Please do not write below the line

They could have told him that though if it's the case, and the mystery would be solved. But there obviously wasn't any desire (or more charitably - time) on their end to really look into the reasoning or even understand the question.

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Edit: I will share what I think is a nice a little counterpoint story here, from a business that is clearly still interested in understanding. I sent Lego an email a while ago:

  I'm just wondering if you're able to tell me what the
  tune is that the Lego Primo musical camel plays in set
  number 2007. It's a set from 1998. We have the camel and
  it plays a nice tune, but no-one seems to know what it is! 

They replied a day later:

  Thanks for getting in touch with us. 

  This is a really really really and I mean really interesting
  question you got there for us. I have checked with all the
  resources I have and come to a possible conclusion.

  The Musical Camel – which in Denmark actually is called
  ‘PRIMO Dromedar'. 1st theory is that, One DUPLO-designer
  says that the melody was composed by the designer that
  created the camel but no one remembers the name who created
  the Musical Camel. Another thing is, one of the engineer once
  had a musical box that had the same melody but he is no
  longer with us anymore and cannot provide us the answer.

  I am so sorry that, at the end of the day I cannot provide
  you with any name to the title. But I hope the facts can
  make a good story for you to tell your friends.

That is an amazingly competent response. Every company should aspire to that kind of depth, if a toy company can manage it.

The problem is there’s no “they”. Just an underpaid government contractor manning the email inbox, asking around “hey why do the letters say this?” and responding with the bare minimum.

I have a wonderful memory of eating a snickers bar with my Dad as a kid, and deciding to call the comment line (1-800 number) on the wrapper. I was probably about 6 and just wanted to say that I liked their candy bars. The woman was very nice and took our address so they could mail us some coupons for free snickers bars.

While we're here, does anyone happen to recognize the camel's tune?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JKpD-KkaBHc

We never worked it out.

That's wild to get a real response like that. Bravo to Lego.

I offered to provide some expert help on a set they were designing once and they immediately put me in direct contact with the designer in Billund. No bureaucracy.

Why can't more companies be this good? I've been trying for years to get into one Google account of mine :(

I assume none of the Shazam-alikes can make any sense of it?

Yeah, they don't recognise it - or at least Shazam doesn't.

I cannot find it, but I once sent an email to johnnie walker to ask for the music for what is arguably the best ad I ever saw (except for think different). They correctly answered, though the answer was the music is original and copyrighted, and thus I could not get it.

The thing is, Lego is a "nice" company, and they care about their image. Answering obscure question the best they can goes a long way, people will be more than willing to share their anecdote. That's great publicity, and all you need are a few guys answering emails, most of them are likely to be copy-pasted for the most part, people are not that original. And if you get a truly original question, it may take a bit more time, but the impact will be greater, and I am sure employees have great fun finding these bits of trivia.

TV licensing on the other hand is "evil". They are in the business of collecting a tax that many people see as unfair, and prosecute those who don't pay. Even if their actions are fully justified, they won't make your life better, it is simply not their job. Even if they are genuinely nice in their communication, it won't change the fact that their are after your money and have to be forceful sometimes, and everything will be seen through these lens, so they might just as well assume their evilness.

The only thing I would say against this is that sometimes that kind of curiosity can help the business itself as well. For example imagine a situation similar to the post except that it's someone's job to manually write the equivalent of "Please do not write below the line" on every letter. Sometimes little tasks like that can waste time for years before someone finally asks 'do we actually need to be doing this?'

I do realise that is not the case in the post, where it's probably even simpler to print the same message on every letter vs. only on some. And your point is of course well made in general.

I humbly suggest: 3M Thermo-Fax https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TZVYRMu6Q9k

More importantly, they don't need to be nice and/or care to be successful.

Businesses are nice because they have to compete for customers, and that is easier if you're viewed as nice.

TV Licensing is a monopoly, they can have the worst customer service on earth, and that won't affect their revenue by much. There's just nowhere else to switch to.

This is also the reason why many government / publicly-run systems are so unfriendly and have such terrible UX. It's not like you can apply for benefits somewhere else (and the government would actually be very happy if you could!) , so nobody cares if the application is fifty pages and requires you to put in the same personal details 5 times.

To add insult to injury, there are no shareholders that demand the metrics to go up, so nobody has any incentive to optimize anything.

Something that goes to show how unnecessary much of it is is how I've found a staggering difference in paperwork between various US states. Registering a car in New York is equivalent to securing a mortgage with pages and pages of forms and a bill of sale and verification of insurance etc., while in New Hampshire you just show up with the title signed over to you and that's literally it, that's literally all you need to walk out with plates.

It fits the states' identities, New York is (somewhat exaggerating) a kafkaesque dystopia that wants to be in all of your business and have absolute control over everything you do, while New Hampshire's state motto is "Live Free or Die".

Try the ones that let you hum or sing to it - they don't require a perfect radio mix to match the fingerprint.

I think SoundHound was the original I used, I think Google's will do the same.

Oh you just wrote below the line

Google's audio search tells me that it's a stock sound effect: https://music.youtube.com/watch?v=2wLKlWPkcOM&si=Sle4B04wAoV...

https://secure.dewolfemusic.com/page/digiffects_sound_effect....

It appears to be used or sampled in a couple of songs (by Anna Maria Jopek and Boozehounds), but these date in the 2000s so can't have come into the camel from then I suppose!

I still prefer mine https://vimeo.com/113756330 :)