[johnohara]

The oldest and most mind-boggling process ever devised and foisted upon readers lies at the bottom of many of those ads -- "circle ### on reader service card."

It was a cruel joke for the ad to spark your interest whereby you would circle the number, mail in the bingo card to the publisher (3-5 days), whose lead management group would process it (3-5 days), then send the lead to the company or dealer (3-5 days), who would assign it to a sales rep (3-5 days), who was working their leads and getting back to potential customers (3-5 days), who would then ignore the call because they had lost interest in the product or couldn't remember requesting information.

Compare that with today where making a phone call to the sales team takes too long (3-5 minutes) and it's easier to just go get the damn information yourself.