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The Latest Pithy Posts from the Mail Order Pundit
12-04-2025 - 5:00 AM - Good Morning! It's Thursday, and I need some good mail today to make up for the light delivery yesterday. In an earlier post, I mentioned ebook compilers that a few of us Mail Order Dealers used to create “information” ebooks in the 1990s. When I searched for some of those, like Writer’s Dream and Pop-a-Book, Google's “AI Overview” claimed to have no knowledge of their existence. Well, I know they existed, and those were fun publishing days. My Folgers Black Silk coffee is ready.
--- AIDA - The primary aim of all advertising is to create in the reader a desire to own what you are selling. To be successful, your advertising must be compiled to contain these four essential elements. It must attract attention, stimulate interest, arouse desire, and call for action. (From the Money Jr. reprint reports CD-ROM.)
--- If you order little speakers, don't be surprised if they send you little speakers! Cute, aren't they? I really have no use for them, but I just had to have them. I guess it's a CB Radio / Ham Radio affliction.
--- About 25 years ago, a Mail Order dealer was advertising a VHS videotape of scanned dealer sales circulars. I guess you just watched as one circular after another was presented. I don’t know if it zoomed in on all or parts of each sales circular. I also don’t know whether this service was successful. It seems like a slow process.
--- Do you recall the Computer Bulletin Board Systems (BBS) that were popular in the 1990s? They were widely used before the Internet really took off. It was essentially a website or social media site, without the web, allowing users to download files, read content, and post comments. I had one up and running in 1995 or so and it was tied in with my Mail Order operations. I advertised it in Mail Order publications. I used the Wildcat BBS program and a U.S. Robotics dial-up modem. I started out with a 2400 BPS modem, then upgraded to 14,400 BPS, and then to the 28,800 model. I don't remember making the jump to 56K, but I'm sure I did. The BBS got calls from all over the U.S., and someone even logged in from Australia. Impressive, since they had to make the call on their dime.
--- In the news - Layoffs highest since pandemic, The World Has More Billionaires Than Ever, Private payrolls fell by 32,000 in November, Manufacturing shrinks.
--- Is it just my area, or do TV news presenters everywhere use the tag team method? You know, one presenter reads a line, then hands it off to the other, who reads a line. Sometimes it goes back to the first one to say a few more words before going to the video. How is this not paying two people to do the job of one person? Stop it! You never saw Walter Cronkite or Lester Holt allowing this nonsense. And, while I'm on the subject, I'm beginning to think news media people have a "hotkey" on their computers that spits out the words "alleged" and "allegedly." Come on, folks, try alternate ways to express yourself occasionally.
--- There is a USPS facility that deciphers addresses on mail that the machines can't read. That would include bad penmanship. At processing centers, an image of these pesky addresses is created and sent to the Remote Encoding Center. There, workers do their magic to determine the correct address and send a barcode back to the originating facility. The machine-readable barcode is added to the suspect piece of mail.
--- The same people who would scream if they received a letter from their bank or other professional entity that looked like a 10th-generation copy, complete with faded text and black specks scattered about, have no problem mailing the same garbage to other Mail Order Dealers. I can hear them sobbing now - "I can't get any orders. I just don't understand it".