28 ms·

Why nobody ever wins the car at the mall

1104 points by sxv 8y ago

andrewclunn 8y ago
My parents went to such a presentation to prove to my younger sister what scams they are. They won the car.
SpaceManiac 8y ago
Reminds me a bit of a process I've been wrestling with to redeem a "rebate" (gift card to a chosen retailer from a list) on an online textbook, negotiated between the professor and the textbook company after the semester start. The stakes are a little lower ($15 rather than a car) but the hoops they make you jump through, and the personal information they want, for what is ostensibly your money definitely make it feel just as scammy.
- drawkbox 8y ago
  Nathan For You did a really funny take on this for a gas 'rebate' in S1E4. Basically jumping through hoops until everyone would give up. https://www.imdb.com/title/tt2777064/ https://www.imdb.com/title/tt2777064/
deleted 8y ago
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threatofrain 8y ago
Well I would be for penalizing such businesses. Isn't this just bait and switch? Such businesses should have their licenses revoked, as they damage relations for everyone else who wants to use prize incentives. These cheaty businesses also call into question the common person's ability to negotiate with fine print -- it's just too much.
- extradego 8y ago
  In the USA, this is just how it’s done. I’m not exaggerating; this is business as usual. Penalizing this would be a catastrophe for Americans. I think the sheer volume of the tricks, lies, gimmicks and gotchas cause each one bleed into the next to the point of immersion. The shimmer of the spectacle and hope become one and the same. Because every day is just another swindle at the Big Bazaar Of Life.
  - m_fayer 8y ago
    A decade ago I would have thought your comment was over the top. Then I moved to Germany. And was surprised to find an utter lack of spammy phone calls, no crowd of ubiquitous scammers vying for my attention, no surprise mystery medical bills, nothing. I was with my German girlfriend in a department store once, she tore a little slip off the stockings she was buying, put her name and email on it, and dropped it into a jug by the cash register. I gave her a "were you born yesterday" look and asked if she hadn't yet learned that these things are all scams. She had absolutely no idea what I was talking about. A month later we won an all expenses paid trip to a resort in Turkey, it was on the tacky side but also the height of luxury and relaxation. All the stocking brand wanted from us in return was a few happy selfies to post on their Twitter account. If more Americans knew that it doesn't have to be this way, maybe things could change.
    - vinceguidry 8y ago
      Good Lord, you're right. This sort of marketing could work, if Americans were more vigilant about punishing bad actors. If someone in Germany tried an American-style scam, the sheer tangibility of the vision I have of angry Germans not effing stopping until the perps are put in jail is palpable. Sadly, this seems to be a national attitude and those just don't seem to be transmissable. Now I'm wondering whether Germany is the exception or the rule. I darn sure wouldn't want to trust anyone, say, in Russia. Not sure about Latin America though. Argentina might seem safe, but Mexico? Africa, mostly probably not.
    - matt_the_bass 8y ago
      That’s how it was when I was kid (in the US). Obviously not twitter selfies, but the equivalent at the time.
    - glenneroo 8y ago
      I have more or less the same story moving to Austria. I get spammy calls but they are actually legit surveys (quality of life, political leanings, newspaper preferences, etc) and only because I gave up my phone number at a party many years ago and haven't bothered to have it removed. I get once of these survey calls about every 3-6 months and if I'm not in the mood I just tell them I don't have time and they never call back. On occasion they ask if they could call back at a later date. Re: winning things - I won 500 Euro from Visa for entering a contest, where the only requirements were to fill out the online form with my name, age and email address, followed by using my Visa card 3 times in one month any of the following 3 months. I should note that Visa the company here doesn't actually function as a credit card like in the U.S., rather it's directly connected to your bank account, where at the end of the month any balance due is automatically deducted. If your account drops below zero, you just pay some interest at the end of the month. From my basic research (looking at my bank statements for the past 2 years), it's extremely low. In fact looking at my last "25% KEST" charges, I was in minus for 3 months last year, and the charge was 0,02 euro cents. I honestly have no idea how that works, but I assume we have some good consumer protections in place.
ktal 8y ago
I saw that very car at that very mall, and the screens were all surrounded by people eagerly entering their info. Don't people get enough spam calls and emails to realize why?
- cbg0 8y ago
  One more spam e-mail won't bother them too much when they think they can win a car for it.
  - jacquesm 8y ago
    It's never just 'one spam email'. You end up on a list, the list will end up being sold many times over, also to other list creators and in the end you will get 100's if not 1000's of messages, probably you will still be receiving messages long after you're dead.
- acct1771 8y ago
  No. Otherwise, the marketers wouldn't waste their time. People don't think past their nose. Similarly to the concept of demanding adequate gov't representation, digital security has been made to seem impossible by large media conglomerates who benefit from all the tracking of advertising networks, etc.
- dawnerd 8y ago
  They just blame it on their phone company and the like. I know a few people that knowingly hand out info at conventions yet will blame everything but. Might have to do with the marketing companies waiting long enough and people quickly forgetting about them entering their info. So when the spam calls hit they just think of whatever company they know for sure has it. Side note: it’s almost impossible to book anything in Orlando without getting spamming with timeshare calls months later. I’m amazed it’s even legal.
  - Cthulhu_ 8y ago
    This is why the GDPR and similar things are good; you can sign up, but they have to delete your data if you ask them for it. It makes schemes like this a lot less er, 'final', so to speak.
deelowe 8y ago
The gift tax section seems out of place. It has nothing to do with the rest of the article.
- lolsal 8y ago
  I think it's trying to drive home the point that even if you win some amount of money, it can be misleading - $1000 is less than $1000 after taxes.
Animats 8y ago
Since this is a California on-site thing, California sweepstakes law applies.[1] - "The exact nature and approximate value of the prizes must be disclosed clearly and conspicuously when they are offered." - "The law prohibits the company from misrepresenting the odds of receiving any item offered." - Prohibited: "Failing to award and distribute all prizes of the value and type represented." Online complaint form here.[2] [1] http://consumerwiki.dca.ca.gov/wiki/index.php/CONTESTS/SWEEPSTAKES/GIFTS/PRIZES http://consumerwiki.dca.ca.gov/wiki/index.php/CONTESTS/SWEEP... [2] https://oag.ca.gov/contact/consumer-complaint-against-business-or-company https://oag.ca.gov/contact/consumer-complaint-against-busine...
- starpilot 8y ago
  Why haven't they all been shutdown if they are clearly illegal? Also, I've seen these across the country.
  - ehnto 8y ago
    There's generally no one doing the work basically. A gym I went to had notoriously bad competitions and advertising. It was never the "last memberships available" and there wasn't actually "10 days left" the counter just changed back on the final day. No one ever got the prizes either, they just never announced a winner, and a new competition started the same day. People still signed up by the hundreds. Hundereds of formal complaints by people from the gym to the ombudsman and consumer affairs over more than five years amounted to literally nothing. They still do everything they used to. Even more seriously, they didn't pay their employees superannuation, and it took years to even start the process of sorting that out. As these car competitions are run by private businesses and not the car manufacturers my guess is they are simply too small of a fish to go after. Now, just last week that same gym was implicated in a drug trafficking ring. But that's a different department of law enforcement...
    - dvfjsdhgfv 8y ago
      I think it's one of these cultural differences between the USA and Europe. There might be more bureaucracy in Europe, but these officers actually do the work they're paid for. E.g. as for the superannuation issue, you could probably get a court order within 2-3 months here.
svilen_dobrev 8y ago
pff, there was some movie long ago, some technician was installing a few 1-armed-bandits in some pub, and asked the owner - should they give 1 win per 100, or 1 per 1000 ? And the owner answered: What? 1 per 1000? We're not a charity here, there must be zero wins!
- mschuster91 8y ago
  Having worked in casinos and actually owning a real, unrestricted gambling machine (for laughs, tbh): that's bullshit. Gambling works because there is always, always some machine that is paying out money. This one machine is sufficient to get all other patrons to throw more and more money at them. Sometimes all hell breaks loose and multiple or all machines pay out. The joke is that most gamblers won't cash out and go home - they will "reinvest" their entire win in hope to win more... and the really desperate ones throw even more "fresh" money at them.
  - Cthulhu_ 8y ago
    Yup, pretty much. The machines are configured for a certain win percentage though, so the house always wins in the end.
  - TheReveller 8y ago
    I interviewed about engineer who used to work for a South American casino company, and he explained that on Saturday nights the machines are configured to pay out 110%, then the next morning... Much less.
  - feintruled 8y ago
    You mentioned owning an 'unrestricted' gambling machine - I've always wondered, do such machines have a setting to actually be fair (or I guess, totally random?) Or is it always a matter of payout percentages?
    - mschuster91 8y ago
      "Unrestricted" in that most second-hand gambling machines are switched to a "demo mode" which delivers unrealistic winning chances. The situation with the modes is more complex in Germany: - "real", licensed casinos can carry the big ass slot machines. These have very high limits, both in wins and losses, and can be centrally controlled by the casino. - bars, "machine casinos" and other unlicensed venues carry the machines of the kind which I have. On these you can lose (aka pay in) no more than 80€/h, and win (aka pay out) no more than 500€/h. Which means: if you win e.g. 1000€, you'll have to hang around for 2 hours to withdraw your win. Machines based on the new rules (TR5) actually have even lower limits (80/400 loss/win). These are mandated to only collect a certain amount of money - only 33€/hour used should go as profits to the operator, the rest of the money paid in must be distributed to the gamblers over time ("long term").
blowski 8y ago
Another shady “competition” is the “complete this form and get a laptop”. Except it’s not just this form, it’s this form, and this form, and this form, and this form... until the user gives up. Each of those forms goes to a sales call list. And when you give up, you’ve already completed half a dozen forms - and you’ve given all that data for free. If somebody does ever complete all of the forms, they get told the laptop is now out of stock - but here’s a free £50 voucher for Amazon.
