An Open Letter to EW
Posted on | January 27, 2006 at 7:22 pm | 5 Comments
Dear Entertainment Weekly,
I have been a subscriber of your magazine for more years than I can remember – probably at least ten. I am such a loyal customer; you really love me. I read every weekly issue cover to cover (yes, usually while seated in the “library”), even though I can get more than enough entertainment news and interviews from the Internets. I dutifully renew every year like clockwork, though I often wait until the last minute. You always send me goofy “Renew Now!” offers in the mail, starting about six months before the subscription expires, and I usually ignore them. Your offers always promise some sort of special prize or special price or extra issues or whatever, but don’t seem to be that much of a savings. However, this year I decided to take you up on one of these offers, about four months before the subscription was due to expire. The notice I got in the mail screamed how excited it was about the Mystery Gift I would get for Renewing Now. I even had to put little stickers in designated areas of the reply form to prove that I was worthy of the Mystery Gift. (Because, God Knows, you want your subscribers to be able to deal with spatial relationships.) You’ve produced some halfway interesting extras in the past, such as detailed episode guides to shows like Seinfeld. So, I figured, what the heck. I’ll renew now and see what this most excellent surprise Mystery Gift would be. Maybe it would be something actually interesting.
Today, the Mystery Gift arrived. I eagerly but somewhat apathetically tore open the book-sized mailer. And what was revealed? Silence of the Lambs. The movie. On freakin’ VHS videotape. WTF?? What, you had a bunch of these things lying around your warehouse since the mid 90s, and thought this was an easy way to dump them, while duping people into accepting your nefarious renewal scheme? How many people even still have a VCR? You couldn’t even spring for the DVD, which costs all of $10 these days? This is how you treat your most loyal customers – by pawning off ancient worthless materials on us? The tape went straight to the trash. I’ve already got the movie on DVD (twice, including the Criterion edition) – I certainly don’t need an old VHS tape of it. I doubt I could get any money for it even on eBay.
I admit that I didn’t expect much from this offer, but I know I expected better treatment than this from my favorite mag. Entertainment Weekly, you suck!
Latre,
Flasshe
Comments
5 Responses to “An Open Letter to EW”
January 28th, 2006 @ 4:59 am
I couldn’t help myself, and checked out the going rate for a VHS copy of “Silence of the Lambs” on eBay. Turns out to be about a dollar. Of course, the going rate for dryer lint on eBay is about a dollar too, so I’m guessing you can sell *anything* on eBay for about a dollar.
January 28th, 2006 @ 8:03 am
Of course, that’s probably $1 plus $5 for “shipping and handling”. So I might’ve been able to make a few bucks (minus the eBay fee), but that kind of thing is such a hassle it makes you wonder why anyone sells such low-priced items on eBay.
January 28th, 2006 @ 8:23 pm
How do you open something “eagerly but somewhat apathetically”?
January 28th, 2006 @ 9:58 pm
If I were to reveal that, it would give you too much insight into my personality, and we can’t have that.
January 31st, 2006 @ 4:55 pm
Ha ha hee hee ho ho.