One of life’s enduring mysteries — joining “why do women and gay men choose the narrowest, most congested point in any passageway to stop?” and “why do old people achieve sexual arousal through providing cashiers with correct change?” — is how frequently and cavalierly a corporate image is allowed to incrementally tarnish through oversight, laziness, ineptitude or outright contempt for consumers. Take, for instance:

PharmaPlus, Toronto, 26 February 2008

Now, I don’t expect to get much of a discounted price on easter goodies prior to that blessed event, but reminding your customers that they’re getting no deal at all is more than a bit cheeky, isn’t it? But it’s far from rare. We encounter it all the time.

“Well, why do you have to complain all the time? You know what they mean!”

Right. I’m the problem. And, yes, I do know what they mean. But so much more is inferred. On one hand “yes, we’re stupid and/or we’re sloppy and/or we don’t know what we’re doing” and on the other, “we do know what we’re doing and we don’t care that you’re not getting a bargain at all, so much so that we’ll rub your goddamned face in it.”

Not much of a range and neither option says good things about your organization. And even if only 5% of the public responds as I do, that’s 5% of your market thinking ill of you.

“Well, that’s the way the labeling system works. Talk to the I.T. department.”

No, you talk to your I.T. department. Or Marketing. How is it that problems like this get to the customer in the first place?

“God, given all there is in the world, you pick this to complain about?”

It’s everywhere, it’s omnipresent, it’s bad, it’s getting worse, it’s getting more pervasive and. It. Doesn’t. Need. To. Happen.

At work I get into discussions of this sort all the time. Whether it’s regarding nonbargains or spelling or grammar or grocers’ apostrophe’s [sic] or inaccuracies. Would you rather your organizations look sloppy/stupid/contemptuous or would you rather spend no more than a few minutes making it right? There should be no barriers between the consumer and your product.

And I fucking love Maltesers. No way in hell I was going to buy them from PharmaPlus, though.