- userbinator 8y ago
  I know some people who automated those but basically fed them fake generated data, and managed to make quite a bit before they got banned. Probably not legal, but AFAIK the responses to those surveys aren't legally binding either, and the more "poisoned the well", the less profiling and tracking they can do, so I don't have any moral problems with that.
  - 6cd6beb 8y ago
    Is there a good way to find these free laptop scams? I'm looking for good use cases to sharpen my selenium skills and like wasting scammer's time.
dirktheman 8y ago
A couple of years ago I had some time to kill in Vegas since i don't gamble. I was approached by this timeshare dude who offered me free tickets to the Shark Reef and a $100 gift card for a fancy restaurant. I attended the meeting (free breakfast!), politely declined all offers from a range of salesmen with ever hardening sales tactics and walked out with my vouchers two hours later. That was a good day.
- saalweachter 8y ago
  Some of these presentations can be a good "deal" if you can resist the sales pressure, the sales staff takes your declination in good humor, and they actually give something of real value as a lure. If not, well the best case scenario is you've wasted an afternoon being yelled at and walked away with a useless "prize".
- felipemnoa 8y ago
  Similar experience here. They really do try several tricks to get you to bite. The one trick that they tried was that once we were in the restaurant the lady claimed that it was a mistake and that we were not supposed to be there. The free meal was only for members but she would overlook it and continue with the presentation just for us. Pretty laughable.
MatthewWilkes 8y ago
Amusingly, the website this article is hosted in pops up a modal asking you to sign up to a mailing list with a low contrast dismiss button and saying "you can always unsubscribe". People in glass houses.
- Cthulhu_ 8y ago
  At least they're not saying you could win a car.
- test6554 8y ago
  I switched to reader view in safari and that fixed the modal right up.
- fortythirteen 8y ago
  Ultimate hypocrisy is that their profit model is probably built around reselling their email list.
  - jl87 8y ago
    We do not make money from reselling people's email.
    - fortythirteen 8y ago
      Do you use your email list to send third party promotional content?
- wrich5011 8y ago
  Also there’s about 17 typos and grammar issues in this tiny article making me question if the “investigative journalism” portion of this article is just made up. Seems suspicious that they are willing to spend days chasing down a story but not 5 minutes proofreading...
Theodores 8y ago
The TV giveaways are also a con. You know the deal, you watch the whole show because the competition details will be given at the end. Then the questions are multiple choice and rather easy. For example, where is the final stage of the Tour de France? Option a) Peterborough, option b) Potters Bar, option c) Paris. In this semi-fictional example if you get the answer right then you could get to win a bicycle shaped object that looks like one of the bicycles ridden by one of the top teams. You might not be telemarketed to death in this instance but the text you send will be to one of those premium rate numbers, to cost you £3 or so. This money then goes to pay for the show, if you get 10000 people to text in then that is real money, enough to pay for the interns and rent the camera gear. But it was not always like this. There was a time when the answers were difficult. There was also a time when nobody knew what a search engine was because they had not been invented yet. There was also a time when knowledge might only exist in people's heads rather than only online. Questions for TV shows could be difficult and the only way to enter might have been on a postcard where you might also have to enter a 'tie breaker', e.g. 'bicycles are best because...' (complete in less than ten words). The tie breaker might not be there to just pick a winner from those that got the question right, the show might honestly be looking for a slogan and crowdsourcing it was a good way to pick more brains than just the production crew. Furthermore, the result or answer was something of interest to the viewers. You could learn something. General knowledge was a thing back then, not denigrated to 'trivia' or something you could get by using your favourite search engine. General knowledge had value beyond the pub quiz. In these former times, before 'Who wants to be a millionaire', it would have been an insult to the audience to ask a noddy multiple choice question for a competition. Answering would not have been totally beyond the realms of possibility, you might have to go to the local library, dig out Encyclopaedia Britannica and get the answer from there. Or, if you knew your subject, then it might be something you knew. So winning also meant that you did get 'respect' from your peers and 'the world at large' for being clever enough to know the answer. Winning might have been more valuable than the prize itself just for the kudos. It wasn't as if some computer just selected your name at random in some lottery of other mugs willing to gamble. The funny thing though is how these things go full circle. The TV shows that made the competition into something patronising and lame no longer get viewers, or even interns. That intern can make more success for themselves being a Youtube influencer and doing it all themselves. Rather than make the tea and do the errands for the big fat producer they can do their own script, presentation, camera-work and sound. they can also do their own competitions. And, in their competitions they can give away some respectable loot and get some genuine feedback from their fans. They can also avoid having to fleece their fans of an SMS premium rate call, a like/subscribe/thumbs-up and comment will be needed though. Even the question can be non-Google-able, fans might know from watching the show what breed of dog their co-presenter owns, so that could be a good quiz question. There need not be any bait-and-switch and the car given away really can be an actual car that actually gets given away.
throwaway0255 8y ago
I used to know someone who worked for one of the companies behind those "We'll Fix Your Credit Score, Call Us" and "We'll Buy Your House, Call Us" signs on the side of street intersections (among other things), and I asked her to explain to me how those signs could possibly make any money. The way she explained it was (mostly her words), way less than 1% of people are dumb enough to dial the number, but of the people who do call, 100% of them are people who are dumb enough to call. In other words, if the signs appeared more credible, they would be much less effective, because they'd end up wasting a lot of time screening the calls of people who are unlikely to accept the terms they offer. She also said that scaling up (and going up market) would increase their likelihood of litigation. It seems to me like that's what's happening with these timeshare seminars. The car isn't just there to mislead people about the potential upside of the contest, the car is really there to screen the marketing process for gullible people attracted to large financed purchases.
- TangoTrotFox 8y ago
  I sometimes wonder if this isn't a fairly common practice in numerous industries. For instance some time back I was watching a show on US cable television. Vikings on the History Channel, in particular. Aside from the completely obnoxious icons and labeling everywhere, about 5 minutes into the show advertisement pops up literally in the middle of the screen consuming about 25% of the screen space. And that was enough for me to immediately move onto other things, as that's worth less than the $0 price of admission. Incidentally the web version is amazing, has more content, is better quality, has no ads, and something I would generally highly recommend - underrated series. While cable TV, and cable news in particular, has been rightfully demonized, it makes me wonder if they're really just happy to target themselves down to a demographic that is willing to tolerate this nonsense. And perhaps this demographic might also respond more favorably to advertising, influencing, and other corporate ends. The same thing has also happened in the movie industry as well. If you think the vast majority of modern movies suck, it would not necessarily just be because of nostalgia or other effects. The modern movie viewer demographic has changed radically and thus movies are being made for these people. Even more interesting is that movie ticket sales are down hard, but they're somehow convincing the new demographic to pay even more which actually means that gross receipts have been stable and even increasing at times. -- Of course there's also a chicken and egg question. In the movie industry for instance, did movies change because the demographic changed, or did the demographic change because movies changed?
apexalpha 8y ago
>The information from these forms is collected en masse, entered into a large database, and delivered directly to the telemarketing company running the promotion (in this case, Great Destinations). Praise be GDPR.
- deleted 8y ago
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jcelerier 8y ago
I've got a friend who actually won the car in the mall once. Not US though.
- bvinc 8y ago
  In the 90s my brother almost won a car. It was legit because he was part of the 10 finalists and the news media was there. They all drew keys out of a bag and tried to start the car until one of them started it. The key he drew didn't work.
basicplus2 8y ago
Even worse, i followed a lottery for a car to raise money for alzheimers. On the draw date given on the ticket in the newspaper the notice said the draw was delayed to a later date. Dutifully i waited for that date and surprise surprise it was delayed again to another new date. Finally there was simply no notice of the draw being completed in rhe newspaper on the last date specified..
ainiriand 8y ago
...And there is still people considering the GDPR a bad thing...
- Jacq5 8y ago
  Indeed, lol. That feeling when you check all the spam about GDPR and understand that it is the last time you see such spam.
dluan 8y ago
Back in the 90s there was a hilarious trend of winning the car in the mall by being the person to be in the car the longest. This was when SUVs were becoming a really big thing. People were sleeping in the car with 5 other strangers to see who could outlast the others, with only short bathroom breaks allowed. I'm not really sure what the advertisers/dealers won in that exchange.
- Cthulhu_ 8y ago
  Probably a bit of free publicity in a local newspaper, people coming by to watch for a while (while a salesperson approaches them), etc. It's good fun, too.
- glenneroo 8y ago
  Did someone actually win the car though?
- robterrell 8y ago
  Perhaps related -- http://handsonahardbodythemovie.com http://handsonahardbodythemovie.com
- macintux 8y ago
  That '70s Show had an episode based on that concept, so I assume it had been around for a while.
- macca321 8y ago
  These competitions are all fun and games until someone receives severe frostbite. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/2691229.stm http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/2691229.stm
analogmemory 8y ago
