Fifty Plus (50+) - Beef with Performance Bicycle

Save your postage and don't send me a letter wanting me to sign up for your Mastercard Credit Card. How lame........Your letter just joined the hundreds of others I get on an annual basis. Just shows how desperate your company is becoming. If you want to get me to do more business with you, expand your product line and reduce your rates. Hail to the LBS's!!!!

Okay I feel better........

:thumb:

Keeps the shredder busy. I probably get 2-3 CC apps every day which I get to dice and slice. Seems like an awful waste of paper and I don't think it is a very effective way to market.

This might sound silly but it worked for me: For awhile every time I got junk mail from a credit card company, I mailed back in the free postpaid envelope the entire contents of the solicitation (including the outer envelope) and wrote, "Take me off your list." It took about six months, but I almost never get solicitations any more. Ah, the joys of being a cranky old man.

Save your postage and don't send me a letter wanting me to sign up for your Mastercard Credit Card. How lame........Your letter just joined the hundreds of others I get on an annual basis. Just shows how desperate your company is becoming. If you want to get me to do more business with you, expand your product line and reduce your rates. Hail to the LBS's!!!!

Okay I feel better........

Its not a sign of desperation- they are expanding into new money making products.

Save your postage and don't send me a letter wanting me to sign up for your Mastercard Credit Card. How lame........Your letter just joined the hundreds of others I get on an annual basis. Just shows how desperate your company is becoming. If you want to get me to do more business with you, expand your product line and reduce your rates. Hail to the LBS's!!!!

Okay I feel better........

Tape the return card to a brick and send it back to them. The post office is required to deliver the item and the company is required to pay the postage. A little sweet revenge.

Keeps the shredder busy. I probably get 2-3 CC apps every day which I get to dice and slice. Seems like an awful waste of paper and I don't think it is a very effective way to market.
DON"T SHRED! Stuff all the contents back in the postage paid envelop and return. This forces them to pay postage both ways doubling there postage costs and keep your friendly neighborhood postal worker employed.

Tape the return card to a brick and send it back to them. The post office is required to deliver the item and the company is required to pay the postage. A little sweet revenge.

Please don't do that. The rules changed some years ago and your brick will only end up in the USPS trash.

We can, though, just send the blank or name-obscured card or the envelope back.

I thought this was going to be a recipe thread.

My gripe is that the Performance/Nashbar conglomerate should spend half of the effort they spend on coming up with two new sales per "company" every week to make some real difference in their shipping delays.

Keeps the shredder busy. I probably get 2-3 CC apps every day which I get to dice and slice. Seems like an awful waste of paper and I don't think it is a very effective way to market.

It is actually supposed to be the most cost effective way to market... Why do you think they do it?

I do find it interesting that Capital One (or fill in any one of a dozen others) actually find it cost effective to send me dozens of pieces every month...

When my credit was questionable, I was especially curious why someone would continue to send me applications after refusing to give me credit. :twitchy:

But, it keeps us Postal workers employed.

This might sound silly but it worked for me: For awhile every time I got junk mail from a credit card company, I mailed back in the free postpaid envelope the entire contents of the solicitation (including the outer envelope) and wrote, "Take me off your list." It took about six months, but I almost never get solicitations any more. Ah, the joys of being a cranky old man.

Used to do that but now we just shread em and put the remains is our Historical Society's paper recycling bins. Paper is not landfilled and the society gets some $ to keep running.

DON"T SHRED! Stuff all the contents back in the postage paid envelop and return. This forces them to pay postage both ways doubling there postage costs and keep your friendly neighborhood postal worker employed.

:eek: No, please don't do this. I've heard and read numerous places that one of the reasons first class postage continues to go up (note I said ONE of the reasons) is because of reduced rate mail for business. Hence, every time business sends (or receives something in their postage paid return envelope) those of us who pay primarily first class rates end up subsidizing it.

I've tried to make it a point not to give any personal information to retail stores during the check out process. I believe it is the collection of such information that forms the foundation of marketing data bases that get sold and re-sold. I believe if we can reduce the number of business places our private information is stored, we reduce the amount of junk mail we ultimately get. So, when a clerk asks for such information, I politely say, "You don't really need this." If they seem too flustered or insistent, I give them a pseudo name, address and phone number. So, if any of the retailers our there are reading this thread, yes, I'm the Herman Gluztmier that keeps showing up with the 1600 Pennsylvania Ave, Washington DC address.

Yes, they should focus more of their efforts upon selling $75 nutritional supplements

http://www.nashbar.com/profile.cfm?category=6000105&subcategory=60001204&brand=&sku=22404&storetype=&estoreid=&pagename=Shop%20by%20Subcat%3A%20Nutritional%20Supplements

My gripe is that the Performance/Nashbar conglomerate should spend half of the effort they spend on coming up with two new sales per "company" every week to make some real difference in their shipping delays.

