Read the fine print

Last month I pulled four identical envelopes out of the mailbox, one for each account we have at a local bank. Each contained the same folder filled with fine, closely written legalese entitled, “Privacy Notice.”
My bank had sent me a pamphlet that required a magnifying glass, lots of concentration and time to read it. I tossed it in my to-read-someday file thinking, “somebody must have been complaining about privacy issues for some reason and they had to send this.”
I didn’t think anything about until I received privacy notices from credit card companies, similar notices from a couple other banks and saw that a my son and daughter had gotten notices as well. Only after I read a story in the Arkansas Democrat Gazette (in a readable print size) regarding the deadline for financial institutions to send out the notices did I realize there really was a purpose. I was supposed to actually get out my magnifying glass, read those things and respond if I did not want information from my account forwarded from my credit card companies. (The banks weren’t releasing any information.)
The deadline for the financial institutions is long gone, but customers never have a deadline. We can take all the time we want to opt out … as long as we can find the little piece of paper with the contact point.
A lot of “ifs” and fine print. I found it a bit ironic that the last bank notice I received came in the same mail as the envelope labeled, “Sweepstake Winner!!” Inside was a very clearly printed announcement page, in large letters which I could read without my bifocals, “You have not yet won. You do not have to purchase in order to win.”
The idea is not new. It used to be hidden in the faded, tiny print on the back of one of the many pages of information and stickers sent to excite the gullible that they could win. Now it is one short sentence in plain language meant to protect gullible people like the woman whose garage sale I visited. She never got around to reading the fine print. She believed buying something would insure she would win.
Her basement overflowed with stacks of new boxes of never used trinkets, kitchen tools, gadgets and knick knacks. “I thought I would really win, if I just ordered something from these places…” she told me. She also pointed out a brief case she bought when she sold insurance – before she lost the job for not meeting the quota.
An avid quilter, she had completed 25 quilts over the years and had given all but a couple away. She still had heaps of books and magazines on quilting, many unread for lack of time. She spoke of a house she had purchased, and the sweat equity she put into it before she realized she could not return a profit on it.
Her basement and conversation overflowed with broken promises and dreams. Grand ideas filled her mailbox – until the fine print became real life. Only then did she realize she was not going to win her way into the easy life, that a full mail box only meant an empty wallet. After all that I wonder … When she received her finely, printed privacy notices from banks, did she pull a magnifying glass out of one of those boxes to read the thing?