My dad signed up for one of those sweepstakes back in the '90s. They called and said he won a "prize" but he had to come into view a "presentation". Went to the "presentation" where they tried to hustle him to signup for a timeshare. He resisted and they gave him the "prize", which was a knockoff boombox. That boombox is still alive, my mom uses it in the garage when she's doing gardening. I'm pretty sure the company that gave it to us is long gone. Life finds a way?
- polynomial 8y ago
  What's a boombox?
  - acomjean 8y ago
    For those of a certain age (I guess).... Its a radio player with speakers. Usually battery powered. Usually with a cassette tape or two (for copying). They ended up getting pretty big in the 80s (large in size) with detachable speakers. We had the small yellow waterproof, sony sport model.[1] I think one even had a record player. At some point loud portable stereos migrated into cars. Now we just transmit audio to portable battery powered bluetooth speakers images: Sony sport boombox https://www.flickr.com/photos/55910525@N07/16532295849 https://www.flickr.com/photos/55910525@N07/16532295849 google image search https://www.google.com/search?q=boombox+80s&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X https://www.google.com/search?q=boombox+80s&source=lnms&tbm=... vector stock: https://www.vectorstock.com/royalty-free-vector/vintage-cassette-recorder-ghetto-blaster-boombox-vector-1715494 https://www.vectorstock.com/royalty-free-vector/vintage-cass...
    - macintux 8y ago
      I had one with a tiny b&w TV in addition to the stereo. Mediocre audio and video quality but it lasted for years.
    - deleted 8y ago
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    - fl0wenol 8y ago
foobar1962 8y ago
When I was a kid -- I'm in Australia -- we'd regularly get computer line-printed Readers Digest Sweepstakes out of the blue -- we lived in a farm in a rural area and this was the 1960s. The sweepstakes often made claims that "we have invested $1.34 in your name..." It was many years before I realised that they really meant "we have spent $1.34 buying your name and address..."
theshadowknows 8y ago
This sort of thing and the sorts of things Facebook and other companies do really gives CRM and marketing a poor name. My team and I work in technical CRM and we do what we can to give our customers actual relevant advertisements. We also willingly collect only relevant data, don’t store it indefinitely, and never purchase data. The social team gets cranky with us but we have a core set of values that we don’t compromise even when upper management gets pushy.
drawkbox 8y ago
On the flipside, I worked on promotions game systems in the brand promotions space with instant win and giveaways after the user played a game. If they won we had to contact them to verify and get info to send them the prize. When someone won the prize we had to get the social security number of the person that won for gift tracking as many were over 15k, their contact info and location to send the prize, you'd be surprised at how many people pass that up or think it is a scam and/or never get back. We had to pick the next person if they passed it up or didn't get back and sometimes it would go through dozens of people before they would accept it. Lots of game systems, trips and even motorcycles were passed up. I myself would have probably done the same thing, hard to believe you won and if you do win it is hard to not think it is a scam due to systems like mentioned in the article.
- mort96 8y ago
  Why did you even need the SSN?
  - TheSpiceIsLife 8y ago
    Not parent but presumably the bit about requiring it for gifts over $15k is a regulatory requirement?
    - deleted 8y ago
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  - willowwillow 8y ago
    Only if you win a prize larger than a certain amount (I think it's somewhere around $600) the promoter of the sweepstakes must issue an IRS 1099-MISC form as such prizes are taxable income.
  - drawkbox 8y ago
    As mentioned by others, sweepstakes sponsors are required to report prizes awarded to US residents to the IRS if the value is $600 or more. For tax purposes some also choose report prizes of lower values especially if they are giving away lots of them that equal substantial value businesses expense out. I thought it was only the 15k prizes above gift tax but it was actually any prize for tax tracking. Lots of people balked when the SSN question came up and understandably so. In a few cases the prizes were motorcycles and ATVs and I felt bad for the people that passed them up. The promotions systems were brand focused and most of them really did want to give away the prizes but sometimes it was tasking due to the fear of a scam. The entries were mainly for brand focused games and brand focused gear/prizes mostly marketing focused. The system also only asked for email and the opt-in for the company/brand loot running it was un-selected. Though the brand companies did want to collect emails of people interested in the brand, they had to opt-in for that. We mainly needed emails for contacting if the user won. After winning, names/SSN/location would be asked for but lots of people weren't having it.
willowwillow 8y ago
Yeah... When I was in my early 20s I was gullible so I entered into those "contests" a lot - and all that I got was telemarketers and junk mails.
fwdpropaganda 8y ago
> In the course of an hour on a Wednesday afternoon, 22 hopefuls fill out the digital form. Lets take this hour to be an average hour. Over 12 hours in a day that the mall is presumably open, that's 22*12 = 264 leads. > the mall isn’t behind these giveaways; they merely rent out the advertising space (for around $1.5k per day). This would imply that these leads need to be worth at least $1500/264 = $5.68 per lead. Does this look like too much to anyone else? I would have guessed that independently of what they're selling, the conversion rate has to be attrocious, as people signed-up not because of their interest for the thing being sold but because they wanted a free car. Maybe the reason why this works is that people who are stupid enough to give out their names on a mall promotion, are probably also easy to push shit on. EDIT: I forgot to add at least two other costs: they need to lease the car, and they need to pay employees to keep an eye on everything. So that figure is more of a lower bound.
- sueders101 8y ago
  Don't forget to consider the revenue side of the equation. I imagine these promotions wouldn't exist if they didn't make money, for at least a few, business entities in the chain. If they have: 0.3% conversion; $25,000 average price; 20% margins Which aren't unrealistic numbers for timeshares. They break even at $15 cost per lead when ignoring call center costs and other overhead. It's pretty easy to find people to work at an outbound call center for a campaign like this for $9-$12 an hour. (that's without looking offshore) There's also the possibility for additional revenue on customer financing and data resale. When I was a very very broke college student, I worked on cold calling campaigns trying to set appointments to sell security systems. Now I do analytics for a a business that is happy with doing outbound dials on $20 CPL for largely semi-qualified leads. It ain't the most fulfilling work. But it does pay well and the owners have never, and will never take outside investment.
  - fwdpropaganda 8y ago
    > I imagine these promotions wouldn't exist if they didn't make money That was my point.
invalidusernam3 8y ago
I remember a few years back walking on the beach with my dad and some similar time share scam people asked us if we wanted to enter a competition. We were handed two scratch cards with various prizes; cash, a holiday or the grand prize of a car. Obviously all the scratch cards were winners for the holiday. My dad scratched his card and said "Oh great, I won the car!" The scam guys eyes opened wide and he had a confused look on his face and asked my dad to show him the scratch card. Obviously it was actually for a holiday, but it was great seeing the confusion in the guys face since he knew there was no car.
- quickthrower2 8y ago
  What the scam? "Free flight" if you buy the timeshare or something?
  - skate22 8y ago
    They make it seem like they want to give you something free, but their only intention is to get money from you i guess
    - stronglikedan 8y ago
      They do give you stuff for free. I got two free tickets to Disney. I just had to convince them that I was interested in buying a timeshare for 90 minutes. Once I got past that mark, they were obligated to give me the tickets - a fact that I promptly reminded them about. Two aggressive sales people and one super pissed off sales manager later, and I was off to Disney. I would never do it again - it was sheer agony.
  - abrookewood 8y ago
    These are all through Bali. The scam is that you appear to win something, but really it is just to get you into a high pressure sales environment. So you go back to their office (where everyone is amazed that you won!) and then realise the prize is a tour of some holiday destination they want you to invest in etc.
  - 8y ago
hemmert 8y ago
I once worked as a freelance graphic designer for a company that wanted to give away a car as the first prize in a raffle. All promo material needed to have huge amounts of fineprint, including that the winner - in order to get the car - would have to sign a contract, forcing him to leave the company's logo stickers on the car for two years, or pay a penalty of about 20% of the car's value.
rubzah 8y ago
Why is it always timeshares? What makes them so ideal to sucker people with? I've seen these scams all over the world.
- deleted 8y ago
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- maushu 8y ago
  It makes you think you own something but in reality you don't. Edit: Also paying for something yearly that you might not use.
  - oftenwrong 8y ago
    "Sharing is ownership for losers"
- erikb 8y ago
  This is one of the investments no normal person with a healthy common sense would even consider to invest in. So if you see "timeshare" and are not dropping the flyer into the trash can, that already says that you are open to getting screwed over. It's like the "African prince died, gives you $10 mio if you give us your credit card details". That said, there is nearly no game or investment that doesn't at least have some people trying to cheat others.
  - throwaway080383 8y ago
    So in practice, I know this is true, but in principle, splitting a vacation property 52 ways so that everyone gets one week a year actually seems pretty reasonable. Why is it that these things are always scams?
    - joering2 8y ago
      They are NOT always scams, they just have bad reputation because of possibility of abuse. There are plenty of good management companies that run thousands of timeshare units. My family pays for 3 and all are in perfect shape, own private beach access, gives access to nice cars (that are changed to new every 2 years) and have very strict rules on participants. No, you cannot just crash place with your friends and call the day; the penalties are harsh and good timeshare management will match you with people interested in similar lifestyle. They are much much cheaper than price of tickets / setting up vacation trip and the thought alone that maximum 52 people (versus 365 in hotel room) per year slept in that bed and took a dump in that toilet is a very comfortable one :)
onewhonknocks 8y ago
TANSTAAFL.
erikb 8y ago
The really disappointing part here is that many, many more things are like this. E.g. raises and promotions. Nowadays a lot of companies can't afford these any more. But still on paper they offer these opportunities and even really give promotions to 1-2 people of multiple dozens or hundreds, so that you feel shitty about not getting one. Or dating websites that give unattractive people hope that they can find a (-n attractive) partner if they fill out 2 hours worth of forms and let the inputs run through an algorithm. The best selling product is unrealistic hope.
