Marketing Genius(?) of FIOS

I enjoy getting things in the mail other than ValPak coupons and the bi-weekly 20% off oversized banner from Bed Bath and Beyond. The exception would be bills, but usually the bulk of my mail consists of poorly printed grocery ads and other miscellaneous JUNK mail. You can imagine my surprise when I received a Priority Mail envelope with "IMPORTANT INFORMATION INSIDE". My first thought was "I wonder how many houses the (fe)mail man skipped to deliver this precious cargo? What could it be? A check from a long lost rich-as-heck uncle, or perhaps a solicitation for advice from Dubya on world affairs, or even an encrypted message from the makers of Ovaltine. "

That thought quickly turned to "If this is so damned important, why was it stuffed into my tiny mailbox at such an angle as to require jaws of life to extract?" Turns out, this important information was nothing more than a cheap ploy to get me to sign up for Verizon FIOS.

The problem is, I already have FIOS.

Now the fact that they send mass marketing items out is not so much an issue, however, the extravagant method of delivery, and the contents of said package are what has my fiber-optic shorts in a wad. Contained in this rather expensive package, were two pieces of paper that looked to have been printed on a low-level inkjet.


Where am I going with this rant? That's a lotta packaging for a glorified memo. Based on current USPS pricing, an envelope of this caliber runs a person about $4.60 to send. Not taking discounts and bulk mail rates into account, let's say Verizon sends a small run of 3000 letters to the area I am in. This is probably a very conservative number. We're looking at $13,800.

I say we take away the marketing budget, and purchase some more decent channels. There are many repeats, about 200 music channels, and about as many useless other random channels. Let's use that money for a good cause. Let's get some more HD channels in the lineup, and I am not talking QVC or Lifetime or Telemundo.

Or at the very least send the money to me. You can even put it in a fancy envelope.