Tragedy of the Marketing Commons: Telemarketing that mimics calls from security

I received a call from my wife’s credit card company (MBNA) yesterday while she was out. The caller wouldn’t say why he was calling because of “confidentiality”.

In the past, the only time a credit card company cites “confidentiality” is if there a problem with the account or the card may be stolen, so I gave her the message. Once she called them back, she discovered that they wanted to sell her a loan.

Not only is MBNA decreasing the likelihood that their customers will respond to legitimate calls about security and account problems, they’re projecting that same problem onto the rest of the industry.

This is an extraordinarily deceptive and self-destructive practice.

One thought on “Tragedy of the Marketing Commons: Telemarketing that mimics calls from security

  1. MBNA is scum. I cancelled my card recently because of the never-ending telemarketer calls. Plus Canadians can’t login to a website to check account balance…you have to do it over the phone…

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