kumarvvr 8y ago
In India, at the entrance of almost every mall, you will find a few people handing you cards to fill-up your name, phone number and email, with the promise of lucky draw gifts. It's a way to harvest personal information for mobile phone and email spamming. Yet, so many fall for it. Even modern urban types.
ataturk 8y ago
This, in a nutshell is what is wrong with America (and the West in general)--everything is a scam! When nothing is real, it changes people's behaviors and expectations. It sucks, quite frankly. In a country as rich as ours, it should be possible for poor people to legitimately win a car. Instead, they are endlessly suckered by these fly-by-night vampires who do nothing but tear at the fabric of civilization. Malls suck, btw, which is why nobody goes to them anymore. It could have been different.
ddgflorida 8y ago
Reminds me of the "Toy Yoda" lawsuit back in 2002 when a lady thought she won a Toyota but instead got a yoda toy.
neya 8y ago
The article mentions about GDPR, but I thought GDPR was mostly for online businesses? How would GDPR affect an offline telemarketing company like this one where almost all of your info are collected and processed to the fullest possible unethical extent?
- robin_reala 8y ago
  GDPR affects any organisation (not just businesses) that collects and processes the personal data of people who reside in the EU. So yes, the same rules would apply here, assuming the business deals with EU residents.
deleted 8y ago
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dxxvi 8y ago
Once, there was a telemarketer calling me and trying to persuade me to buy a home alarm system. All he wanted is to get my credit card #. I asked him to repeat himself 2-3 times for almost all of his sentences (not all, because that would make him hang up). After about 20 mins, he knew my game and said that I was wasting his time and I was not a good citizen of the U.S. I was sad because somebody said that but the whole conversation was fun :-)
- mikro2nd 8y ago
  Have to smile, reading this. It reminds me of the time I received a very scammy call telling me I'd won a week's holiday in Florida (US accented person; I am not in the US). Now in my world view, if first prize is a week in Florida, second prize would be two weeks in Florida. Losers get to spend the rest of eternity at Maralago (sp?). But all that's a horse of a different colour... I asked the caller to hold a moment... Went out into my veggie garden and spent almost an hour doing some digging and weeding and generally having a grand ol' time in the sunshine. It raised quite a laugh when I returned around sunset and the caller was still holding, waiting for me to return. Quite unbelievable! Led me to wonder how these people are incentivised. I put the phone down without waiting to find out anything more about their scam/offer/whatever.
  - frockington 8y ago
    I know a lot of telemarketers can not hang up a phone themselves or require a manager to do it for them. Not hanging up is a great method if you want to annoy them
    - mikro2nd 8y ago
      I considered it a service to society -- the longer they're (supposedly) on the phone to me, the less time they have to annoy other victims. Also: I just wondered how they would treat the situation. Clearly with more patience than I would!
- icebraining 8y ago
  "Sorry, I can barely hear you there." https://www.youtube.com/user/ToaoDotNet/videos https://www.youtube.com/user/ToaoDotNet/videos
ibdf 8y ago
I always thought there was a winner but assumed the winner was someone related (family/friend) to the prize giver.
jetti 8y ago
A few years ago my wife got a call about a free cruise but the catch was sitting through the timeshare sales pitch. We had no intention of buying in, especially since we couldn't afford it at the time, but we wanted the free cruise (well my wife did, I didn't want to go). Well we sat through the horrible sales pitch and then they put us in a room to get the cruise. We sat in the room for maybe 25 minutes before we gave up. Nobody came in to help us in that time. The reason we left wasn't because of the wait, I was determined to get that free cruise despite not wanting to be there. The reason was the restrictions behind the cruise. There were tons of blackout dates and you couldn't pick the exact date of travel. You picked 3 dates and they would let you know which one. I also believe there was a very short window of when they would notify you that you had the tickets to the cruise. I was starting my career at the time so I didn't have the flexibility of just taking a week off at the last minute.
- ghaff 8y ago
  Quite a long time ago, I went to a big ski show and being younger and more foolish than I am today I filled out a bunch of contest entries. I was positively bombarded with "you've won a free vacation" sorts of calls and mails for the next year or two. All I had to do was listen to some timeshare pitch. I never actually did but I'm sure it would have been similar. I've met a few people who at least convinced themselves they liked their timeshares but the idea never appealed to me.
- acomjean 8y ago
  My friend won a "dive trip" after entering a contest at a dive show. just sit through a timeshare pitch. I went with him, because my dad spent some times in car sales and I'm good at not buying things. Plus as his dive certified friend I could go too. We went to a rented conference room in a hotel for the pitch. It was agony.. High pressure sales (If they have to pressure you to buy, you probably don't want it) He got the trip voucher, but it ended up being worthless. It was cheaper to book another trip normally because of added fees and such on the free trip. He never took his "free" trip.
  - jetti 8y ago
dvcrn 8y ago
My mom participated in one of these drawings at a mall in Germany. A few weeks later we received a call: we got randomly selected for the final 10-20 candidates (can’t remember the exact number) from which 5 will win a car and should come to the main event. At the main event, believe or not, 5 people out of the 10-30 finalists actually won a car! My mom included! Of course they said it’s not the car that was at the mall because that was only for demo, but she received a brand new never used model roughly a month later after filling out the papers and still drives it today :)
lysp 8y ago
About 30 years ago in Australia There was a competition at the local shopping centre. Spend $20 at any shop in the centre, show your receipt and you get a chance to win the displayed car. The chance involved folding a paper plane, and then trying to get it into the car through the sunroof. Which was only open a small crack. A friend of the family tried about 5 times over the day and never got close. They came back quite drunk at the end of the day to have one last go. Threw the plane and instead of going over the top of the car, it accidentally slammed directly into the front windscreen. It then rebounded straight up in the air and then dropped straight down through the sunroof. They walked away with the car.
- rayiner 8y ago
  > They came back quite drunk > They walked away with the car. Hopefully they did walk.
  - oconnor663 8y ago
    I believe the contest rules require you to floor it straight out of the mall (the "Left4Dead 2 clause").
    - chipperyman573 8y ago
      What is the L4D2 clause? Google didn't return anything.
      - KJKingJ 8y ago
        One of the 'campaigns' in Left 4 Dead 2 involves driving a car that is on display in a mall through the doors. At speed. http://left4dead.wikia.com/wiki/Dead_Center http://left4dead.wikia.com/wiki/Dead_Center
    - dragontamer 8y ago
      Any joke that revolves around driving cars inside of a mall needs a mandatory reference to the Blues Brothers mall chase scene. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0l3CGibsWT8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0l3CGibsWT8
mlthoughts2018 8y ago
It also reminds me of loyalty programs at department stores. I get so tired of the disgusted look on the face of the cashier when they ask me if I want to sign up for some clothing store loyalty card today to save 40% or something. They can’t believe that the 40% discount on $50 isn’t enticing to yoke myself to their stream of ads and even more intense data sharing than whatever they are already getting from plain transactions.
SubiculumCode 8y ago
I heard a commercial advertising lawyers specializing in getting people out of timeshares. Now I know why.
sirable 8y ago
The boiler room tactics seem similar to Trump University. I believe that was primarily targeted at retired people though. edit in this case they had opportunity to meet Trump, which apparently never happened
blancotech 8y ago
When I was in middle school, I remember doing a raffle at our local mall for an iPod Mini. My Mom told me to ruffle up the paper before dropping it in because the raffle drawer would feel the rough edges and select that one. We got a call a few weeks later that I won the iPod mini. I still remember my mom driving me to the mall and them handing me the new iPod Mini. That was my peek. I've never won a raffle since.
megamindbrian2 8y ago
Same goes for the fishbowl of business cards at restaurants.
tlynchpin 8y ago
My grandfather won a Cadillac, it was the 60's in San Francisco, and Regal gas stations ran a contest, grand prize a shiny new Cadillac. The details are lost, but as far as my dad knows it was a plain enter-to-win raffle, and his dad won! Comin up slammin Cadillac doors, but they "weren't really a Cadillac family" so they sold it.
exabrial 8y ago
It really bothers me that people completely lack any sort of moral fortitude they think overtly lying and deceiving people is "ok". The fact is, everyone from the dealership to the call center employee knows whats going on and is a willing participant in this scam.
seymour333 8y ago
I worked in one of these call centers just after high-school. Not even a molecule of ethics existed in the entire company. My job involved getting yelled at by people who were sick of getting calls from dozens of different companies, and occasionally talking with someone gullible enough to come in for a sales meeting, who would then yell at everyone involved once they discovered they had been duped. I can't remember exactly, but I think I eventually got fired because I started to deviate from the script. Sometimes being honest with people, and sometimes trolling angry people. It was a horrible job.
leoh 8y ago
Arguably this is an allegory for so many things in the world
casabarata 8y ago
I wonder how this can be legal. I’ve seen the “free vacation” scams inside malls and it’s really disturbing to see their practices
1024core 8y ago
> In simple terms: when you enter one of these contests, you’re allowing telemarketers to not only use your data to make robocalls in perpetuity, but sell it and share it with any “subsidiaries” it chooses. They don't check if it is you who's entering the information. What could go wrong?
mleonhard 8y ago
Is this article a very clever Facebook submarine marketing ad? It ends with a false statement about Facebook providing instructions to delete data. I live in USA and can't find any way to delete my browsing history that Facebook collected via the Like button. http://www.paulgraham.com/submarine.html http://www.paulgraham.com/submarine.html
ryen 8y ago
And what happens after I read... >What happens when your personal information gets sucked into an endless marketing vortex? ... i'm prompted with a popup to enter my email address for a marketing newsletter..
8bitsrule 8y ago
Hey, it works for Facebook.

