I went to the ATM today to deposit some checks. As soon as I approached the teller machine, I was like, “WTF! What is that huge 7-11 sticker doing on the floor?” It turns out that 7-11 has a marketing deal going with Citibank. Not only is the tiny area in front of the teller plastered with a 7-11 smoothie, the touch screen of the machine is also polluted with 7-11 ads and catch phrase. Just before I thought this experience couldn’t be worse, my printed receipt from the ATM was also littered with stuff from 7-11… <\/p>\n
\nIntroducing the ATMmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm.
\n7-ELEVEN now has Citibank ATMs.
\nGo to Citibank.com to find the location nearest you.\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\nO~kay… I guess that’s good<\/i> to know.<\/p>\n
Now I can’t even get my own my money in a peace and quiet manner. As if Citibank isn’t doing me enough favor<\/i> by squeezing every possible dollar out of my bank account, they want to also make money by selling me ads…. <\/p>\n
It feels like ads are all over the place now. They are between half-time breaks of professional sports games (“This half time break brought to you by Budwiser” ), half-time scores announcements (“This half time score brought to you by “AT&T” ), shopping carts…. everywhere. And now they are even on the ATM machines and printed receipts. What next? Toll booths and gasoline receipts (well, they ARE all over the back of Safeway’s receipts)? Or, ahem, blogs?<\/p>\n
This kind of stuff makes me appreciate Apple and Macs even more. Allow me explain why.<\/p>\n
When I had to buy a Dell years ago (stupid 3D modeling), I had to sign up an account with them. It’s been almost 5 years, I am STILL getting emails from Dell about their special deals despite of my opting out (can I sign up somewhere to sue them?). When I got the computer, there were endorsed trial services and softwares all over the computer! AOL, Earthlink, this or that financial services, this or that trial software… The computer was literally littered with stuff I didn’t want and didn’t ask for. So the first thing I did was reformat the hard drive and install only stuff I wanted. But when I had to support 10-15 Dell computers, it was a nightmare. <\/p>\n
Fast forward to the day I got my PowerBook from Apple. I powered up the computer; I made an account; it asked if I had an ISP, if not, whether I wanted to sign one up with Earthlink. DONE. No more ads, trial software, advertising garbage. Nothing.<\/p>\n
It’s been almost four years since I got the PowerBook, I have yet to receive a single piece of junk mail from Apple. I will take a company that does not compromise the integrity of its customers’ information v.s. another that treats it as another dollar sign any day, even if it means I have to pay a slight premium over the former’s products and services (all this is beside the point that Apple simply makes superior products).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I went to the ATM today to deposit some checks. As soon as I approached the teller machine, I was like, “WTF! What is that huge 7-11 sticker doing on the floor?” It turns out that 7-11 has a marketing deal going with Citibank. Not only is the tiny area in front of the teller … Continue reading “The World of Advertisement”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[8,12,6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-506","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-apple","category-no-logo","category-rant"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p54IqZ-8a","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wiredatom.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/506","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wiredatom.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wiredatom.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wiredatom.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wiredatom.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=506"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.wiredatom.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/506\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wiredatom.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=506"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wiredatom.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=506"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wiredatom.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=506"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}