The Best A Man Can Get

Dear Gillette,

Let me start by saying I’ve been a long time fan of the Fusion razor.  It is my opinion that an electric razor is merely capable of knocking the edge off a scraggly face, but to truly get the job done right a razor blade must be used.  And when you take that simple razor and quintuple the blades, you quintuple the shaving power!  It almost makes me wonder what six side-by-side blades could do.

Anyway, just the other day, I was going through my shaving journal and realized that I have been exclusively using the Fusion for more than a year.  But even more fascinating than that, I ran across another interesting detail.  There seems to be a noticeable disparity in the longevity of the blades.

I couldn’t believe it myself, but the numbers support what I’m seeing.  Out of a standard four-pack blade refill, each individual refill has a different lifespan.  The average shaving duration, in weeks, goes something like this:

Blade Refill #1 – 2 weeks

Blade Refill #2 – 2 weeks

Blade Refill #3 – 3.5 weeks

Blade Refill #4 – 19 weeks

Had the fourth refill been off by a week or two, it would have been easily dismissed, but nineteen weeks is hard to overlook.  It seems like it would be more advantageous for your company if every blade lasted for only two weeks.  In that case, the shaver would need to purchase his refills every couple of months.  So, it escapes me why that impressive fourth blade is allowed to showcase the level of quality your company can achieve.

You might be tempted to think that it was a one-time fluke, however I have noticed that it happens with every single four-pack that I buy.  Now that I’ve established that it’s a real phenomenon, I have so many more unanswered questions.  For instance, is it the same blade every time?  I tend to be a top down kind of guy, meaning that I always use the razor oriented at the curved section of the refill first.  What if I started with the bottom razor, would it last for nineteen weeks even though I’m using it first?

There’s so much more experimentation that I’d like to do, and I think your quality control department could greatly benefit from my findings.  That’s why I would like to propose that you send some cases of refills so I could continue my work.  Any help you would like to give would be appreciated, but I believe thirty packets would be good enough for us to establish some sort of statistical significance.

I look forward to sharing the results with you.

Sincerely,

Michael Thomas

**** UPDATE ****

I received this e-mail reply, in which my research offer was politely turned down

:

Hello Michael,

Thank you so much for taking the time and sending us an email about your shaving experiences.  I will be happy to send your comments along to our quality team.  Unfortunately our quality team has their own experiments and data that they go by, but we appreciate all of our consumer's feedback.  As a goodwill gesture I'll be more than happy to send you a coupon for your next purchase of Fusion cartridges.  If you have further questions or comments please contact us back.

Thank you,

Sarah
Fusion Team

.

.

They did, in fact, send a coupon for $5 off on a cartridge refill, as well as two other Proctor and Gamble coupons.