Okay, I’m pissed again. I was just about to send a few thousand dollars to my propane supplier for heat this winter and I just happened to notice a “gotcha” buried in the pre-buy contract. I am perplexed so I have to ask the question: If you have regular customers who sign up to make a large purchase of your products or services every year, and then one year you decide to change your terms, aren’t you obligated to point out that change? Okay, not “obligated” in the legal sense. After all, as the self-righteous customer service rep explained to me, “You are responsible for reading the contract.” I mean “obligated” in the don’t-screw-your-repeat-customers-because-it’s-not-good-for-business sense.

Not if you’re my propane gas supplier. Your mission is to get my signature on the new pre-buy contract, and then you collect 50 cents a gallon “Shortage Fee” if I over-estimate how cold I think the winter is going to be. I can just hear the conversations Customer Service reps will be having with the over-estimators at the end of the heating season: “Didn’t you see the last paragraph of the second page before you put your signature on this year’s contract? Oh, well, if you had read it thoroughly, before you signed on the line indicated by the bright yellow sticky YOUR SIGNATURE HERE arrow, you would have known you’d be penalized for ordering too much gas. It was right there in the contract. So pay up.  And have a nice day. Is there anything else I can do for you today?”

Like pornography, we knew it when we saw it — the point at which a political cartoon crossed the line from clever satire to bad judgment. The New Yorker’s cover depicting Michelle and Barack Obama as flag-burning, bin Laden-loving militants was monumentally tasteless and insensitive on so many levels it’s hard to know where to begin. What rankles me the most is that those responsible for the cover say it was designed to spark much needed conversation about the racial divisiveness that is just beneath the surface of this campaign.

Unfortunately, the cover’s imagery is more potent than its message. These negative and distasteful images of the Obamas will blend in with all the factual information that is stored in our minds, and their negative impact will be there long after the sophisticated have savored the satire that was intended.

For example, if you are old enough, you can’t look at the image of Michelle Obama without seeing Angela Davis and feeling the fear and uncertainty of the period during which her image became synonymous with radicalism. And who can look at bin Laden without seeing the crumbling towers reflected in his zombie eyes and feeling the queasiness that will forever be linked to his image?

Publishing this cartoon was not only damaging to the Obamas, but it is damaging to all of us. It will be forever etched in our individual and collective psyches. It makes me want to grab the shirt collars of the editor, the illustrator — and everyone else who gave this cover a thumbs up and say, “You idiots! Can’t you see when you are doing more harm than good?”

So, do we ban these images? Ridiculous. Instead, let’s not defend them. It would have been a lot more rational for the magazine cover editor to say, “I don’t know what the hell we were thinking. Sometimes an idea sounds better than it actually is. We screwed up and we our sincerest apologies to the Obamas and everyone else who was offended by that cover.”

Nothing makes me angrier than the feeling that I’ve been had. I’m not talking about relationship-being-had, I mean the small stuff. An example—I was cruising around on the web researching my current marketing project, and I came across a promotion for newest scientific breakthrough in “age defying” eye cream and signed up for a free trial. (Yes, I know. I should know better by now, but that’s another topic. ) The “free” had an asterisk with a very light grey note: *may include S/P. Fine, whatever; I’m willing to pay postage for something that will make me look younger. The product arrived and the samples were surprisingly generous. Did it perform the miracle it promised? No, of course not, but I didn’t expect that. The problem was the $89.95 charge that showed up on my bank statement two weeks later. A rip-off or clever marketing?

I retraced my tracks. What did I miss? If you click on the light gray terms and conditions at the bottom of the page there was the “fine print”. It was a 14-day free trial which required you to send the product back in order to avoid being charged the full price — monthly. How dumb of me to have missed that. And, to add insult to injury, there was a click-this-box to show you understand the terms of this offer just before the submit button – which I, and thousands of others who didn’t understand the terms of the offer, giddily clicked.

Still, I phoned the company to register my indignation and they were ready with two solutions, my choice: send the product back and get a refund (they forgot to mention there was a hefty $20 restocking fee) or keep the product and pay just $50 rather than $89.95. Rather than feel vindicated, I just got angrier which prompted the call center operator to ever so slightly raise her voice,

“Have you tried the product?” …as if this would explain everything.

“Irrelevant,” I replied. “I don’t care how good your product is. I will never use it because I don’t like how you tricked me.”

Silence.

At that moment it was abundantly clear to both of us what good marketers know:

1. Clever marketing isn’t clever if it makes your future customer feel like an idiot

2. Copy should communicate what’s important to the reader. In this case, it was important not to bury the fact that the free offer was actually a commitment to a monthly deduction from your bank account. This fact should be up front, not at the bottom of a wordy scroll bar that is the last obstacle between you and your free product.

3. Customers prefer to do business with people and companies that have integrity, even if that means they have to forego looking younger.