THINKing

Stupid Marketer Tricks #1

Marketers do the dumbest things. And now, thanks to this blog, I can point them out to a lot of people.

Personal story: I belong to FitCare at Birkdale, part of a chain of fitness centers. I’m not linking to them because at this point I don’t want to improve their search engine position. Been a member for more than 5 years. Last year, I added my son to the membership while he was home from college. When he went back, we transferred the membership to my wife. No problem. He is home again and we wanted to add him into a family membership.

You’d think a company would make it easy for you to spend more money with them.

Several phone calls to the center. Leave messages. We’re bounced from one person to the next. We’re told it should be no problem, but we must call back and talk to someone else. The manager, maybe.

Finally, reach the manager, Andy. He says he’ll pull our records and call us back. No call.

We call again. Have to leave a message. We call again. We tell the story about no one calling back. Turns out it’s Andy. He says, “well you’ve reached the manager now.” We tell him, “you were one of the ones who never called us back.” D’oh!

Now, he tells us it will be a problem. More registration fees, higher monthly costs, yada, yada, yada. We tell him this was not the case the first time we did it. Well, now it is, says Andy. Andy? Andy? Hmmm.

Many marketers think that once they have you as a customer, one who has been a customer a long time, that they can treat you anyway they want. Now, the fitness center is one mile from my house and very convenient. But Peak Fitness seems to really want me. Maybe it’s time for a change. Are you listening, Andy? Andy? Andy? Hmmm.

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