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Another reason why we will never buy another car from Honda Village (Newton, MA)

[You can read the whole series of Honda Village postings here.]

Long-readers of my blog may remember the experience my wife and I had when we bought a minivan from Honda Village in Newton, MA. To summarize, the salesman from whom we bought our van outright lied to us about one of the warranties he convinced us to buy, then ignored my complaint letters about it, then promised a refund check which they never sent.  I had to threaten legal action to get them to refund the cost of that warranty as promised.

Well, I’m sorry to say that Honda Village is up to their slimy sales tactics again.  I got an envelope in the mail a few days ago which looked like this on the front (click for bigger image):

Front of Envelope

And this on the back:

Back of Envelope

Notice how cleverly this envelope is designed to look like something important; in fact, it’s pretty clearly designed to look like something from the IRS (the big bold “2009″ makes that clear).  Notice how cleverly the green registered mail “sticker” (except it’s not really a sticker — it’s actually a fake registered mail sticker printed on the envelope) on the front wraps around onto the back, as do the two black bars on the side.

Notice how nowhere on the envelope does it say who it’s from.

So, what do you think I found inside this incredibly urgent, “official use only” envelope when I opened it?  A letter from Honda Village telling me that if I trade in my 2007 Odyssey and buy a 2009 Odyssey, I can reduce my monthly payment by $232.64 per month.

Deceptive envelopes that force people to open junk mail are one of my big pet peeves (previous instances reported on my blog: Verizon, Verizon again; I’ve received others before that I haven’t blogged about).  I won’t do business with companies that use them.  So, although Honda Village was already in my hall of shame, now they’re doubly so.

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This entry was posted on Saturday, June 20th, 2009 at 10:28 pm and is filed under Boston, Consumer activism, Junk mail. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

6 Responses to “Another reason why we will never buy another car from Honda Village (Newton, MA)”

  1. Honda Village fires us as a customer « Something better to do says:
    January 18, 2012 at 9:05 pm

    [...] readers of my blog may remember my multiple postings about Honda Village in Newton, [...]

    Reply
  2. Herb Chambers Honda gets in on the “fake important letter” scam « Something better to do says:
    June 18, 2010 at 9:44 am

    [...] one is a tiny, tiny bit less deceptive than the Honda Village mailings: notice how it has the word “Auto” hidden in the return [...]

    Reply
  3. Honda Village is still at it; let’s see if the threat of a class-action lawsuit will put a stop to it! « Something better to do says:
    January 22, 2010 at 6:37 am

    [...] [image elided; see my previous blog posting] [...]

    Reply
  4. Honda Village continues to send me junk mail in deceptive envelopes « Something better to do says:
    October 15, 2009 at 11:05 pm

    [...] I first wrote about them in June, Honda Village has sent me many more pieces of junk mail enclosed in envelopes that do not have [...]

    Reply
  5. Wouter says:
    June 29, 2009 at 2:38 pm

    Village Subaru in Acton does the exact same. I will never go there again.

    Reply
  6. Frisky070802 says:
    June 21, 2009 at 10:29 am

    Wow, is that slimy. I’ve seen bogus official-looking spam before, but nothing quite so egregious!

    Reply

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