1104 points by sxv 8y ago

My parents went to such a presentation to prove to my younger sister what scams they are. They won the car.

Reminds me a bit of a process I've been wrestling with to redeem a "rebate" (gift card to a chosen retailer from a list) on an online textbook, negotiated between the professor and the textbook company after the semester start. The stakes are a little lower ($15 rather than a car) but the hoops they make you jump through, and the personal information they want, for what is ostensibly your money definitely make it feel just as scammy.

drawkbox 8y ago
Nathan For You did a really funny take on this for a gas 'rebate' in S1E4. Basically jumping through hoops until everyone would give up. https://www.imdb.com/title/tt2777064/ https://www.imdb.com/title/tt2777064/

deleted 8y ago

[deleted]

threatofrain 8y ago

Well I would be for penalizing such businesses. Isn't this just bait and switch? Such businesses should have their licenses revoked, as they damage relations for everyone else who wants to use prize incentives. These cheaty businesses also call into question the common person's ability to negotiate with fine print -- it's just too much.

extradego 8y ago
In the USA, this is just how it’s done. I’m not exaggerating; this is business as usual. Penalizing this would be a catastrophe for Americans. I think the sheer volume of the tricks, lies, gimmicks and gotchas cause each one bleed into the next to the point of immersion. The shimmer of the spectacle and hope become one and the same. Because every day is just another swindle at the Big Bazaar Of Life.
- m_fayer 8y ago
  A decade ago I would have thought your comment was over the top. Then I moved to Germany. And was surprised to find an utter lack of spammy phone calls, no crowd of ubiquitous scammers vying for my attention, no surprise mystery medical bills, nothing. I was with my German girlfriend in a department store once, she tore a little slip off the stockings she was buying, put her name and email on it, and dropped it into a jug by the cash register. I gave her a "were you born yesterday" look and asked if she hadn't yet learned that these things are all scams. She had absolutely no idea what I was talking about. A month later we won an all expenses paid trip to a resort in Turkey, it was on the tacky side but also the height of luxury and relaxation. All the stocking brand wanted from us in return was a few happy selfies to post on their Twitter account. If more Americans knew that it doesn't have to be this way, maybe things could change.
  - vinceguidry 8y ago
    Good Lord, you're right. This sort of marketing could work, if Americans were more vigilant about punishing bad actors. If someone in Germany tried an American-style scam, the sheer tangibility of the vision I have of angry Germans not effing stopping until the perps are put in jail is palpable. Sadly, this seems to be a national attitude and those just don't seem to be transmissable. Now I'm wondering whether Germany is the exception or the rule. I darn sure wouldn't want to trust anyone, say, in Russia. Not sure about Latin America though. Argentina might seem safe, but Mexico? Africa, mostly probably not.
  - matt_the_bass 8y ago
    That’s how it was when I was kid (in the US). Obviously not twitter selfies, but the equivalent at the time.
  - glenneroo 8y ago
    I have more or less the same story moving to Austria. I get spammy calls but they are actually legit surveys (quality of life, political leanings, newspaper preferences, etc) and only because I gave up my phone number at a party many years ago and haven't bothered to have it removed. I get once of these survey calls about every 3-6 months and if I'm not in the mood I just tell them I don't have time and they never call back. On occasion they ask if they could call back at a later date. Re: winning things - I won 500 Euro from Visa for entering a contest, where the only requirements were to fill out the online form with my name, age and email address, followed by using my Visa card 3 times in one month any of the following 3 months. I should note that Visa the company here doesn't actually function as a credit card like in the U.S., rather it's directly connected to your bank account, where at the end of the month any balance due is automatically deducted. If your account drops below zero, you just pay some interest at the end of the month. From my basic research (looking at my bank statements for the past 2 years), it's extremely low. In fact looking at my last "25% KEST" charges, I was in minus for 3 months last year, and the charge was 0,02 euro cents. I honestly have no idea how that works, but I assume we have some good consumer protections in place.

ktal 8y ago

I saw that very car at that very mall, and the screens were all surrounded by people eagerly entering their info. Don't people get enough spam calls and emails to realize why?

cbg0 8y ago
One more spam e-mail won't bother them too much when they think they can win a car for it.
- jacquesm 8y ago
  It's never just 'one spam email'. You end up on a list, the list will end up being sold many times over, also to other list creators and in the end you will get 100's if not 1000's of messages, probably you will still be receiving messages long after you're dead.
acct1771 8y ago
No. Otherwise, the marketers wouldn't waste their time. People don't think past their nose. Similarly to the concept of demanding adequate gov't representation, digital security has been made to seem impossible by large media conglomerates who benefit from all the tracking of advertising networks, etc.
dawnerd 8y ago
They just blame it on their phone company and the like. I know a few people that knowingly hand out info at conventions yet will blame everything but. Might have to do with the marketing companies waiting long enough and people quickly forgetting about them entering their info. So when the spam calls hit they just think of whatever company they know for sure has it. Side note: it’s almost impossible to book anything in Orlando without getting spamming with timeshare calls months later. I’m amazed it’s even legal.
- Cthulhu_ 8y ago
  This is why the GDPR and similar things are good; you can sign up, but they have to delete your data if you ask them for it. It makes schemes like this a lot less er, 'final', so to speak.

deelowe 8y ago

The gift tax section seems out of place. It has nothing to do with the rest of the article.

lolsal 8y ago
I think it's trying to drive home the point that even if you win some amount of money, it can be misleading - $1000 is less than $1000 after taxes.

Animats 8y ago

Since this is a California on-site thing, California sweepstakes law applies.[1] - "The exact nature and approximate value of the prizes must be disclosed clearly and conspicuously when they are offered." - "The law prohibits the company from misrepresenting the odds of receiving any item offered." - Prohibited: "Failing to award and distribute all prizes of the value and type represented." Online complaint form here.[2] [1] http://consumerwiki.dca.ca.gov/wiki/index.php/CONTESTS/SWEEPSTAKES/GIFTS/PRIZES http://consumerwiki.dca.ca.gov/wiki/index.php/CONTESTS/SWEEP... [2] https://oag.ca.gov/contact/consumer-complaint-against-business-or-company https://oag.ca.gov/contact/consumer-complaint-against-busine...

starpilot 8y ago
Why haven't they all been shutdown if they are clearly illegal? Also, I've seen these across the country.
- ehnto 8y ago
  There's generally no one doing the work basically. A gym I went to had notoriously bad competitions and advertising. It was never the "last memberships available" and there wasn't actually "10 days left" the counter just changed back on the final day. No one ever got the prizes either, they just never announced a winner, and a new competition started the same day. People still signed up by the hundreds. Hundereds of formal complaints by people from the gym to the ombudsman and consumer affairs over more than five years amounted to literally nothing. They still do everything they used to. Even more seriously, they didn't pay their employees superannuation, and it took years to even start the process of sorting that out. As these car competitions are run by private businesses and not the car manufacturers my guess is they are simply too small of a fish to go after. Now, just last week that same gym was implicated in a drug trafficking ring. But that's a different department of law enforcement...
  - dvfjsdhgfv 8y ago
    I think it's one of these cultural differences between the USA and Europe. There might be more bureaucracy in Europe, but these officers actually do the work they're paid for. E.g. as for the superannuation issue, you could probably get a court order within 2-3 months here.

svilen_dobrev 8y ago

pff, there was some movie long ago, some technician was installing a few 1-armed-bandits in some pub, and asked the owner - should they give 1 win per 100, or 1 per 1000 ? And the owner answered: What? 1 per 1000? We're not a charity here, there must be zero wins!

mschuster91 8y ago
Having worked in casinos and actually owning a real, unrestricted gambling machine (for laughs, tbh): that's bullshit. Gambling works because there is always, always some machine that is paying out money. This one machine is sufficient to get all other patrons to throw more and more money at them. Sometimes all hell breaks loose and multiple or all machines pay out. The joke is that most gamblers won't cash out and go home - they will "reinvest" their entire win in hope to win more... and the really desperate ones throw even more "fresh" money at them.
- Cthulhu_ 8y ago
  Yup, pretty much. The machines are configured for a certain win percentage though, so the house always wins in the end.
- TheReveller 8y ago
  I interviewed about engineer who used to work for a South American casino company, and he explained that on Saturday nights the machines are configured to pay out 110%, then the next morning... Much less.
- feintruled 8y ago
  You mentioned owning an 'unrestricted' gambling machine - I've always wondered, do such machines have a setting to actually be fair (or I guess, totally random?) Or is it always a matter of payout percentages?
  - mschuster91 8y ago
    "Unrestricted" in that most second-hand gambling machines are switched to a "demo mode" which delivers unrealistic winning chances. The situation with the modes is more complex in Germany: - "real", licensed casinos can carry the big ass slot machines. These have very high limits, both in wins and losses, and can be centrally controlled by the casino. - bars, "machine casinos" and other unlicensed venues carry the machines of the kind which I have. On these you can lose (aka pay in) no more than 80€/h, and win (aka pay out) no more than 500€/h. Which means: if you win e.g. 1000€, you'll have to hang around for 2 hours to withdraw your win. Machines based on the new rules (TR5) actually have even lower limits (80/400 loss/win). These are mandated to only collect a certain amount of money - only 33€/hour used should go as profits to the operator, the rest of the money paid in must be distributed to the gamblers over time ("long term").

