My lifetime or yours…?
Posted by bbc on 02 Apr 2008 | Tagged as: musings
Lately I’ve run across several offers that make a “lifetime” guarantee for rates or services or whatever they happen to be offering. And the question I want to ask is: “Whose lifetime do you mean?”
Maybe the lifetime of the company. But, at the rate some companies are being bought, sold, or folding their tents, that lifetime could be short indeed. Coupons, special deals, even perfectly good purchased airline tickets — all become worthless when a merger or sale or bankruptcy takes place. Or, if I’m being really cynical, maybe they only mean the lifetime of this particular offer. I’m good at reading and interpreting fine print, but I haven’t waded through everything attached to this particular offer. First I have to visit some set of web sites that their flyer refers to — then I have to find the relevant fine print and labor through it. They’re spelling most things out, but they certainly are not making it easy for any normal person to understand.
Or maybe they really mean “my” lifetime. Well, that could be a while or it could be tomorrow. I don’t expect to die suddenly but I believe statistics show that no one ever does expect it. So anything I sign up for today could possibly be useless to me tomorrow. At this stage I’m not really too worried about my longevity. What concerns me more is that some of these services are only good in specific places. If I planned to stay in Oregon the rest of my life, then maybe an Oregon-specific service would be a good deal if I got a “lifetime” rate. But if there’s even the possibility that I might move, that complicates the whole picture. As I’ve watched my life take some unexpected left turns over the years, I’ve gotten much more skeptical about the permanence of any particular location.
Several years ago I became a founding member of an organization in my neighborhood in Arlington, Virginia. I figured I’d be around, either in that neighborhood or at least somewhere nearby where I could take advantage of my lifetime membership. Then three years later I moved three thousand miles away. It’s a little difficult to just drop in at that distance. So I turn a very sceptical eye toward any advertisement that promises me something for life.
It might be a really good deal — but if the quality of the deal is dependent on the number of years it has to run for me to see a benefit, then I’m opting out. A lifetime commitment just isn’t what it used to be.
My desk was behind this column.