Nickel-and-Dime: You're doing it wrong

[MoonCat]

Two recent examples of customers trying to pinch pennies so hard they make Lincoln scream:

False advertising, blah blah blah:

It's garage sale season. Good for the paper (revenue, readership), bad for my sanity. We offer a free garage sale kit, which this year includes a coupon for free coffee (jug or box or something) from a local store...while supplies last. Had a customer who managed to score FIVE kits, trying to get the free coffee coupon. Gas prices here average around $3.79 a gallon. For what she spent on gas, she could've bought enough coffee to drown her whole neighborhood. Best part? She hadn't even placed an ad yet.

Sticker shock:

We had a death notice that was so long, it cost over $1000. Apparently one of the family members flipped out upon seeing the proof/price quote and:
- Counted every single letter, space and punctuation mark
- Compared the notice to other notices already running in the paper
- Put all the info into an Excel sheet, trying to prove that we were overcharging
Our ad system has nothing whatever to do with Excel. This is like, I dunno, trying to analyze the concept of "blue" by using a slide rule and a box of macaroni and cheese.

People.

[emax4]

In her defense, the crappy Kraft macaroni and cheese boxes have a blue background. . I get you though. Lady needs to summarize the dearly departed.

[Seanette]

Try working in a thrift store. I've known customers to haggle over items less than $1.

[sirwired]

What do you have to do to make a death notice cost $1k? Was this pretty much a feature-length article they wrote here?

[DGoddessChardonnay]

What do you have to do to make a death notice cost $1k? Was this pretty much a feature-length article they wrote here?

Sounds to me like it was one of those full length biographies that should have been sent to Lifetime television and instead was inflicted on the newspaper readership b/c somebody (aka whoever had long winded fingers) didn't know when to stop. *yawn*

[eltf177]

Sounds to me like it was one of those full length biographies that should have been sent to Lifetime television and instead was inflicted on the newspaper readership b/c somebody (aka whoever had long winded fingers) didn't know when to stop. *yawn*

And may have included _way_ too many pictures as well...

[DGoddessChardonnay]

And may have included _way_ too many pictures as well...

Believe it or not, maybe one photo but when the obit runs for two columns on a page, it's way too long and enough to put an insomniac to sleep

[icmedia]

I once watched a woman get out of her (older, gas-guzzling model) station wagon, leave it running, and dig through a dumpster for aluminum cans, presumably to recycle.

I wanted to go up to her and explain the poor math behind her method, but I figured that she wouldn't take it well.

[EricKei]

Yeek. When we do paid obits, we just have people submit it as an ad. It's actually cheaper than by-the word 99% of the ones we get are free ones from funeral homes tho, and they understand that that means we can include or leave info out at our discretion (e.g., we're not gonna list all 20 survivors by name or include the pallbearers on a freebie)

[nutraxfornerves]

Mr. Nutrax died last fall. The local newspaper, like many others, charges an arm & a leg for paid obituaries. It's a money maker for them. You can have a short one, just long enough to say so-and-so died and here is the date of the funeral for about $30. Otherwise, they charge by the character--each letter, punctuation mark, and space. A blank line between paragraphs is charged as something like 32 characters. Add a photo for another chunk of change.

Mr. Nutrax's was 4 paragraphs; One a single sentence announcing date and place of death, one a summary of his life in 6 sentences (I just counted), one a list of survivors, and one that gave info on the funeral and where to send donations (3 sentences). And a photo.

Just short of $1000.

[MoonCat]

Yep, obits (to us) are the news article written by a reporter (not by the family, so they won't get their Pulitzer-prize-winning screed in the paper word for word); and the death notice is the paid one. They can say pretty much whatever they want in the paid notice because it's technically a paid ad. But when these things run over 100 lines of text, well, they get pricey. Some people want to say where cousin Fritz went to pre-school, grade school, high school and college; where he met his wife; the name of each town they lived in, their hobbies, where they vacationed, how many times they won Hooterville Bowler of the Year...You get the idea.

Also, we only run one photo but it's an extra charge. We do give veterans a free pic of the US flag for free.

[mathnerd]

The only obit for any of my recently deceased family members that was more than three lines was an article in a major US newspaper. That was interesting, to say the least (though it was the least weird of all the weird thing that happened that week). Fitting. That uncle was an interesting character.

[AccountingDrone]

My dad's death was a news article ... and it got tv time as well. Though we also got the little 1 paragraph one as well. Hm, Name, DoB/DoD, funeral home and schedule, line about no flowers, donations to somewhere I can't mention as I seem to remember. [I really don't want too much about me online, though I am not all that difficult to find.]

[DGoddessChardonnay]

Some years ago, Mom's oldest sister passed away after a lengthy illness and Mom was left to handle the final arrangements.

So while we were dealing with folks in and out of our house (mostly people from the church we were attending at the time) Mom asked me to write the obit to send to the funeral home that afternoon (the funeral home in turn submitted it to the local newspaper. Not sure if this is done that way now, as this was way back in 2001.)

Needless to say, I'm in the living room on my desktop while Mom and her then best friend were visiting with the pastor, who was going to officiate over the small memorial service we were planning and he asked what she could tell him about my aunt.

She didn't do much - just chased men around for years and it didn't matter if they were married or not/related or not (or if she were married at the time or not for that matter. ) Yep, we had one of those relatives who did what she wanted and didn't give a shit who it hurt.

Of course, the way Mom explained it had all of us almost in the floor laughing our asses off (including the pastor, believe it or not.) I had to start over several times on that obit (what I really wanted to put in there would have made the newspaper folks stand on their heads!) so instead of writing the bare bones truth, I basically had to lie.

Well maybe not outright but more like "spray paint over the rust" kinda deal and it ended up giving her name, date of death and city along with predeceased by both parents and her first hubby. Survived by second hubby, three sons, 4 grands (didn't list them all by name - did with the sons and their spouses and their locations), her sister, neice and nephew and her cat (yes Mom wanted Kelly the calico mentioned.) Also mentioned date, time and place of memorial service and that was pretty much it. There really wasn't anything else fit to say.

Can't recall how much that little bit cost but it was a pretty penny and not taking up 2 columns in the newspaper either. Maybe 4 paragraphs and that was it.

So try being the one stuck with that duty of writing the obit - it was rather surreal yet hilariously funny at the time.

[Jester]

That uncle was an interesting character.

From all you've told me about him, he certainly sounds it. I'd love to read that article. Any chance of you finding it and sending the link to me privately?