Prescription for Chaos
Page 24
Interoffice Memo
To: R. Beggs, Vice Pres. Blue Wheel
Dear Beggs:
I have now had a chance to analyze, and mentally review, your plan for dealing with Snarden, and Blue Wheel. I think this is exactly what we should do.
We want to be sure to run out plenty of line on this.
Devereaux
* * *
BLUE WHEEL
A Nonprofit Organization
NARSTA-Approved
Dear Subscriber:
In these days of rising car-care costs, one of your most precious possessions is your Blue Wheel policy. To assure you the best possible service at the lowest cost, Blue Wheel is now operated under the supervision of the National Automotive Repair Specialists and Technicians Association, as a nonprofit organization.
Yes, Blue Wheel now gives you real peace-of-mind on the road. And your Blue Wheel card will continue to admit your car to the finest Servicatoriums, whenever it needs care.
But as costs rise, the charges we pay rise.
As we spend only 4.21% on administration expenses, you can see we are doing our best to hold prices down; but costs are, nevertheless, rising.
To meet the costs, we find it is necessary to raise our premium to $5.40 a month.
When you consider the cost of car care today, this is a real bargain.
Cordially,
Q. Snarden
* * *
BLUE WHEEL
(Nonprofit)
NARSTA-Approved
Dear Subscriber:
For reasons mentioned in the enclosed brochure, we are forced to raise our premium to $6.25 a month.
Cordially,
Q. Snarden, Pres.
* * *
BLUE WHEEL
Dear Subscriber:
Blue Wheel has fought hard to hold the line, but next year, rates must go up if Blue Wheel is to pay your car-care bills.
As we explain in the enclosed booklet, Blue Wheel will now cost $8.88 a month.
This is one of the greatest insurance bargains on earth, when you consider today's car-care costs.
Cordially,
Q. Snarden, Pres.
* * *
BLUE WHEEL
Dear Subscriber:
Blue Wheel is going to have to raise its rates to meet its ever-increasing costs of paying your car-care bills.
Future rates will be only $10.25 a month.
Cordially,
Q. Snarden, Pres.
* * *
BLUE WHEEL
Dear Subscriber:
Blue Wheel's new rates will be $13.40 a month.
Cordially,
Q. Snarden, Pres.
* * *
BLUE WHEEL
Dear Subscriber:
Blue Wheel is going to $16.90 a month effective January 1st.
See our enclosed explanation.
Cordially,
Q. Snarden, Pres.
* * *
BLUE WHEEL
Dear Subscriber:
$22.42 a month is a small price to pay to be free of car-care expense worries nowadays.
This rate becomes effective next month.
Cordially,
Q. Snarden, Pres.
* * *
SCHRAMM'S SERVICATORIUM
To: Jack W. Bailey
413 Crescent Drive
City
Parts: 1 set 22-638 brushes$2.36
Labor: Super diagnostic$85.00
Giant Lift$65.00
Manipulatorium$55.00
Extraculator$28.00
Gen. transport$1.25
Treatment$12.50
Checkulator$4.50
Gen. transport$1.25
Ultramatatoni$5.00
Installator$15.00
Ch. transport$3.75
Checkulator final$6.50
Ch. transport$3.75
Car transport$5.25
Total parts and labor$291.75
Blue Wheel $291.75 PAID
* * *
FORESYTE INSURANCE
Interoffice Memo
To: P. J. Devereaux, Pres.
Dear Mr. Devereaux:
The other day, the turn-signals on my car quit working, and before I got out of the garage, the bill ran up to $417.12.
In today's mail I got a notice that Blue Wheel, with Snarden at the helm, is going to raise its rates to $28.50 a month.
This notice, by the way, piously states that administrative costs now only come to 2.4% of Blue Wheel's total revenues. Naturally, if they keep raising their revenues by upping the premium, administrative costs will get progressively smaller, in proportion to the total. The percentage looks modest, but that's 2.4% of what?
I was talking to a physicist friend of mine the other day, and he says the trouble is, the car-repair setup now has "positive feedback," instead of "negative feedback." When the individual owner used to pay his own bills, his anger at high bills, and his reluctance or even inability to pay them, acted as negative feedback, reacting more strongly against the garage the higher the bills got. But now, not only is there none of this, but the garages are used more the higher the Blue Wheel premiums—because people feel that they should get something out of the policy. This is positive feedback, and my physicist friend says that if it continues long enough, it invariably ends by destroying the system.
