Ok, I went off half-cocked about this. This was not Telogis' fault, but rather some sort of USPS screw up. See my followup post.
<rant>
Ok, maybe the entire company doesn't suck, but the marketing department sure does. Let me explain.
When I got back from DEC Europe (a great success, BTW), there was of course a knee-deep pile of mail for me in my office. Most of it was the usual magazines and promotional material. But there was also a note from the US Post Office. Now I don't know about you, but my interaction with the US Post Office over the last ten years has been about nil. I think I can count the times I've actually visited a post office here is Arizona on the fingers of one hand.
This particular note indicated that I had some mail waiting for me at the local post office, with $.55 postage due. In the box marked "Sender" (well actually, in the vicinity of the box), was an indecipherable scribble. Some of the letters looked like "N", "A", and "Q". But beyond that, the name of the sender was a complete mystery. So during lunch I drove over to the local US Post Office a few blocks away, parked the car, went inside, and parked myself at the end of the line. (Normally at this point I'd go into some rant about how long the line was and what morons the USPS employees were, but the truth is there were only about 5 people in line, and the USPS counter staff were very professional. I watched as one semi-irate and completely idiotic customer just go on, and on, and ON, AND ON about how the post office should have delivered a package to her son in Philadelphia even though she didn't put enough postage on it. She was $1.50 short. The counter-lady was very calm and understanding, and this woman just could not get it through her head that she had to pay another $1.50 to send the stupid package. Just pay the money and let us get on with our lives! Please!
In any case, I showed the man my postage due note, gave him the $.55, and in short order he returned with a small package containing a CD. Hmm, interesting. I didn't recall ordering any software. This might be fun...
After opening the package, I discovered that the CD contained a 30-day trial of a product called GeoBase from the company of the same name. I didn't buy anything from them; it was just junk mail! Unbelievable! Not only is the GeoBase marketing department spamming people with CDs in the mail, they are making the recipients pay for the privilege! Arrrrgh! I can't believe that this was a simple mistake... every shipping department I've ever seen has a scale and knows how much it will cost to mail something. My theory: the company is running out of money and this is a last ditch effort to rope in some unsuspecting customers.
So if you ever see anything from GeoBase, Telogis, or anything called Navteq, just turn around and walk the other way.
</rant>