blowski 8y ago

Another shady “competition” is the “complete this form and get a laptop”. Except it’s not just this form, it’s this form, and this form, and this form, and this form... until the user gives up. Each of those forms goes to a sales call list. And when you give up, you’ve already completed half a dozen forms - and you’ve given all that data for free. If somebody does ever complete all of the forms, they get told the laptop is now out of stock - but here’s a free £50 voucher for Amazon.

userbinator 8y ago
I know some people who automated those but basically fed them fake generated data, and managed to make quite a bit before they got banned. Probably not legal, but AFAIK the responses to those surveys aren't legally binding either, and the more "poisoned the well", the less profiling and tracking they can do, so I don't have any moral problems with that.
- 6cd6beb 8y ago
  Is there a good way to find these free laptop scams? I'm looking for good use cases to sharpen my selenium skills and like wasting scammer's time.

dirktheman 8y ago

A couple of years ago I had some time to kill in Vegas since i don't gamble. I was approached by this timeshare dude who offered me free tickets to the Shark Reef and a $100 gift card for a fancy restaurant. I attended the meeting (free breakfast!), politely declined all offers from a range of salesmen with ever hardening sales tactics and walked out with my vouchers two hours later. That was a good day.

saalweachter 8y ago
Some of these presentations can be a good "deal" if you can resist the sales pressure, the sales staff takes your declination in good humor, and they actually give something of real value as a lure. If not, well the best case scenario is you've wasted an afternoon being yelled at and walked away with a useless "prize".
felipemnoa 8y ago
Similar experience here. They really do try several tricks to get you to bite. The one trick that they tried was that once we were in the restaurant the lady claimed that it was a mistake and that we were not supposed to be there. The free meal was only for members but she would overlook it and continue with the presentation just for us. Pretty laughable.

MatthewWilkes 8y ago

Amusingly, the website this article is hosted in pops up a modal asking you to sign up to a mailing list with a low contrast dismiss button and saying "you can always unsubscribe". People in glass houses.

Cthulhu_ 8y ago
At least they're not saying you could win a car.
test6554 8y ago
I switched to reader view in safari and that fixed the modal right up.
fortythirteen 8y ago
Ultimate hypocrisy is that their profit model is probably built around reselling their email list.
- jl87 8y ago
  We do not make money from reselling people's email.
  - fortythirteen 8y ago
    Do you use your email list to send third party promotional content?
wrich5011 8y ago
Also there’s about 17 typos and grammar issues in this tiny article making me question if the “investigative journalism” portion of this article is just made up. Seems suspicious that they are willing to spend days chasing down a story but not 5 minutes proofreading...

Theodores 8y ago

The TV giveaways are also a con. You know the deal, you watch the whole show because the competition details will be given at the end. Then the questions are multiple choice and rather easy. For example, where is the final stage of the Tour de France? Option a) Peterborough, option b) Potters Bar, option c) Paris. In this semi-fictional example if you get the answer right then you could get to win a bicycle shaped object that looks like one of the bicycles ridden by one of the top teams. You might not be telemarketed to death in this instance but the text you send will be to one of those premium rate numbers, to cost you £3 or so. This money then goes to pay for the show, if you get 10000 people to text in then that is real money, enough to pay for the interns and rent the camera gear. But it was not always like this. There was a time when the answers were difficult. There was also a time when nobody knew what a search engine was because they had not been invented yet. There was also a time when knowledge might only exist in people's heads rather than only online. Questions for TV shows could be difficult and the only way to enter might have been on a postcard where you might also have to enter a 'tie breaker', e.g. 'bicycles are best because...' (complete in less than ten words). The tie breaker might not be there to just pick a winner from those that got the question right, the show might honestly be looking for a slogan and crowdsourcing it was a good way to pick more brains than just the production crew. Furthermore, the result or answer was something of interest to the viewers. You could learn something. General knowledge was a thing back then, not denigrated to 'trivia' or something you could get by using your favourite search engine. General knowledge had value beyond the pub quiz. In these former times, before 'Who wants to be a millionaire', it would have been an insult to the audience to ask a noddy multiple choice question for a competition. Answering would not have been totally beyond the realms of possibility, you might have to go to the local library, dig out Encyclopaedia Britannica and get the answer from there. Or, if you knew your subject, then it might be something you knew. So winning also meant that you did get 'respect' from your peers and 'the world at large' for being clever enough to know the answer. Winning might have been more valuable than the prize itself just for the kudos. It wasn't as if some computer just selected your name at random in some lottery of other mugs willing to gamble. The funny thing though is how these things go full circle. The TV shows that made the competition into something patronising and lame no longer get viewers, or even interns. That intern can make more success for themselves being a Youtube influencer and doing it all themselves. Rather than make the tea and do the errands for the big fat producer they can do their own script, presentation, camera-work and sound. they can also do their own competitions. And, in their competitions they can give away some respectable loot and get some genuine feedback from their fans. They can also avoid having to fleece their fans of an SMS premium rate call, a like/subscribe/thumbs-up and comment will be needed though. Even the question can be non-Google-able, fans might know from watching the show what breed of dog their co-presenter owns, so that could be a good quiz question. There need not be any bait-and-switch and the car given away really can be an actual car that actually gets given away.

throwaway0255 8y ago

I used to know someone who worked for one of the companies behind those "We'll Fix Your Credit Score, Call Us" and "We'll Buy Your House, Call Us" signs on the side of street intersections (among other things), and I asked her to explain to me how those signs could possibly make any money. The way she explained it was (mostly her words), way less than 1% of people are dumb enough to dial the number, but of the people who do call, 100% of them are people who are dumb enough to call. In other words, if the signs appeared more credible, they would be much less effective, because they'd end up wasting a lot of time screening the calls of people who are unlikely to accept the terms they offer. She also said that scaling up (and going up market) would increase their likelihood of litigation. It seems to me like that's what's happening with these timeshare seminars. The car isn't just there to mislead people about the potential upside of the contest, the car is really there to screen the marketing process for gullible people attracted to large financed purchases.

TangoTrotFox 8y ago
I sometimes wonder if this isn't a fairly common practice in numerous industries. For instance some time back I was watching a show on US cable television. Vikings on the History Channel, in particular. Aside from the completely obnoxious icons and labeling everywhere, about 5 minutes into the show advertisement pops up literally in the middle of the screen consuming about 25% of the screen space. And that was enough for me to immediately move onto other things, as that's worth less than the $0 price of admission. Incidentally the web version is amazing, has more content, is better quality, has no ads, and something I would generally highly recommend - underrated series. While cable TV, and cable news in particular, has been rightfully demonized, it makes me wonder if they're really just happy to target themselves down to a demographic that is willing to tolerate this nonsense. And perhaps this demographic might also respond more favorably to advertising, influencing, and other corporate ends. The same thing has also happened in the movie industry as well. If you think the vast majority of modern movies suck, it would not necessarily just be because of nostalgia or other effects. The modern movie viewer demographic has changed radically and thus movies are being made for these people. Even more interesting is that movie ticket sales are down hard, but they're somehow convincing the new demographic to pay even more which actually means that gross receipts have been stable and even increasing at times. -- Of course there's also a chicken and egg question. In the movie industry for instance, did movies change because the demographic changed, or did the demographic change because movies changed?

apexalpha 8y ago

>The information from these forms is collected en masse, entered into a large database, and delivered directly to the telemarketing company running the promotion (in this case, Great Destinations). Praise be GDPR.

deleted 8y ago
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jcelerier 8y ago

I've got a friend who actually won the car in the mall once. Not US though.

bvinc 8y ago
In the 90s my brother almost won a car. It was legit because he was part of the 10 finalists and the news media was there. They all drew keys out of a bag and tried to start the car until one of them started it. The key he drew didn't work.

basicplus2 8y ago

Even worse, i followed a lottery for a car to raise money for alzheimers. On the draw date given on the ticket in the newspaper the notice said the draw was delayed to a later date. Dutifully i waited for that date and surprise surprise it was delayed again to another new date. Finally there was simply no notice of the draw being completed in rhe newspaper on the last date specified..

ainiriand 8y ago

...And there is still people considering the GDPR a bad thing...

Jacq5 8y ago
Indeed, lol. That feeling when you check all the spam about GDPR and understand that it is the last time you see such spam.

dluan 8y ago

Back in the 90s there was a hilarious trend of winning the car in the mall by being the person to be in the car the longest. This was when SUVs were becoming a really big thing. People were sleeping in the car with 5 other strangers to see who could outlast the others, with only short bathroom breaks allowed. I'm not really sure what the advertisers/dealers won in that exchange.