Already there is talk of government regulation, and of plans to spread the burden further by taxation. This is just more of the same thing, on a wider scale. It will only delay the day of reckoning, and the trouble when the day of reckoning comes.
I think we'd better pull the plug on this pretty soon.
R. Beggs
* * *
FORESYTE INSURANCE
Interoffice Memo
To: R. Beggs, Vice-Pres. Special Project
Dear Beggs:
Snarden goes before the congressional investigating committee next week.
When he is about halfway through his testimony, and has them tied in knots with his pious airs and specious arguments, then we want to hit him.
Have everything ready for about the third day of the hearing.
Devereaux
* * *
FORESYTE INSURANCE
Interoffice Memo
To: R. Beggs, Vice-Pres. Special Project
Dear Beggs:
Now's the time. Snarden has pumped the hearing so full of red herrings that it looks like a fish hatchery.
Pull the plug.
Devereaux
FORESYTE INSURANCE
Interoffice Memo
To: P.J. Devereaux, Pres.
Dear Mr. Devereaux:
The first ten million circulars are in the mail.
Beggs
* * *
FORESYTE INSURANCE
"In Unity, Strength"
Since 1906
Dear Car Owner:
When car-care insurance cost two dollars a month, it was a bargain. Now it costs about fifteen times as much.
This present insurance plan is so badly set up that it forces up car-care costs. And when car-care cost go up, that forces up insurance premiums.
This is a vicious circle.
Before this bankrupts the whole country, Foresyte Insurance is determined to stop the endless climb of these premiums, by offering our own plan.
Possibly, after paying these present terrific bills, you will understand why we call our plan Blue Driver. But you won't feel blue when you learn that our monthly rates on this new insurance are as follows:
$90.00 deductible 90%$18.50
$90.00 deductible 75%$12.50
$90.00 deductible 50%$5.25
$180.00 deductible 90%$13.75
$180.00 deductible 75%$7.95
$180.00 deductible 50%$3.75
Compare this with what you are paying now.
We are convinced that the huge increase in car-care costs is due mainly to the fact that the system now used makes it nobody's business to keep costs down, and puts the ever-increasing b
urden just as heavily on the man who doesn't overuse the plan as on the man who does.
Our plan is different, and puts the burden where it belongs—on the fellow who overuses the plan. You don't have to pay for all his expenses. He can't get away without paying for them. This is how it should be. Moreover, this plan gives good protection, at a lower cost.
For instance, with our $90.00 deductible 90% plan, you pay the first $90.00 of the bill yourself. True, $90.00 is a lot of money, but in less that a year's time, you save that much or more in premiums.
The 90% of the plan means that we pay 90% of the rest of the bill. You only have to pay 10%. On an $825.00 bill, for instance, you pay $90.00, which you have probably already saved because our premiums are so much lower. This leaves $735.00. We pay $661.50 of this, right away. You pay only what's left.
This lets you pay the small bills you can afford, while we take most of the big bills that everyone is afraid of these days.
Meanwhile, the less you use the plan, the more you save.
The larger the share of the risk you are willing to take, the more you save. Our $180.00 deductible 50% plan costs only $3.75 a month.
Because we may be able to lower premiums still further, these rates are not final. But at these rates, you can see that this plan rewards the person who doesn't overuse it.
We are already using this plan ourselves, and saving $10.00 to $24.75 a month on it.
How about you?
Cordially,
R. Beggs
Vice-Pres.
413 Crescent Drive
Crescent City
Dear Mr. Beggs:
Here is my check for $7.95. I am signing up on your $180.00 deductible 75% plan, and saving $20.55 a month.
But you better not jack the rates way up, or I will go back to Blue Wheel. If we only burn one light in the house, heat one room, and eat cornmeal mush twice a day, we can still pay their premium.
Yours truly,
Jack Bailey
SCHRAMM'S SUPER SERVICATORIUM
To: Jack W. Bailey
413 Crescent Drive
City
Note: Time for oil change, new filter. Our Automatic File Checker also says it is time your car had a Complete Super Diagnostic and Renewvational Overhaul on our special new Renewvator Machine. Your Blue Wheel will cover it.
