We are one of the one point something million households who have received New Zealand Post’s daunting six page survey asking a lot of impertinent questions about who we are and what we earn, like to do, eat, buy, drive etc. They snuck it past the ‘no circulars’ sign on our letter box by cunningly disguising it as a regular letter.
Needless to say we’ll be choosing not to fill it in. The reason is not so much their open admission that they want us to allow them to pass on all our personal information to a whole bunch of unknown marketers who will then bombard us with Internet spam and the postal equivalent, probably despite our ‘no circulars sign’ and the anti spam law. No it’s not so much the effrontery of the exercise; it is simply the utterly awful appearance of it.
As a partially sighted person it might be assumed that I wouldn’t fill it in anyway. But one would have to be highly motivated as well as having 2020 vision and a very good light to be enticed by a few tawdry prizes and the one in one point something million ‘chance to win.’ The usual interminable and no doubt, (since I can’t read them) tedious terms and conditions alone are minuscule, about 4 point text. The six pages of invasion of privacy have extremely poor contrast, pale grey text on pale blue and tiny form fields and text. Why would anyone bother?
Anyone who is really keen could fill it in online, the online survey is better in appearance but without testing it I couldn’t vouch for its accessibility.
Poor old New Zealand Post, already shedding jobs because of the demise of snail mail is desperately clutching at straws and buying into a recessionary dream world where everyone is young with perfect vision and a trusting faith in ‘a chance to win.’ They have never heard of the ageing population and that most ‘normally’ sighted people over 40 need their reading specs for more readable material than the survey.
So NZ Post we won’t be filling in your survey because we, like many others I suspect, simply can’t read it, and have more interesting things to do online. But I will add the form to my collection of abject examples of terrible communication I use in workshops.
On a brighter note I read in the Dompost that ‘plain English’ sale and purchase forms for home buyers and sellers will be available soon. The Real Estate Institute is trying to get rid of complexity and ambiguity. I hope they really are plain English and really work.
