Don’t you just love it when you are told something is for your convenience?

Like when your credit card company sends you a notice that tells you for your convenience they have raised your interest rate to 24.95%.  Or for your convenience they now have online billing – which means that they are no longer sending you a paper statement.

This last one really gets me.  Because it’s really inconvenient for me.  I can tear open a statement in seconds and check it.  And I don’t need to find my user ID and password for THEIR website to do it.  Good gravy, I have more user ID / passwords than a grade school janitor has keys on his key chain.  Which is about the same thing, really.

I thought new technology was supposed to make things more convenient.  I’m all for less paper and saving trees, so just send me an e-mail or a one click option that gets me to my statement straight away.

Now here’s one I really love – when they say, “For your convenience this call is being recorded.”

Really?

You aren’t recording this for any legal disputes we may have in the future?  That you can use against me?  Ahem … for “my convenience.”

I sometimes get the wild impression that these aren’t really for my convenience at all.  They seem to be more for the company’s convenience — the company that issues these inane statements.  But that could just be paranoiac me.

I saw a great post on the internet the other day about a sign at a major retail department store in the United States that said “For your convenience, an elevator is located in China.”

Seriously.

The guy posted a picture of the sign.  He asked, “Just how is this convenient for me, or even relevant?”

Good question.

Now, I don’t know if his post about the sign is true, urban legend or an internet hoax, so take it with a grain of salt.  But what IS SO RELEVANT about his post is how believable it is.  It wouldn’t surprise me to see this.

Oh, and to this week’s cartoon, about the pay toilets, you may think I got really crazy with this one, yes?  Okay, I confess, you are right.  Because these days the price would be five dollars, not ten cents — for your convenience.

But I’ll tell you this actually happened at Lambert Airport in St. Louis some years back.  Yep — you really had to hope you had a dime when you went into their airport.  And not to pick on St. Louis, one of my favorite cities, but I’m sure many other airposrts did this too.  These things seem to come and go as business fads.  Mercifully, this one finally went — away.

Personally, I think companies need to start talking more about what truly is for our convenience and less about their convenience.

Or they should just stop talking completely (hmmm … maybe start using all that energy for, let’s say, customer service).  Because silence seems far better than all the convoluted bull they keep trying to foist on us all.

If not, maybe we should all start talking to them, like “For your convenience, we are taking our business elsewhere.”

I really like the sound of that one.

So what convenience falsehoods have you endured lately?
 
Just click on the title of this post and send me your thoughts in the comment box that appears below.

And have a “convenient” day – J. Daniel.

P.S. This WoodChips post was written for your convenience (chuckle).