Dante viewed Opportunists as minor sinners, dwelling just outside the first circle of Hell, perpetually stung by wasps and hornets, and we presume, by their consciences. As a simplifier, I view opportunists who use simplicity as a “come-on” even more harshly.

The mere mention of the word “simple” is a hook for purchasers (just ask the publishers of the very successful magazine, Real Simple). For that reason, advertisers and marketers stock their copy with the words: “easy,” “convenient,” “quick,” and “simplified.” The thought of assembling a product sends shivers through most consumers who envision hours of frustration and a few pieces “leftover.” The promise of technology, investing or medicine made simple is alluring.

Of course, if a product or service lives up to its advertising promise, I applaud it. Unfortunately, many do not and yet others really stretch the meaning of Simple. I recently came across a print ad for Simple a nice little shoe companyTM. I looked at their website and the shoes look great; however, how complicated is any shoe? Their link to the notion of simplicity seems to be their statement that “To reduce our environmental footprint we’re changing the way we make shoes by using sustainable materials like recycled car tires, core and bamboo.” For me, this raises the question—is noble virtue akin to simplicity? Is doing something good for the mankind by definition simple? I’d like to think I’m earning entry points for Heaven by toiling as a simplifier but I must say I’m not banking on it.

I recently heard a radio ad exhorting everyone to make sure that their real estate agent is a “Realtor.” I wondered what that meant—would a realtor have a special license and how did it differ from the terms “agent” and “broker”? Then, a few days later, I came across an article promoting the use of a “Certified Buyer Representative.” As though buying or selling a home isn’t already filled with aggravation, apparently there are at least 8 designations of types of real estate professionals: CBR, C-CREC, CEBA, CRP, CBA, CRS, ABR and GRI. You can explore this alphabet soup yourself at www.CBRsource.com. What might the difference be between a CBR: Certified Buyer’s Representative and a CEBA: Certified Exclusive Buyers’ Agent? Don’t look to me for the answer, I’m still confused.

Isn’t this a classic case of industry self-absorption? Who has the time or inclination to find out what each of these is and when to use one or another? Even doctors have the good sense to name their specialties in a recognizable way (orthopedist, ophthalmologist, cardiologist, etc.). Industries that don’t look at themselves from the customer’s perspective risk looking like they are trying to dupe the customer. The idea of a buyer’s agent might be a very solid one but at the moment I’m too busy to find out because I’m looking for a headache specialist.

Last night, on ABC’s World News Tonight, I was pleased to see that Kaiser’s Supermarkets in Germany has introduced several innovations to cater to older grocery shoppers. Having commented on the wonders of Stop and Shop’s Peapod home delivery service last week, you might think I am obsessed with groceries. I’m not. Actually, what it points to is a brain trust among marketers in the grocery business. They are taking a low-margin, commodity business and re-inventing it by applying common sense to customer service.

According to ABC, Kaiser’s Supermarkets realized that older shoppers spend more on groceries and therefore should be catered to with magnifying glasses attached to shopping cart handles, seats built into the carts for a quick rest, brighter lighting, sturdy shelving with built-in steps to reach higher shelves and a help button that summons a real person to answer questions or provide other assistance. Of course, all of these service features will prove useful to younger shoppers as well. The full video can be viewed at www.abcnews.com.

These common sense adaptations will do more to bring meaning to the company’s brand than ads, slogans, taglines and logos could ever hope to. I can only hope that gas stations are taking notes.

Apparently, as they say, “all that glitters is not gold.” Last week, I saw a television ad from Zales, the largest specialty jewelry retailer. It consisted of many pieces of attractive diamond jewelry, each described with a full price and then a markedly lower current price for Valentine’s Day. Clearly, the point of the ad was the fantastic pricing. So, I was amazed to see fine print at the bottom of the screen which said: “Original prices may not have resulted in actual sales.”

What does that mean? I think it means that the original price they quoted was a fiction–no one actually ever bought the jewelry at the higher price. They simply quoted a high number so that they current price sounded dramatically lower.

Really, duping the lovestruck seems unnecessarily cruel.