Joe Schramm
Dear Joe:
In a pig's eye my Blue Wheel will cover it. I'm a Blue Driver now, and I get socked 180 bucks plus 25% of the rest of your bill, and it sounds to me like I will get hit for enough on this one to buy a new car.
Keep the Renewvational Overhaul. As for the Complete Super Diagnostic, I found an old guy out on a back road, and he can figure out more with a screw driver, a wrench, and a couple of meters than those stuck-up imitation mechanics of yours can find out with the whole Super Diagnostic Machine.
Don't worry about the oil change. I can unscrew the filter all by myself. I will pay myself $4.50 for the labor, and save anyway a hundred bucks on the deal.
If the transmission falls out of this thing, or the rear axle climbs up into the back seat, I'll let you know about it. But don't bother me when it's time to oil the door handles and put grease on the trunk hinges.
Jack Bailey
* * *
SCHRAMM'S SUPER SERVICATORIUM
Dear Mr. Wrattan:
I just got your monthly booklet on "New Superdee Labor-Saving Giants."
Since the paper in this fancy booklet might clog up my new oil burner, I'm afraid I don't know what to do with it.
I am enclosing half-a-dozen letters from ex-customers, and maybe they will explain to you why business is off twenty per cent this month.
Yours truly,
J. Schramm
SUPERDEE EQUIPMENT
Interoffice Memo
To: W. W. Sanson, Pres.
Dear Mr. Sanson:
I am sending up a big envelope containing letters from garagemen and their customers. These letters are representative of a flood that's coming in.
What do we do now?
G. Wrattan
* * *
SUPERDEE EQUIPMENT
Interoffice Memo
To: G. Wrattan, Sales Mgr.
Dear Wrattan:
I put this one to Schnitzer and his Supervac 666. It flattened them.
There's just one thing to do. We take a loss on this latest stuff, and get out while we're still ahead.
As for these questions as to how much we offer to repurchase Renewvators, Giant Lifts, et cetera, we don't want them at any price. Point out how well made they are and how much good metal is in them. That's just a hint to the customer, and if he deduces from that that the best thing to do with them is scrap them, that's his business.
Do you realize it cost me $214.72 to get a windshield-wiper blade changed the other day? They ran the whole car through the Super Diagnostic first to be sure the wiper blade needed to be changed.
As far as I'm concerned, this whole bubble can burst anytime.
Sanson
* * *
SCHRAMM'S ECONOMY GARAGE
To: Jack W. Bailey
413 Crescent Drive
City
Parts: 1 set 22-638 brushes$1.48
Labor: overhaul generator,
set regulator$8.50
total$9.98
Note: Time for oil change, new filter. We will take care of this for you next time you're in—no charge for labor on this job. Al Putz says there was a funny rumble from the transmission when he drove the car out to the lot. We better check this as soon as you can leave the car again. Once those gears in there start grinding up the oil slingers and melting down the bearings, it gets expensive fast.
Joe Schramm
Dear Joe:
Thanks for the offer, but I'll take care of the oil change myself. I want to keep in practice, just in case the country comes down with another epidemic of Super Giant Machinitis.
As for that rumble from the transmission, I jacked up a rear wheel, started the engine, and I heard it, too. It had me scared for a minute there, but I blocked the car up, crawled under, and it took about three minutes to track down the trouble. In this model, the emergency brake works off a drum back of the transmission. Since I brought the car down to your garage, one end of a spring had somehow come loose on the emergency brake, and this lets the brake chatter against the drum. It was easy to connect the spring up again. The transmission is now nice and quiet.
I am enclosing the check for $9.98.
Jack Bailey
* * *
FORESYTE INSURANCE
Interoffice Memo
To: P. J. Devereaux. Pres.
Dear Mr. Devereaux:
We were able to bring the rates on Blue Driver car-care down again last month. We are still making a mint from this plan, even with reduced premiums, and we are still getting enthusiastic letters.
I can see, in detail, how this works, by giving everyone involved an incentive to keep costs down. But I am still wondering about a comment you made earlier.
What is the "Master Science" you referred to, in first suggesting the idea of this plan?