Spam glorious spam. I know it’s bad and we should frown on it, but sometimes it just cheers you up.
I was greeted in my inbox this morning with the following title:
Pay up to 2,195 GBP for laser eye surgery.
Normally I know the routine with spam, don’t open it, bin it. But when someone is offering me cut-price laser eye surgery I am interested. To quickly cut to the end of the tale, so that you are not worried that I am dictating this to an amanuensis, I didn’t take them up on the offer.
I did read the email though, which means they got past the first line of defence. Make an interesting title must be the first rule of spamming and boy is cut-price laser eye surgery an interesting title. Like anyone who has an email address I have been the recipient of many unsolicited emails, mainly for increasing the size of this and decreasing the size of that. My long-lost uncles/business partners in Nigeria have also been in quite active correspondence – I gather that for various reasons I am owed several million dollars, as well as having gold and jewels waiting for me in many places around the world.
None of these have I been tempted to try, but cut price laser eye surgery?! That has piqued my interest. I want to know how they do it. What’s the scam? Do they take the money and run or do they actually attempt eye surgery? Do they meet you, grab the money and run, or go through the charade of dressing up in white coats? Inside the email I learned that it is exact same laser technique at many top clinics but up to half price. I can’t imagine they hire a hospital and a fully qualified anaesthetist, but maybe they do. I want to know.
However there is a problem. There are many things that I would risk buying from a source unknown. Old rubber bands, second hand pencils – I would buy them no questions asked. But when it comes to laser eye surgery, call me an old stick-in-the-mud but I like the chappie controlling the laser to know what he is doing. I like to have met him through my doctor, not via an email of dubious English. There are certain things the price of which might sway my purchasing decision. Salt is one of these. Laser eye surgery isn’t. Show me some cheap salt and I will probably think that’s just as good as the expensive one. But laser eye surgery?
Maybe I’m just a laser-eye surgery snob. I can’t believe anyone has responded to this email. But people don’t generally do things that have no result. Which brings me to my question. Have you bought cut price laser eye surgery from a spam email? If so I’d love to hear from you. Please report on your experience in the comments below.
I think you made some good points in your article.