And Why Should I Care?

Earlier this week, I recieved this email:

Dear David,

Thank you for your recent priceline.com Hotel purchase. Now that you’re back, we’d love to hear about your stay at the Rickeys, A Hyatt Hotel in Palo Alto.

We’ve put together a very brief survey that will only take about 2 minutes of your time to complete. Your feedback will be used to ensure the quality of future hotel stays for you and other priceline.com customers. Click on the button below to take our quick survey now!

Thank you for your participation,
The priceline Hotel Team

I don’t know about y’all, but I’ve pretty much hit the end of my line with this sort of thing. First, none of these things is ever as quick as they say. If they say 2 minutes, you’d be lucky for 5. But more importantly, why do I give a shit? Filling out web surveys is slightly less appealing to me than a trip to the dentist. I’ve stopped getting subscriptions to computer magazines when the only cost was filling one out every 6 months. I don’t like them. Appealing to me that my effort will “ensure the quality of future hotel stays for you and other priceline.com customers” is a losing strategy. That’s baseline. Should the service stop being quality, I stop using you. Helping that happen is your job, not mine.

If you are waiting for me to feel so altruistic that I’ll be delighted to give Priceline my time for free, set the alarm for a quarter past hell-frozen-over. If you want to draw on my good time, bribe me for god’s sake! Make it worth my time. Obviously if I used Priceline to get this hotel room, I’m already a cheap bastard, so maybe I don’t feel like doing your work unpaid. Give me a coupon for a download at the iTunes music store or an Audible download or a Fictionwise ebook. You don’t have to bribe me with a lot, but do something. Otherwise, your appeal goes straight to the bin.