claims "Nothing works better than Product X for removing/preventing/curing whatever..." then why do they buy it?

Nothing works better, so use nothing because it's free.



I shout at those ones too.

You're over thinking this.

The reason for "call in the next ten minutes" is because that 800 number will be re-used on another channel for a different commercial spot in 10 minutes.

They track which commercial spots brought in the sales by having dozens of different 800 numbers--basically a unique on for each spot that runs at a given time. They have to re-use the numbers throughout the day. They urge you to call in "now" because if you wait, they can't accurately track which sales went with which commercial.

I'm not buying it - the explanation above, that is. Maybe when these product ads first hit the airwaves (back in the 60's or 70's possibly), I would think that was necessary, but these days - I don't think so. And I suspect that most of those 800 phone numbers lead directly to the same call center - betcha you can call the Shamwow number and order a Slap Chop no problem.

Oh, and speaking of Shamwow - my wife's a teacher - and one of her students said that a friend of her's parents bought the Shamwow and decided to test it by pour liquids all over their living room carpet and using the Shamwow to soak it up. Well, after their expensive carpet cleaning bill they determined that the Shamwow wasn't that 'wow' afterall. True story.

-Z-man.

Just how stupid do you have to be?

First you have to be stupid enough to buy it, then crazy enough to believe it works like the ad. You just can't fix stupid. Most of us have seen the U-tube videos of some world class stupid people.

I've got three at the moment.

Why are some toilet seats an oval and others are U-shaped?

Why do some women paint their toenails red regardless of what color they paint their fingernails?

Ceiling fans from the 70's have the low speed, then medium, then high as you click through the chain pull... why, at some point in the history of ceiling fan making, was the order reversed, with the high speed first?

What was Captain Hook's name before he lost his hand?

Mr. Hand?