I agree with Kenneth G. Kraetzer’s observation that misrepresentation of financial service marketing practices is not constructive to the current national debate over privacy issues.
It seems to me that most, if not all, financial institutions are inherently incentified, if by nothing more than a basic profit motive, not to alienate their customers or vacate (a.k.a. “sell”) an equity relationship with respect to information about them. That’s almost absurd when you really think about it.
While I might assign a tad more weight to the revenue-generation motive of financial institutions (in renting their sacred database of customer names), the bottom line, especially in today’s competitive marketing environment, involves finding ways to create and maintain a sound fiscal balance between serving both customers and stockholders without unduly unsettling either, legally or otherwise.
Granted, this effort sometimes leads to (opted-in?) phone calls during the dinner hour to sell the latest gadget or widget, which, in true bandwagon de jour fashion, becomes more fuel and fodder for increased privacy-issue bashing. But such efforts also lead to the accomplishment of genuinely altruistic goals that benefit society in the final analysis, and that’s pretty neat if you ask me.
Jerry Jones, Vice president, Amerenhance, a division of Travel and Transport Inc.,
