I Thought I Had Real Mail, But It Was Just A DirecTV Ad

I do most of my communicating with loved ones electronically, which makes it a rare treat when I get actual mail that isn’t a bill. Who doesn’t like a nice card? When Justin’s wife received this envelope resembling a greeting card from someone named “Chris Thomas” in California, he didn’t dismiss it as junk mail. It seemed legit.

Yeah, disguising advertisements as real mail is a trick as old as junk mail, but this one kind of impressed it. The real masterful touch has to be the pink, lighthouse-laden address label, which looks like something that your favorite aunt ordered 5,000 labels of back in 1994 and has been using for every piece of mail since.

Of course, his wife didn’t know who Chris Thomas was, either. “It was clear that he knew her because the address was hand-written and the return address was a personal one . . . but neither of us knew,” he wrote to Consumerist. That is a pretty convincing faux-handwriting font. “We opened it and found a promotional offer from DirecTV made to look like a wedding invitation or friendly card.” Well, at least you don’t have to buy anyone a present.

Who lives at that address in El Segundo, though? Well, we know who “Chris Thomas” is, so let’s look up that address on Google Maps…

Ah, I see. That’s Uncle Chris’s bungalow…or DirecTV’s corporate campus. It all makes sense now.

by Laura Northrup via Consumerist