All of these car "warranty" scammers use the same script.

At least three or four times a week, someone calls my mother's land line to "offer" an "extension" of her long-expired car warranty, and having chatted with these disgusting scammers (scambaiting is kind of a hobby of mine) I can anticipate the script with almost 100 percent accuracy.  They all offer an extension of the same warranty mom had when she bought the car brand-new.  They all offer exactly the same "coverage," and they all offer a caveat that she must accept or decline during the phone call "because people might decline and experience car trouble and then try to get coverage"- never mind that none of these bottom-of-the-barrel scum-suckers require a pre-coverage inspection but instead are willing to take the customer's word for it that no warning lights are on, there are no current problems with the vehicle, etc. etc. etc.  They do vary widely in how much money they want to steal from you- we've been offered "coverage" of anywhere from three to five years in length, costing anywhere from $99 to $350 per month.   Other than that, though, all of these people seem to be using the exact same script they picked up from EasyScammer.com (if such a service exists.)  

I've noticed that recently these companies are using Indian call centers to make the initial calls and then transferring us to American "salespeople" to "complete" the transaction once we express interest.  I'm assuming that this is done to cut Scam Overhead costs while increasing the likelihood of pulling off a successful scam (certainly an American is more likely to trust someone who doesn't speak in broken English with a thick Indian accent while claiming an obviously fake English name.)  This phenomenon certainly makes ending the call more interesting- when Indians realize you are scambaiting them, they usually just hang up or at the very most curse you out for a few seconds before cutting off the call.  Americans are more willing to get involved in insult-hurling contests, as if I can be judged, let alone shamed, by a guy who chooses to make his living by trying to rip people off.

Anyway, I guess that this particular company has amassed enough income to buy commercials on low-viewership channels, competing with endless ads for Nutrisystem and BS "Medicare" deals that dominate airtime between crap movies and reruns of the Andy Griffith Show.  But they are basically just more expensive versions of what you can hear over the phone if you swipe right for Scam Likely. 

(BTW, I do appreciate the generic fees included in the receipt shown in the ad and especially the way the "total" amount is circled in red followed by Sales Tax, as if the customer isn't at all concerned about the Sales Tax.  I guess maybe I wouldn't be all that concerned either after paying all that money for Shop Fees and Oil.  Hysterical.)

Picking on BMW Again

 

Just back from a week at Hampton Beach New Hampshire- which is most definitely not The Hamptons, but is in fact just one of the more popular of the hundreds of beaches in New England featuring Arcade-littered boardwalks offering culinary delights for any palette as long as it's limited to fried dough, hot dogs, cheap pizza and ice cream, cramped cottages a five-minute walk to the beach renting for $1000 or so a week, and tinny bar music mixed with the sounds of those arcades you can't quite ever get away from (if you were indifferent to the song "Sweet Caroline" when you first visit a New England beach, you are guaranteed to loathe it a week later.  Seriously, it's the freaking National Anthem of this region.)

And my very first day back, I'm greeted with...this.   A reminder of how awesome it must be to own a palace in Hawaii with a marble driveway to park your tricked-out BMW in.  Uh huh.  I'm as sure that this is 100 percent accurate as I am that it is 0 percent relatable.  Where's a devastating typhoon when you need one?  Isn't Hawaii due for a volcano eruption?  Give me SOMETHING here. 

Navage is just gross

 

The radio version of these ads has been the bane of my existence this summer.  They show up at least eight times an hour on SiriusXM and there's been only one version running since late spring.  I've got in memorized and I'm pretty good at jumping up and hitting mute or changing the channel before the guy manages to get to the word "nose."  

I get that this product is probably a worthwhile thing to use, and I get that it only makes sense for Navage to use The Current Situation to pitch it, but enough already with trying to get me to pay close to $100 for a freaking nose water vacuum.  If I had money to burn I suppose I might actually head over to CVS and pick one up, but I don't have money to burn so I guess I'll just have to keep washing my hands with soap and water and wear a mask when I'm in crowded areas and use Flonase when I get sick as I inevitably will because I'm not buying one of these things.  Please stop trying to sell it to me.  I've had enough of your stupid smarmy voice and and being forced to visualize the workings of this device and it's ruining my summer and my life.  Stop now.  Right now.  Please. 

(And on that note, I'm off to the beach for a week.  See you all next weekend- and until then, please enjoy the archives and keep that View number up!)

WageSlave-- err, ZipRecruiter, et. al. can seriously take a hike now

 

Just between you and me, with those obnoxious Indeed commercials on the radio and these Zip Recruiter ads on TV,  I am so over the endless whining of small businessmen struggling to hire people so they can keep raking in the cash.  Don't care about your problems, Mr. Heartbeat of America.  Having trouble finding great candidates?  Offer more money.  Problem solved.   Ah, but that's not the solution you're looking for, is it?  You'd rather pay a headhunting agency to flood your inbox with well-qualified but also appropriately desperate and subservient laborers who would like to make a living but at the moment are willing to work for enough money to put food on the table, keep a roof over their heads once eviction moratoriums come to an end and maybe- if Boss Man is feeling generous (or desperate) enough, get a little of that Sweet Sweet Health Insurance Coverage which is tied to employment because America is Teh Dumb. 

