Not Very Funny

The Jourdan Co. is one of the oldest and largest distributors of eel-skin products in the United States. Although the growth of our company has been phenomenal, our sales of ladies’ eel-skin products have not been increasing as much as we had expected. We believe that the unfounded rumor that eel skin demagnetizes bank cards is the reason for sales not reaching our projections.

Until Feb. 11, nothing had been published about this unfounded speculation by any credible source. On that day, however, your fine publication (in a story headlined “Slippery Problem for ATM Cards”), and others, ran a story about eel skin that may have left some readers with the impression that eel skin was the cause of “fouled-up ATM cards.”

Even though any high school science teacher will tell you that the eel leather carries no electric current and has no magnetic field, we felt compelled to run our own tests. I can assure you that there is nothing in the eel leather itself that could possibly cause the aforementioned effect. The failure of the magnetic strip on bank cards is usually caused by the proximity of other magnetic credit cards or by the magnetic snap that may be present on any leather, vinyl, or nylon wallet or purse.

Your paper did a disservice to my industry. The story may have been an attempt at humor, but when we saw the reference to “an ugly creature also unaffectionately known as the slime eel” causing the banking industry to squirm, we didn’t laugh.

ELLIOT SAX

San Marino

The writer is president of the Jourdan Co. in South El Monte.