Norville T. Hooms, of Battle Creek, MI, died last week at the age of 81. The cause of death was advanced ennui. Although Hooms was a passionate direct marketing consumer, he always received the lowest value or highest priced offer, according to meticulous notes he kept detailing six decades of offers received and purchases made.
According to his notes, he never took advantage of – or was even aware of – an offer for an extra record (or later, compact disc) when buying 10 for a penny. No matter how many times he flew the same airline, he was never offered a free upgrade beyond those he meticulously earned. Despite subscribing to dozens of magazines during his lifetime, he always paid the basic rate – if not a higher amount due to a price test.
This anomaly extended to Hooms’ family members. In 1963, Hooms married Lizzelotta Bindelstaff, a mail-order bride he imported from central Europe, not realizing cheaper spouses were available from the Eastern bloc countries.
In 1969, his only child, a late-in-life son was born. The hospital trolley bearing “Welcome Baby” gift packs with Similac bounce back coupons ran out before it reached his room.
Hooms’ marriage to Bindlestaff ended in acrimonious divorce in 1987. A lawyer Mr. Hooms obtained through an inbound teleservice center so badly bungled his end of the proceedings that he ended up paying double the national average for alimony among men in his wealth range.
His only inclusion in anything that might be considered a “sample group” came when the Recording Industry Association of America included him in a series of lawsuits against consumers who had downloaded music illegally. When the RIAA discontinued a number of the actions it took against consumers, his was mysteriously not included among those dismissed, despite investigators finding no evidence that he had ever downloaded as much as a jingle.
Alerted to his legacy after his death, executives at cooperative direct marketing database firm SharedWealth ran an promotional history on Hooms.
“We found out that he never received a single better-than-average-Joe deal,” said Greg Regis Solicitation, the firm’s chief database administrator. “It was a statistical fluke – the guy’s contact information was constantly being included in lists we pulled, but he never was sent the lower price tests, or any of the come-ons with extras thrown in. It’s as though he was perennially slated to pay top dollar.”
Medical reports listed gout as a contributing factor to Hooms’s death. “This didn’t have to happen,” his son, Roy, observed angrily. “If he had just been offered the bamboo steamers with those fancy knives he ordered, he might have eaten more healthily and still be with us today.”
His family has asked that, in lieu of flowers, mourners sent $29.95 to the Michigan Society for Chartered Accountancy, which was the first organization to solicited his loved ones posthumously.
(Tech staff: Please make sure that half of our readers receive a version of this asking for $24.95.)
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Last week’s column, “Postal Workers Are Mad as Hell, And Not Going to Take It Any More,” [Direct Newsline, Dec. 15, 2003] has been featured on a few postal worker union Web sites. Because of this, it has generated a larger-than-usual volume of letters to the editor (both positive and negative), which we will be featuring in upcoming editions of Direct Newsline as we obtain permission from the authors.
However, one site, http://www.postalnews.com, has attached a comments section to its link, which features unvarnished reactions to the piece as submitted directly to the site. (To do so, scroll down to the articles under Friday, December 19, 2003 and click on “Comments” directly under the piece’s title.)
Readers may enjoy reading these, but are warned – as is the case with most unfiltered Web comment sections, the language may be stronger than what delicate direct marketing constitutions are used to.
To respond to this column, please contact [email protected]
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