More on the mystery of why a card issuer might hit the same person 200 times with a mailer, despite the lack of response: I heard from a former executive of a major bank card issuer, who said that, in her experience, no one cares how many times a customer has ignored a mailer. No one thought about it; it isn’t tracked. She framed it as a cost issue — it would be too expensive to scrub the list to eliminate serial non-responders. (She said even trying to remove duplicates within a single list is a big chore.) I understand the logic, but let’s face it, this is big, dumb, spray & pray marketing. (And I think she’d agree with me on that.)

She had another juicy tidbit: Doctors are highly prized marks for credit card companies because they “usually pay — but late — and rarely walk because they don’t have the time to hassle, so therefore are a wonderful opportunity for low risk fees on top of fees, and punitive interest rates.”

She also reports leaving the industry because “it just felt dirty.”