This Summer: BMW is still Just a Car

 

Here's yet another commercial for a luxury automobile which rides on the message that if you own a particular car you'll be able to travel places and see things.  But not just travel places and see things- do all that while driving really, really fast in a car that makes you feel Important because Listen to that Engine as I Hit the Gas. 

In a few days, I'll be heading to the beach for a week in an 11-year old Honda Civic.  It will take exactly the same amount of time to get there as it would if I were driving a 2021 BMW, Audi, Lexus, or whatever.  Because regardless of what all these commercials imply, driving one of these overpriced Overcompensation Toys doesn't make the traffic part like the Red Sea or grant you a special exemption from speed limits.  Nor does it open up vacation spots unavailable to the Unwashed Masses who have to get from Point A to Point B in 11-year old Honda Civics.  Seriously, Luxury Car Manufacturers:  get over yourselves.  Your products are nothing special no matter how many epilepsy-inducing images and VROOOM VROOM noises you throw at us. 

Hey Shaq, I can say "no more" too!

 

As in

1.  No more watching you pitch The General Car "Insurance."  You don't use The General, a company that aims it's "product" at people with crappy driving records and worse credit.  Stop telling how awesome a "service" you wouldn't be caught dead using (I doubt O'Neill even KNOWS what car insurance he has, but it's most definitely NOT The General) is. 

2.  No more using a body double carefully photographed from the neck down to sell Gold Bond Medicated Cream.  Maybe you use it- but that's not YOU using it in the commercial, no matter how much you want us to think it is- because you do NOT have the body of a 25-year old athlete.  Not anymore.  Not even close.

3.  No more trying convince us that you give a flying damn what printer cartridges are the highest quality, what copying machines do the best job, etc.  You aren't the least bit concerned about any of this because you're a former NBA star and now pimp for basically anyone willing to hand you a fistful of money to throw on the already-massive mountain of gold you already have.   You aren't the least bit credible, Mr. O'Neill.  Not anymore.  Probably not ever- but certainly, not anymore. 

AIG "Tackle the Risk" Commercial: Three Minutes of Bizarre

 

Ok first of all, this is a commercial aimed at Japanese investors from 2017.  I generally don't bother with ads written for a foreign audience- I know there are different social mores and expectations and what have you, so what seems absolutely crazy and maybe even inappropriate to an American might not even raise an eyebrow in other countries, but this one was too weird to pass up.

For two minutes, all we see is a bunch of scary athletes who seem determined to assault anyone who happens to be standing in their way as they run through the streets of Tokyo, including a pretty young woman who was just strolling down the street looking at her phone (normally, I wouldn't mind at all the idea of body-slamming smartphone zombies, but she's about one-third the size of the guy who barrels over her, and as I implied, she's awfully cute.)  They just keep blasting through people who are just trying to go about their day.  I think the poor, underpaid window washer who now has broken bones and a severe concussion because a 20-year old, 200 pound athlete decided that it was his duty to crash into him at 10 MPH (the commercial suggests he's going much faster, but I'm going to try to stay in the real world here) was supposed to be a special bit of comic relief because his washing rag is just stuck there to the window, like he was swept up into heaven in a "Left Behind" film.   It goes from being weird to jarring to exhausting by the halfway mark- I mean, we get it; the producer is really really proud of this concept, so he's going to beat it into us.  One or two people put into situations where they should be badly injured isn't good enough.  Let's do this at least half a dozen times.

(I did think it was funny when one guy jumps into the back of a car and there's a baby in a car seat there- and the guy doesn't tackle the baby.)

Near the halfway point of this three-minute marathon of pain, the entire team traps a young couple in their car and glares at them menacingly.  Are they going to all gang-tackle this couple now?  Are they going to murder them?  What the actual hell?

Then we see that none of the people who were brutally slammed to the ground are hurt at all- they are being helped to their feet by the guys who rendered them horizontal moments before (I guess it's moments, but considering all that we saw, it's fair to wonder if all those mugging victims just stayed on the ground- perhaps waiting for emergency medical services- for a very long time, wondering if they would become crippled if they dared move their spines.)  The situation is resolved with a smile- "It's fine that you ran over me and caused me to crack my skull on the sidewalk, you helped me back up after all so all good.  No apologies necessary."  I guess this is how countries with strict gun control laws deal with situations like this.  In America, everyone within a city block would hear cursing, and probably gunfire, while a hundred bystanders live-streamed the event on their phones and searched for the right emojis to add. 

So as I noted AIG is an investment service and this is all about staying "financially safe" with your money.  And so I must add that this commercial certainly didn't age very well; in a few weeks Japan hosts its delayed Olympics amid mass protests over COVID concerns, concerns which have convinced the Olympic Committee to ban spectators at the events.  As poorly as the United States has done in getting its population vaccinated against COVID, we've got it all over the Japanese, who are just about the very worst among Westernized nations in getting shots into arms.  And Japan doesn't have the excuse of having half it's population living in a far right fever dream of fake viruses, autism-and-homosexuality-causing vaccines invented by people who hate Trump, and people who would rather die than take the advice of The Libs and Big Government.   I bet they are just fine when it comes to keeping their money safe, though, especially with compelling, "hard-hitting" (sorry) ads like this to help educate them.