I'm thinking the shipping delays are deliberate. Whenever I've paid the extra charge for 2nd day shipping my order has arrived promptly. If I opt for regular ground shipping, however, it takes the full 14 days. I think they deliberately wait 10 days before picking orders for regular ground shipping.

...I give them a pseudo name, address and phone number. So, if any of the retailers our there are reading this thread, yes, I'm the Herman Gluztmier that keeps showing up with the 1600 Pennsylvania Ave, Washington DC address.

That's my tactic, too, especially when an internet site insists on an address...just in case you ever get anything with a return address of

Hadji Bashir
1313 Mockingbird La.
Manama, Bahrain

:eek: No, please don't do this. I've heard and read numerous places that one of the reasons first class postage continues to go up (note I said ONE of the reasons) is because of reduced rate mail for business. Hence, every time business sends (or receives something in their postage paid return envelope) those of us who pay primarily first class rates end up subsidizing it.

This is not true.

The Postal Service is specifically prohibitted from subsidizing one type of mail by charging extra in another class of mail.

Business class mail is reduced rate because they do the sorting. I believe business return mail is pretty much not discounted.

However, I would be cautious about sending anything in the mail simply to get back at someone for sending advertising through the mail, or falsifying anything that uses the mail. The mail fraud statutes are very broad. I think sending something of no value, or false information in order to force someone to pay postage is probably within the scope of existing fraud laws. I am sure the usual up to X months in jail and Y thousands of dollars in fines are specified somewhere. :)

Its not a sign of desperation- they are expanding into new money making products.


I guess you could make that argument.........but what a shame. They ought to focus their time and energy at doing their core business better.

They have the look and smell of the Wal Mart of cycling........

God Bless the LBS's!!!!!!!!

Still getting Junk mail over there???

One of the things that has occured over here is the predominance of Broadband. As virtually every home has a PC and if they don't, They have access. The UK has the highest number of homes connected to the net in Europe and the big problem is keeping your address secure enough to stop Spam.

We don't get junk mail- Just Spam.---And that gets shredded with the push of a button without even opening.

Still getting Junk mail over there???...One of the things that has occured over here is the predominance of Broadband. As virtually every home has a PC and if they don't, They have access. The UK has the highest number of homes connected to the net in Europe and the big problem is keeping your address secure enough to stop Spam....We don't get junk mail- Just Spam.---And that gets shredded with the push of a button without even opening.

I believe that the data privacy laws between the UK and the US are quite different. In the UK, as I understand it, it's not legal to use customer data for "non-obvious" purposes. In other words, in the U.S., if you shop at Performance (either catalog, the web, or in store) they can rent your name to a bank that will then mail you a solicitation for a credit card. Or, they can rent your name to a long list of other interested parties -- camping stores, magazines, etc. etc.

In the UK, however, it's "non-obvious" that if you buy a bike part from a catalog that you would then be solicited by a third party for a credit card. So, while I believe it's legal for them to solicit you to purchase another bike part from them, it wouldn't be legal for them to rent your name for "non obvious" follow up purposes.

As a result, I don't think marketers rent names widely to other marketers. When I lived in the UK, I got probably 95% less "junk mail" than I do in the U.S. - and this was well before broadband was well penetrated in the UK (I was on dial-up in my home).

(BTW, there are a lot of PhD statisticians employed by the U.S. direct mail industry....none of us would be getting these credit card solicitations if it wasn't profitable for someone...)

I guess you could make that argument.........but what a shame. They ought to focus their time and energy at doing their core business better.


Basic misunderstanding: Performance Bike is not in the business to sell bike stuff, they are in the business to make money, and selling bike stuff is how they got their start. Like most any businesses, if they get the opportunity to make more money by selling cattle prods to shepherds in Outer Slobovia, they will do it! Credit cards are easy to make money off from, because there's no hardware to stock. They're probably paid per piece, by the bank, when they mail it. Supplements are another great money-maker - like cosmetics, they are dirt cheap to manufacture and the profit margin is just short of obscene (IMHO.)

I believe that the data privacy laws between the UK and the US are quite different. )

The selling on of addresses may be one difference- but We have an "Electoral Roll" that lists name age and address of every person that can vote in the UK. Any company can use this to post anything they want to you. But Mailing out cost's money. Using the internet doesn't. The electoral role may not specify my buying habits- but it will tell them that I live in a certain "Class" area and that I own my own home.