Cthulhu_ 8y ago
Probably a bit of free publicity in a local newspaper, people coming by to watch for a while (while a salesperson approaches them), etc. It's good fun, too.
glenneroo 8y ago
Did someone actually win the car though?
robterrell 8y ago
Perhaps related -- http://handsonahardbodythemovie.com http://handsonahardbodythemovie.com
macintux 8y ago
That '70s Show had an episode based on that concept, so I assume it had been around for a while.
macca321 8y ago
These competitions are all fun and games until someone receives severe frostbite. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/2691229.stm http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/2691229.stm

analogmemory 8y ago

My dad signed up for one of those sweepstakes back in the '90s. They called and said he won a "prize" but he had to come into view a "presentation". Went to the "presentation" where they tried to hustle him to signup for a timeshare. He resisted and they gave him the "prize", which was a knockoff boombox. That boombox is still alive, my mom uses it in the garage when she's doing gardening. I'm pretty sure the company that gave it to us is long gone. Life finds a way?

polynomial 8y ago
What's a boombox?
- acomjean 8y ago
  For those of a certain age (I guess).... Its a radio player with speakers. Usually battery powered. Usually with a cassette tape or two (for copying). They ended up getting pretty big in the 80s (large in size) with detachable speakers. We had the small yellow waterproof, sony sport model.[1] I think one even had a record player. At some point loud portable stereos migrated into cars. Now we just transmit audio to portable battery powered bluetooth speakers images: Sony sport boombox https://www.flickr.com/photos/55910525@N07/16532295849 https://www.flickr.com/photos/55910525@N07/16532295849 google image search https://www.google.com/search?q=boombox+80s&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X https://www.google.com/search?q=boombox+80s&source=lnms&tbm=... vector stock: https://www.vectorstock.com/royalty-free-vector/vintage-cassette-recorder-ghetto-blaster-boombox-vector-1715494 https://www.vectorstock.com/royalty-free-vector/vintage-cass...
  - macintux 8y ago
    I had one with a tiny b&w TV in addition to the stereo. Mediocre audio and video quality but it lasted for years.
  - deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]
  - fl0wenol 8y ago

foobar1962 8y ago

When I was a kid -- I'm in Australia -- we'd regularly get computer line-printed Readers Digest Sweepstakes out of the blue -- we lived in a farm in a rural area and this was the 1960s. The sweepstakes often made claims that "we have invested $1.34 in your name..." It was many years before I realised that they really meant "we have spent $1.34 buying your name and address..."

theshadowknows 8y ago

This sort of thing and the sorts of things Facebook and other companies do really gives CRM and marketing a poor name. My team and I work in technical CRM and we do what we can to give our customers actual relevant advertisements. We also willingly collect only relevant data, don’t store it indefinitely, and never purchase data. The social team gets cranky with us but we have a core set of values that we don’t compromise even when upper management gets pushy.

drawkbox 8y ago

On the flipside, I worked on promotions game systems in the brand promotions space with instant win and giveaways after the user played a game. If they won we had to contact them to verify and get info to send them the prize. When someone won the prize we had to get the social security number of the person that won for gift tracking as many were over 15k, their contact info and location to send the prize, you'd be surprised at how many people pass that up or think it is a scam and/or never get back. We had to pick the next person if they passed it up or didn't get back and sometimes it would go through dozens of people before they would accept it. Lots of game systems, trips and even motorcycles were passed up. I myself would have probably done the same thing, hard to believe you won and if you do win it is hard to not think it is a scam due to systems like mentioned in the article.

mort96 8y ago
Why did you even need the SSN?
- TheSpiceIsLife 8y ago
  Not parent but presumably the bit about requiring it for gifts over $15k is a regulatory requirement?
  - deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]
- willowwillow 8y ago
  Only if you win a prize larger than a certain amount (I think it's somewhere around $600) the promoter of the sweepstakes must issue an IRS 1099-MISC form as such prizes are taxable income.
- drawkbox 8y ago
  As mentioned by others, sweepstakes sponsors are required to report prizes awarded to US residents to the IRS if the value is $600 or more. For tax purposes some also choose report prizes of lower values especially if they are giving away lots of them that equal substantial value businesses expense out. I thought it was only the 15k prizes above gift tax but it was actually any prize for tax tracking. Lots of people balked when the SSN question came up and understandably so. In a few cases the prizes were motorcycles and ATVs and I felt bad for the people that passed them up. The promotions systems were brand focused and most of them really did want to give away the prizes but sometimes it was tasking due to the fear of a scam. The entries were mainly for brand focused games and brand focused gear/prizes mostly marketing focused. The system also only asked for email and the opt-in for the company/brand loot running it was un-selected. Though the brand companies did want to collect emails of people interested in the brand, they had to opt-in for that. We mainly needed emails for contacting if the user won. After winning, names/SSN/location would be asked for but lots of people weren't having it.

willowwillow 8y ago

Yeah... When I was in my early 20s I was gullible so I entered into those "contests" a lot - and all that I got was telemarketers and junk mails.

fwdpropaganda 8y ago

> In the course of an hour on a Wednesday afternoon, 22 hopefuls fill out the digital form. Lets take this hour to be an average hour. Over 12 hours in a day that the mall is presumably open, that's 22*12 = 264 leads. > the mall isn’t behind these giveaways; they merely rent out the advertising space (for around $1.5k per day). This would imply that these leads need to be worth at least $1500/264 = $5.68 per lead. Does this look like too much to anyone else? I would have guessed that independently of what they're selling, the conversion rate has to be attrocious, as people signed-up not because of their interest for the thing being sold but because they wanted a free car. Maybe the reason why this works is that people who are stupid enough to give out their names on a mall promotion, are probably also easy to push shit on. EDIT: I forgot to add at least two other costs: they need to lease the car, and they need to pay employees to keep an eye on everything. So that figure is more of a lower bound.

sueders101 8y ago
Don't forget to consider the revenue side of the equation. I imagine these promotions wouldn't exist if they didn't make money, for at least a few, business entities in the chain. If they have: 0.3% conversion; $25,000 average price; 20% margins Which aren't unrealistic numbers for timeshares. They break even at $15 cost per lead when ignoring call center costs and other overhead. It's pretty easy to find people to work at an outbound call center for a campaign like this for $9-$12 an hour. (that's without looking offshore) There's also the possibility for additional revenue on customer financing and data resale. When I was a very very broke college student, I worked on cold calling campaigns trying to set appointments to sell security systems. Now I do analytics for a a business that is happy with doing outbound dials on $20 CPL for largely semi-qualified leads. It ain't the most fulfilling work. But it does pay well and the owners have never, and will never take outside investment.
- fwdpropaganda 8y ago
  > I imagine these promotions wouldn't exist if they didn't make money That was my point.

invalidusernam3 8y ago

I remember a few years back walking on the beach with my dad and some similar time share scam people asked us if we wanted to enter a competition. We were handed two scratch cards with various prizes; cash, a holiday or the grand prize of a car. Obviously all the scratch cards were winners for the holiday. My dad scratched his card and said "Oh great, I won the car!" The scam guys eyes opened wide and he had a confused look on his face and asked my dad to show him the scratch card. Obviously it was actually for a holiday, but it was great seeing the confusion in the guys face since he knew there was no car.

quickthrower2 8y ago
What the scam? "Free flight" if you buy the timeshare or something?
- skate22 8y ago
  They make it seem like they want to give you something free, but their only intention is to get money from you i guess
  - stronglikedan 8y ago
    They do give you stuff for free. I got two free tickets to Disney. I just had to convince them that I was interested in buying a timeshare for 90 minutes. Once I got past that mark, they were obligated to give me the tickets - a fact that I promptly reminded them about. Two aggressive sales people and one super pissed off sales manager later, and I was off to Disney. I would never do it again - it was sheer agony.
- abrookewood 8y ago
  These are all through Bali. The scam is that you appear to win something, but really it is just to get you into a high pressure sales environment. So you go back to their office (where everyone is amazed that you won!) and then realise the prize is a tour of some holiday destination they want you to invest in etc.
- 8y ago

hemmert 8y ago

I once worked as a freelance graphic designer for a company that wanted to give away a car as the first prize in a raffle. All promo material needed to have huge amounts of fineprint, including that the winner - in order to get the car - would have to sign a contract, forcing him to leave the company's logo stickers on the car for two years, or pay a penalty of about 20% of the car's value.

rubzah 8y ago

Why is it always timeshares? What makes them so ideal to sucker people with? I've seen these scams all over the world.

deleted 8y ago
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maushu 8y ago
It makes you think you own something but in reality you don't. Edit: Also paying for something yearly that you might not use.
- oftenwrong 8y ago
  "Sharing is ownership for losers"
erikb 8y ago
This is one of the investments no normal person with a healthy common sense would even consider to invest in. So if you see "timeshare" and are not dropping the flyer into the trash can, that already says that you are open to getting screwed over. It's like the "African prince died, gives you $10 mio if you give us your credit card details". That said, there is nearly no game or investment that doesn't at least have some people trying to cheat others.
- throwaway080383 8y ago
  So in practice, I know this is true, but in principle, splitting a vacation property 52 ways so that everyone gets one week a year actually seems pretty reasonable. Why is it that these things are always scams?
  - joering2 8y ago
    They are NOT always scams, they just have bad reputation because of possibility of abuse. There are plenty of good management companies that run thousands of timeshare units. My family pays for 3 and all are in perfect shape, own private beach access, gives access to nice cars (that are changed to new every 2 years) and have very strict rules on participants. No, you cannot just crash place with your friends and call the day; the penalties are harsh and good timeshare management will match you with people interested in similar lifestyle. They are much much cheaper than price of tickets / setting up vacation trip and the thought alone that maximum 52 people (versus 365 in hotel room) per year slept in that bed and took a dump in that toilet is a very comfortable one :)

onewhonknocks 8y ago

TANSTAAFL.

erikb 8y ago

The really disappointing part here is that many, many more things are like this. E.g. raises and promotions. Nowadays a lot of companies can't afford these any more. But still on paper they offer these opportunities and even really give promotions to 1-2 people of multiple dozens or hundreds, so that you feel shitty about not getting one. Or dating websites that give unattractive people hope that they can find a (-n attractive) partner if they fill out 2 hours worth of forms and let the inputs run through an algorithm. The best selling product is unrealistic hope.

