How Corporations Answer Your Questions With Spin Doctors.

Beware of spin.

We are in the information age and the misinformation and disinformation age, too. Information wars permeate our very existence.

Speak to any customer care line of any large corporation and ask them difficult questions. I do this with companies that make products and I usually refer to something in their advertising or on their packaging.

I find it rather interesting to see the lengths some corporations will go to, to not answer my questions.

Customer care lines have certain canned responses depending on your question and most corporations are aware that we all live time-stressed lives and have little time to delve into anything. They are set up to answer with slogans and headlines.

As customers, we are also more and more conditioned to accept headlines as answers, without questioning further. Cyberspace is full of distractions, so like goldfish, we move from one shiny distraction to another.

Here are some questions I asked, and some responses I received.

Real Estate

A while back, I bought an investment property, part of my retirement plan. The real estate agents that run the day-to-day operations of the property were quick to recommend an insurance company for landlord’s insurance.

This type of insurance covers damage to the property but also covers the investor for renters unable to pay the rent.

‘All our clients use this company for their landlord's insurance’ I was told.

If I was a nonthinker or in a rush, I would have signed up, as the bells and whistles sounded good, but I looked at my loan contracts and found that I already had structural damage insurance as the bank would not have financed my purchase if I didn’t.

I replied to the Real Estate Agency that I did not require landlords insurance and they sounded like I had stolen the food out of their children’s mouths. ‘Oh well, it’s risky, but if you think that’s what you want to do, then it’s your choice.’

I attached the loan contract highlighting the insurance I already had and asked them what they offered over and above what I already had and why I needed their insurance. They continued claiming I was taking a risk, but could not tell me what type of risk, and if that’s what I wanted to do, which is different from every other investor. Well then that is my choice.

Note how they tried to manipulate me, by claiming I was a fringe outsider, but they could not tell me how I would benefit by paying them monthly for their insurance.

I decided not to pay the extra and wondered how many other investors they had suckered with their sales pitch.

Are you locally owned?

If there was one thing Covid taught us was that we should support local businesses, because when shipping issues arise from things like pandemics or wars, it is better to have local produce.

Now this is how corporate spin doctors work.

‘Hi, I’m calling to inquire about the ownership of your company. Are you locally owned or internationally owned? I would like to support local businesses.’

‘Our heritage is local and we have a local workforce and board of directors, including our CEO who lives here.’

‘Okay, thank you. Glad I am supporting a local business.’

Notice that they did not answer the question about ownership. They answered a question about management and day-to-day operations of the business.

That company in question is foreign-owned.

Do you have harsh chemicals in your products?

‘Hi, I have been reading a lot about the hormonal disruptions caused by certain chemicals used in the packaging industry. Given that you use packaging similar to the packaging I have been reading about can you tell me if your packaging contains this harsh xxxx chemical?

‘I can confirm we do not use xxxx chemical in our packaging.’

‘Oh thanks, what do you use instead?’

‘We use a food grade certified chemical’

‘Okay, thank you.’

Note above that the harsh chemical that they don’t use is food grade too, so all they have done is replace it with a different chemical that may have the same or worse health outcomes, the caller did not probe further and ask about how the company could assure them that the company had no harsh chemicals with detrimental health effects.

We source our products from the pristine green valley of xxx

In reality, they do not source their products from anywhere near that green valley. They are 40 miles from that valley and so is the location where they source their products, however; it is in the same region as the pristine green valley.

This is what I call ‘assigned provenance.’

There are major companies today filling branded bottles of tap water. They merely filter it and claim it comes from ‘mountain springs.’

Years ago there was a bottled water company who claimed ‘spring mountain water’ and their factory was in the valley where they claimed their water came from. However, they were bottling tap water from the town in the valley.

Recap

Dig deeper when you contact corporates because they know just how to spin an answer that does not answer your question.

Be aware of spin and hold them to account before parting with your hard-earned money.

Having worked in corporations that spin stories, I am very wide awake to these spin doctors.

Learn more:

Start with how information overload causes us to follow headlines and time pressures due to distractions stop us from delving deeper and thinking correctly and more deeply about anything

Write about how companies don’t actually answer the question you ask.

Is this a local company?

We have a broad of directors and CEO who all are local

Do you have this coating on your packaging that may leach into the food and cause health issues, or any other chemical I should be aware of.

No we do not have that chemical, we do however have others but not that specific one you asked about

Our product is sourced from the beautiful green valley, however the product is in a town 20 miles away and that town is in no way pristne like the ‘green valley’

The devil is in the details and we don’t have the time, because we are a generation of information overload and we look only for headlines, as long as the headlines suffice and align with what we want then we move on.