If I just make an enquiry to a compny by Internet- If I give my E-Mail address- I start getting all sorts of un-associated Mail from all sorts of companies. I get round this by Typing part of the address in CAPITal letters and then it gets rejected by the spamming senders computers as a bad address. Or I enter the address as doug@ instead of stapfam@. There must be someone with doug@ that gets a lot of funny mail.

This is not true.

The Postal Service is specifically prohibitted from subsidizing one type of mail by charging extra in another class of mail.

Business class mail is reduced rate because they do the sorting. I believe business return mail is pretty much not discounted.


There is some truth in what you say. I suggest, with all due respect, that what the regulations prohibit and what actually takes place are two different things. My father worked for two decades in a post office sorting mail. Much of it, by his report was already pre-sorted mail. It still needed to be sorted at the micro-level for each specific letter carrier's route. Additionally, if you watch letter carriers as they sit in their vehicles, you will frequently find them sorting the mail that has already been sorted/routed to their specific routes.... all of which takes time. The mail must still be carried via a motorized vehicle and then on foot in order to be delivered. As an experiment on month (several years ago) we saved all of the junk mail we received and weighed it. The total came out to a bit over four pounds. While this does not seem to be a great deal, if you multiply it by thousands of individual households, that is a considerable amount of additional weight that must be transported, at an added expense. I would further suggest that simple sorting is not the singular expense of delivering this stuff.

I would further suggest that simple sorting is not the singular expense of delivering this stuff.

But what makes you think that the one or two personal letters a month subsidizes the pounds of bulk mail received a week?

What makes you think that the 82 cents in first class postage subsidizes the delivery of all of the business mail that is delivered in the same time, as opposed to the infrastructure to handle the pounds of business mail facilitating keeping the first class rate so low?

However, I would be cautious about sending anything in the mail simply to get back at someone for sending advertising through the mail, or falsifying anything that uses the mail. The mail fraud statutes are very broad. I think sending something of no value, or false information in order to force someone to pay postage is probably within the scope of existing fraud laws. I am sure the usual up to X months in jail and Y thousands of dollars in fines are specified somewhere. :)

Good point, it would seem that if you write no thank you on the application and mail it back, they would be hard pressed to call it fraud. Besides, I'd demand a jury trial and where could they find a jury that would convict?

Basic misunderstanding: Performance Bike is not in the business to sell bike stuff, they are in the business to make money, and selling bike stuff is how they got their start. Like most any businesses, if they get the opportunity to make more money by selling cattle prods to shepherds in Outer Slobovia, they will do it! Credit cards are easy to make money off from, because there's no hardware to stock. They're probably paid per piece, by the bank, when they mail it. Supplements are another great money-maker - like cosmetics, they are dirt cheap to manufacture and the profit margin is just short of obscene (IMHO.)

I might be mistaken but I suspect Performance's initial business model was weighed very heavily towards cycling products. I've witnessed a number of businesses that strayed too far from their strengths and core business......or the things they were good at and founded their business on.......only to find in the long term they did not have the competencies needed to be really good at ventures that seemed extremely lucrative at the time. My experience at my company might just be what's triggering all this rant as I've lived through it and seen it in too many businesses. I really don't like what businesses are doing these days to satisfy wall street's short term expectation while sacrificing longer term rationale.

I suspect in this case they're outsourcing this whole credit card scam deal and are just posting their name on the card but this just seems so much more like something a financial institution should promote. Not a company that is supposed to be cycling based. Why not alter and remarket their Performance membership program-and really make it something of value??? Or is this an indicator that their decision to expand too fast in too many markets has not been as good as they thought?

I apologize for the earlier comparison to Wal Mart......Performance is not low price.

But what makes you think that the one or two personal letters a month subsidizes the pounds of bulk mail received a week?

What makes you think that the 82 cents in first class postage subsidizes the delivery of all of the business mail that is delivered in the same time, as opposed to the infrastructure to handle the pounds of business mail facilitating keeping the first class rate so low?

Recreational drugs from 1965 thru 1972.

The selling on of addresses may be one difference- but We have an "Electoral Roll" that lists name age and address of every person that can vote in the UK. Any company can use this to post anything they want to you. But Mailing out cost's money. Using the internet doesn't. The electoral role may not specify my buying habits- but it will tell them that I live in a certain "Class" area and that I own my own home.

If I just make an enquiry to a compny by Internet- If I give my E-Mail address- I start getting all sorts of un-associated Mail from all sorts of companies. I get round this by Typing part of the address in CAPITal letters and then it gets rejected by the spamming senders computers as a bad address. Or I enter the address as doug@ instead of stapfam@. There must be someone with doug@ that gets a lot of funny mail.
I have a real email address that includes the letters "spam", I have never gotten more than one or two spams to that address, I use it for all my online ordering. Similar to your use of caps in the address, but not as elegant.