Truth In Advertising

And me, trying to buy stuff

This weekend, while checking my email (a terrible task that I do my very best to avoid, second only on the list of terrible things to checking messages on my phone) I saw an email promising an electronic coupon thing from a company I’ve done business with in the past.

I read the email.

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Holy Smokes! All I had to do was visit the store’s website, throw some stuff in my ‘shopping cart,’ enter the super secret code word that they had emailed me, and I’d get 15% off!

And how cool was that! Because I actually needed to buy something that the online store sells. I’d run out just the night before.

Now, this isn’t a huge company, but it’s not a particularly small one either. And it’s been around, I think, for a few more years than I’ve been alive. Years ago it was brick and mortar, now it’s largely online, and it’s kind of famous, or was, back in the days before internet shopping became a thing. You see, a very famous author worked the sales floor there while writing her many books.

Ultimately I prefer to do my shopping in local brick and mortar stores, and I try to avoid the Amazon monolith as much as possible, but what I was looking to buy isn’t sold here locally. (Ah, one of the drawbacks of small city living.) If I wanted to buy it in a store, I’d have to drive up to Olympia. Driving of course is another of those tasks I hope to avoid.

So, I clicked the link in the email and visited the website.

Once there, I found what I needed, added it to my ‘shopping cart’ and put in the super secret magic word.

No go. Red error message. No explanation.

I tried it a couple more times. Made sure I knew how to spell properly. Same result.

I could apparently buy what I needed at full price, but not at the promised discount.

In all honesty, the price of the thing wasn’t all that high, so I wasn’t looking at very much money. Enough I figured to pay for the shipping. At best.

But, it rather pissed me off.

Why go to the bother of sending me an email, enticing me to shop on a website, if the entire premise of the email was false?

Why do that, most likely, with thousands of customers?

I didn’t buy the stuff.

But, I did email the outfit to express my concern. I wasn’t sure if I would hear back or not, particularly on a weekend, but I did. Quite quickly actually.

The lady - dude in a foreign call center with an American lady’s name - Ai bot, who knows, wrote a reply.

What did I try to buy? What super secret code word did I use? Can you forward me the email we sent you?

I answered the questions, and forwarded the email.

This time the response took awhile, but I did get one.

Apparently…

The super secret code word is good for all the various junk they sell, but not for the specific single product I was looking to buy, because they have an agreement with the manufacturer that they won’t discount it.

I can actually understand that such an agreement might exist, because while the consumable product I was looking to buy has hundreds, maybe thousands of competitors in the marketplace, this particular brand is the very best of the best. Clearly superior in my mind to all of the others.

But what I can’t understand is why, if that is the case, there wasn’t a little disclaimer explaining that fact on the product page, or why an explanation didn’t pop up when I tried to use the super secret code word.

I didn’t buy the stuff.

I will buy the stuff from another online store, probably after I finish this essay. And indeed, I won’t buy from that place with the fake email coupons again.

Why?

Because they engaged in false advertising.

Maybe their super secret code word just doesn’t work with this one unique product. Or maybe it doesn’t actually work with lots and lots of the products they offer. My hunch is that it is probably the latter.

Ultimately, the store lied, and I have better places to shop than stores that will blatantly lie to me in an attempt to get me to visit their website.

By now you are probably wondering why I have worked to immerse you into this little story.

Here it is…

Does our Lodge engage in false or deceptive advertising practices?

When a young man asks to petition our Lodge it is most likely that he’s spent a fair amount of time online reading about all of the great things our Lodges do, and the great men who have been a part of our Craft.

He’s probably spent some time in online Masonic discussion boards, reading our conversations. Some time on social media, looking at all the great things we post about our Brotherhood.

He may have even read a book or two about our Ancient Craft.

If he Petitions our Lodge…

And if we accept his Petition…

And we deliver the Preparatory Lecture to him…

And we Initiate him an Entered Apprentice Mason…

And he attends his very first Lodge meeting…

Will he find what we have promised in all of our online posting? In all that we have written? In what we ourselves have told him in our ritualistic work?

Or will he find that our Craft engaged in false advertising?

We promised him a course in moral and philosophical instruction. We promised him a legendary Brotherhood. We promised him men whom he could rely upon no matter what.

In his Obligation he made a large number of very serious promises to us. We in turn made those same promises to him in our own Obligations.

Will he find those things?

Or will he leave our Craft, believing that he had been deceived?