While my mother was very ill and I was her caretaker, leaving the house to grocery shop was a dilemma until I discovered Stop and Shop’s Peapod home delivery service. Those of you who live in the city probably can’t relate to the rarity of delivery services in the suburbs. Finding a service where I could order online, choose a delivery time and have the items carried into my kitchen was a godsend. Since I’m usually complaining about the complexity of goods and services, I thought I should give praise where it is due.

What impressed me most was the simplicity of the process. I could browse the “aisles” online, select from lists of my past orders or search directly for an item. Although I’m not particularly thrifty, I was also delighted that I could compare price much more easily than in the real store. On store shelves, prices are scattered beneath the items and you have to move along the aisle to compare them. Online, similar items are aligned in rows and columns so that you can quickly scan the unit price and pick out the cheapest. Had I clipped coupons, I could have given them to the driver when he delivered my order and had their value deducted from the total. They also advertised their weekly specials but didn’t do so in an intrusive way.

What’s more, when they delivered the groceries, they seemed to have selected the plumpest, freshest produce and carefully separated items when bagging them so that fastidious people like me didn’t have to worry about the bleach touching the bananas. Peapod is a good example of a service that fills a need and is designed with the customer in mind.

I recently bought a new mattress and box spring. Very luxurious, very comfy but very, very high–so high that the delivery men burst out laughing after they put them on the bed. I literally would need to pole vault to get into the bed. After a return trip to the store, I discovered that what I required was a “low-profile” box spring since I had chosen a pillow-top, extra-deep mattress and was putting it on a wood-frame, four-poster bed. What makes this so ironic is that my mattress-shopping experience had already involved more interrogation than an interview at the CIA. The choices and decisions had seemed endless—did I want memory foam, coil-spring, latex, pillow-top, firm, soft, adjustable, etc.? Then, having made a choice, I tried to comparison shop for price—turns out no two mattress retailers call their models the same name so you can’t really compare. So, after all that, I was quite surprised when the bed was taller than I am.

I’m not alone in feeling overwhelmed by all of these choices for household items. One of my colleagues is remodeling her entire house and she is losing her mind choosing hardware, tile, bath fixtures, lighting, flooring and paint. Barry Schwartz, author of “The Paradox of Choice: Why More is Less,” is also a professor of psychology at Swarthmore College and he makes the point that unbridled choice is a burden and a source of dissatisfaction. He compellingly points out that too many choices leave us feeling that we missed out on the “best” option and that the time and effort necessary to discern the differences between myriad choices is unrealistic. Ultimately, too many choices lead to inertia as no decision becomes the final decision. So how are manufacturers benefiting? I maintain they are not. They are simply making me unhappy and dissatisfied.

If Best Buy or Circuit City were forced to display the instruction manuals next to their products in the stores, no one would ever buy another digital camera, plasma television or home theater. A classic example is the 147-page instruction manual that came with my newly purchased surround sound receiver. Once my eyes saw the manual, my ears no longer wanted surround sound.

Had I thumbed through the manual in the store, I would have seen the warning signs:

• 36 part names on the front panel; 14 more on the display and 19 more on the rear panel;
• dozens of illustrations that looked like plates of spaghetti (a preview of the many wires I would find shortly); and
• the coup de grace—a chapter titled, “Easy Set-up and Operation.”

Why is it that the words “easy” and “simple” are only present when the task at hand will be anything but?

Of course, the electronics retailers are not to blame. The manufacturers, specifically their engineers, are the ones who dream up the hundreds of features. Then the writers of the manuals make it worse. The manual I was reading seemed to be written for either a moron or a rocket scientist. One page had cartoon drawings of the receiver crying, melting and otherwise exhibiting human traits while the next talked about “connecting the pre-out terminals, the trigger-out terminals and the multi-zone terminals.” I can’t even say that this manual seemed to have been translated into English from another language. I think someone actually wrote it this way.

Since I had 146 pages to wade through, I didn’t appreciate the writer’s inability to get to the point. You tell me whether it was necessary to have these as three distinct steps, “Read instructions…,” “Retain instructions…,” and “Follow instructions…” At that point, the only one I wanted was “Burn instructions…”

Will I ever buy another piece of electronics—yes, but not from this company.