kumarvvr 8y ago

In India, at the entrance of almost every mall, you will find a few people handing you cards to fill-up your name, phone number and email, with the promise of lucky draw gifts. It's a way to harvest personal information for mobile phone and email spamming. Yet, so many fall for it. Even modern urban types.

ataturk 8y ago

This, in a nutshell is what is wrong with America (and the West in general)--everything is a scam! When nothing is real, it changes people's behaviors and expectations. It sucks, quite frankly. In a country as rich as ours, it should be possible for poor people to legitimately win a car. Instead, they are endlessly suckered by these fly-by-night vampires who do nothing but tear at the fabric of civilization. Malls suck, btw, which is why nobody goes to them anymore. It could have been different.

ddgflorida 8y ago

Reminds me of the "Toy Yoda" lawsuit back in 2002 when a lady thought she won a Toyota but instead got a yoda toy.

neya 8y ago

The article mentions about GDPR, but I thought GDPR was mostly for online businesses? How would GDPR affect an offline telemarketing company like this one where almost all of your info are collected and processed to the fullest possible unethical extent?

robin_reala 8y ago
GDPR affects any organisation (not just businesses) that collects and processes the personal data of people who reside in the EU. So yes, the same rules would apply here, assuming the business deals with EU residents.

deleted 8y ago

[deleted]

dxxvi 8y ago

Once, there was a telemarketer calling me and trying to persuade me to buy a home alarm system. All he wanted is to get my credit card #. I asked him to repeat himself 2-3 times for almost all of his sentences (not all, because that would make him hang up). After about 20 mins, he knew my game and said that I was wasting his time and I was not a good citizen of the U.S. I was sad because somebody said that but the whole conversation was fun :-)

mikro2nd 8y ago
Have to smile, reading this. It reminds me of the time I received a very scammy call telling me I'd won a week's holiday in Florida (US accented person; I am not in the US). Now in my world view, if first prize is a week in Florida, second prize would be two weeks in Florida. Losers get to spend the rest of eternity at Maralago (sp?). But all that's a horse of a different colour... I asked the caller to hold a moment... Went out into my veggie garden and spent almost an hour doing some digging and weeding and generally having a grand ol' time in the sunshine. It raised quite a laugh when I returned around sunset and the caller was still holding, waiting for me to return. Quite unbelievable! Led me to wonder how these people are incentivised. I put the phone down without waiting to find out anything more about their scam/offer/whatever.
- frockington 8y ago
  I know a lot of telemarketers can not hang up a phone themselves or require a manager to do it for them. Not hanging up is a great method if you want to annoy them
  - mikro2nd 8y ago
    I considered it a service to society -- the longer they're (supposedly) on the phone to me, the less time they have to annoy other victims. Also: I just wondered how they would treat the situation. Clearly with more patience than I would!
icebraining 8y ago
"Sorry, I can barely hear you there." https://www.youtube.com/user/ToaoDotNet/videos https://www.youtube.com/user/ToaoDotNet/videos

ibdf 8y ago

I always thought there was a winner but assumed the winner was someone related (family/friend) to the prize giver.

jetti 8y ago

A few years ago my wife got a call about a free cruise but the catch was sitting through the timeshare sales pitch. We had no intention of buying in, especially since we couldn't afford it at the time, but we wanted the free cruise (well my wife did, I didn't want to go). Well we sat through the horrible sales pitch and then they put us in a room to get the cruise. We sat in the room for maybe 25 minutes before we gave up. Nobody came in to help us in that time. The reason we left wasn't because of the wait, I was determined to get that free cruise despite not wanting to be there. The reason was the restrictions behind the cruise. There were tons of blackout dates and you couldn't pick the exact date of travel. You picked 3 dates and they would let you know which one. I also believe there was a very short window of when they would notify you that you had the tickets to the cruise. I was starting my career at the time so I didn't have the flexibility of just taking a week off at the last minute.

ghaff 8y ago
Quite a long time ago, I went to a big ski show and being younger and more foolish than I am today I filled out a bunch of contest entries. I was positively bombarded with "you've won a free vacation" sorts of calls and mails for the next year or two. All I had to do was listen to some timeshare pitch. I never actually did but I'm sure it would have been similar. I've met a few people who at least convinced themselves they liked their timeshares but the idea never appealed to me.
acomjean 8y ago
My friend won a "dive trip" after entering a contest at a dive show. just sit through a timeshare pitch. I went with him, because my dad spent some times in car sales and I'm good at not buying things. Plus as his dive certified friend I could go too. We went to a rented conference room in a hotel for the pitch. It was agony.. High pressure sales (If they have to pressure you to buy, you probably don't want it) He got the trip voucher, but it ended up being worthless. It was cheaper to book another trip normally because of added fees and such on the free trip. He never took his "free" trip.
- jetti 8y ago

dvcrn 8y ago

My mom participated in one of these drawings at a mall in Germany. A few weeks later we received a call: we got randomly selected for the final 10-20 candidates (can’t remember the exact number) from which 5 will win a car and should come to the main event. At the main event, believe or not, 5 people out of the 10-30 finalists actually won a car! My mom included! Of course they said it’s not the car that was at the mall because that was only for demo, but she received a brand new never used model roughly a month later after filling out the papers and still drives it today :)

lysp 8y ago

About 30 years ago in Australia There was a competition at the local shopping centre. Spend $20 at any shop in the centre, show your receipt and you get a chance to win the displayed car. The chance involved folding a paper plane, and then trying to get it into the car through the sunroof. Which was only open a small crack. A friend of the family tried about 5 times over the day and never got close. They came back quite drunk at the end of the day to have one last go. Threw the plane and instead of going over the top of the car, it accidentally slammed directly into the front windscreen. It then rebounded straight up in the air and then dropped straight down through the sunroof. They walked away with the car.

rayiner 8y ago
> They came back quite drunk > They walked away with the car. Hopefully they did walk.
- oconnor663 8y ago
  I believe the contest rules require you to floor it straight out of the mall (the "Left4Dead 2 clause").
  - chipperyman573 8y ago
    What is the L4D2 clause? Google didn't return anything.
    - KJKingJ 8y ago
      One of the 'campaigns' in Left 4 Dead 2 involves driving a car that is on display in a mall through the doors. At speed. http://left4dead.wikia.com/wiki/Dead_Center http://left4dead.wikia.com/wiki/Dead_Center
  - dragontamer 8y ago
    Any joke that revolves around driving cars inside of a mall needs a mandatory reference to the Blues Brothers mall chase scene. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0l3CGibsWT8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0l3CGibsWT8

mlthoughts2018 8y ago

It also reminds me of loyalty programs at department stores. I get so tired of the disgusted look on the face of the cashier when they ask me if I want to sign up for some clothing store loyalty card today to save 40% or something. They can’t believe that the 40% discount on $50 isn’t enticing to yoke myself to their stream of ads and even more intense data sharing than whatever they are already getting from plain transactions.

SubiculumCode 8y ago

I heard a commercial advertising lawyers specializing in getting people out of timeshares. Now I know why.

sirable 8y ago

The boiler room tactics seem similar to Trump University. I believe that was primarily targeted at retired people though. edit in this case they had opportunity to meet Trump, which apparently never happened

blancotech 8y ago

When I was in middle school, I remember doing a raffle at our local mall for an iPod Mini. My Mom told me to ruffle up the paper before dropping it in because the raffle drawer would feel the rough edges and select that one. We got a call a few weeks later that I won the iPod mini. I still remember my mom driving me to the mall and them handing me the new iPod Mini. That was my peek. I've never won a raffle since.

megamindbrian2 8y ago

Same goes for the fishbowl of business cards at restaurants.

tlynchpin 8y ago

My grandfather won a Cadillac, it was the 60's in San Francisco, and Regal gas stations ran a contest, grand prize a shiny new Cadillac. The details are lost, but as far as my dad knows it was a plain enter-to-win raffle, and his dad won! Comin up slammin Cadillac doors, but they "weren't really a Cadillac family" so they sold it.

exabrial 8y ago

It really bothers me that people completely lack any sort of moral fortitude they think overtly lying and deceiving people is "ok". The fact is, everyone from the dealership to the call center employee knows whats going on and is a willing participant in this scam.

seymour333 8y ago

I worked in one of these call centers just after high-school. Not even a molecule of ethics existed in the entire company. My job involved getting yelled at by people who were sick of getting calls from dozens of different companies, and occasionally talking with someone gullible enough to come in for a sales meeting, who would then yell at everyone involved once they discovered they had been duped. I can't remember exactly, but I think I eventually got fired because I started to deviate from the script. Sometimes being honest with people, and sometimes trolling angry people. It was a horrible job.

leoh 8y ago

Arguably this is an allegory for so many things in the world

casabarata 8y ago

I wonder how this can be legal. I’ve seen the “free vacation” scams inside malls and it’s really disturbing to see their practices

1024core 8y ago

> In simple terms: when you enter one of these contests, you’re allowing telemarketers to not only use your data to make robocalls in perpetuity, but sell it and share it with any “subsidiaries” it chooses. They don't check if it is you who's entering the information. What could go wrong?

mleonhard 8y ago

Is this article a very clever Facebook submarine marketing ad? It ends with a false statement about Facebook providing instructions to delete data. I live in USA and can't find any way to delete my browsing history that Facebook collected via the Like button. http://www.paulgraham.com/submarine.html http://www.paulgraham.com/submarine.html

ryen 8y ago

And what happens after I read... >What happens when your personal information gets sucked into an endless marketing vortex? ... i'm prompted with a popup to enter my email address for a marketing newsletter..

8bitsrule 8y ago

Hey, it works for Facebook.