My wife got one of these ads from a car dealership. It was made to look like an Outlook email printout from a sales rep at another dealership addressed to the guy who had sold her car to her. The email stated that the dealership had an interested buyer for that particular model year (about 5 years old) and that hers was the only one in the area. They said that if she came in, they would give her a free oil change and offer her above market rates for a trade in. The printout had what looked like a hand-written post-it stuck to it asking her to get ahold of the sales rep in question. I was suspicious but she followed up and found that the sales rep who had supposedly sent the email was not even a real person. It was a pretty advanced scheme to try to cover up the fact that it was just a way to get her into the shop, inspect her car, and find all sorts of problems with it and pressure her into trading it in. Probably the scummiest thing I've seen in a long time.
For every car I've bought in the past 15 years, at some point I've received a letter from the dealership telling me that my car is in "high demand" and that they'd pay me a premium price to buy it from me (of course with the expectation that I'll buy a new car from them, and the "premium" price probably isn't). I've never received one this sleazy, but unfortunately it seems to be pretty standard practice.
I've only bought 4 cars, and this last one has had much worse spam, some via mail but so much more via phone (3-4 per week, warranty and sales), to the point where the next time I buy (if ever) I will use a burner phone #.
I get something you could consider worse: letters designed explicitly to look like communications from the DMV. I got an absolute DELUGE of these about a year ago from various companies wanting to sell me auto warranties. Phone calls too along the same lines: very official sounding, no company name given, just to contact some person.
The letters were downright devious. The company letterhead was designed specifically to look at a glace like the state official emblem, the contents were all white paper, no photoshopped images (cheaper to produce and more accurate to the real deal, win win I guess) and the marketing materials were designed to look like pre-filled official forms, except when you actually read it you realized it was application for that bloody warranty.
I can't fucking believe it's legal to send shit like that. You're two steps from impersonating the Government. I could totally see someone a little further on in years (or just not paying attention!) thinking they had to respond.
> You're two steps from impersonating the Government
In Poland it's normal practice. You register a company, you get serious looking email from private companies which names are very similar to related government entity which tells you to pay for registration (which is free).
It's going on for years, no consequences for them.
The same about golden and silver coins, gold plated religious stuff - company called freaking "NATIONAL TREASURY" aimed to look like national mint sells this shit for years.
I registered a business entity in California and there's a company in Sacramento that does that. They send you a letter asking you to pay them a large fee to file your officer report (which you have to do anyways, but the real fee is much lower). It's all very official government looking paperwork with a government sounding name and an address in Sacramento. I was nearly fooled until I looked it up online.
