Business 101: Deceptive Scare Tactics

Many of us have been exposed to deceptive advertising campaigns, but today’s topic is quite a bit more insidious in nature. Rather than being deceptive as part of an advertising campaign to increase sales, some companies make use of deceptive scare tactics to frighten people into paying. I won’t name the company in this article, but some of you may be familiar with these practices already.

When you park your car on a private lot, you are responsible to buy the appropriate pass or buy the necessary ticket so that you can park there for a set period of time. This isn’t a law in the same way that you are required the pay the meter when you park on public streets, but it is an implicit contractual agreement when you choose to park on the private lot of this private company.

If your ticket expires or if you park there when you should not be, this private parking corporation will give you what appears to be an official violation ticket, just like the one that you would receive from the city. This is inherently deceptive, because these “violation tickets” do not carry the same legal ramifications as a parking ticket from the city. That’s the first scare tactic.

If you choose to ignore the violation notification, you may be sent to a collections agency. This notification letter will say that you are being sent to something like the City Collections Company, making it sound once again that this is a government agency of some kind. It’s not. The so-called collections company is actually a subsidiary of the private parking corporation. That’s the second scare tactic.

As you can tell, these are very deceptive business practices and, to my knowledge, a class action lawsuit is in the works against this private parking corporation. When running your own business, it is important that you do what you can to increase revenues and reduce expenses, but it is unethical to use deceptive scare tactics like these to achieve your goals.

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