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The worst sales promotion in history: Hoover's free flight fiasco

• colinchartier 7y ago
  This is reminiscent of MoviePass's antics when forced to pay up for the huge deficit per customer they had promised: Change user's passwords to lock them out, freeze out subscribers arbitrarily from blockbusters, etc. [1] I wonder if anyone at Hoover got the same treatment of being known as a disruptor -- the founder of moviepass is quoted as saying, "Things went a little sideways, so I thought talking to investors now would be, 'Ugh, you started MoviePass.' But it's 'You started MoviePass!'" [2] [1] https://www.businessinsider.com/inside-story-moviepass-rise-fall-2019-8 https://www.businessinsider.com/inside-story-moviepass-rise-... [2] https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2019-08-07/moviepass-worked-out-great https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2019-08-07/moviep...
  • noneeeed 7y ago
    I am constantly astonished by the MoviePass story. The whole business model made no sense. Even if it could be restricted to be financially viable, the cinema chains were always going to be able to undercut them as they only pay the marginal cost while making money from the concessions.
    • CaptainZapp 7y ago
      It could have made sense, when the moonthly subscription cost was 50$, alas I doubt it.
      • koboll 7y ago
        Regal just launched their own unlimited movies subscription for $18 a month. Then again, they don't have to pay full price to a middleman like MoviePass did.
        • noneeeed 7y ago
          Yes, that was my point. For the cinema chain, the additional cost of a ticket is negligible if they are filling otherwise empty seats, and they make profit on the concessions. So long as they don't cannibalise full price tickets too much, then the maths works well for them. For MP, the arthmetic is completely different
          • ApolloFortyNine 7y ago
            But surely some amount of money from each ticket has to go to the distributor of the movie? I don't think charging 'nothing' for the ticket is just a huge loop hole in the system.
            • noneeeed 7y ago
              Good point, I'd forgotten about the distributor fees. A quick Google suggest an average of about 50% depending on the film, location and time in the release. Once you factor in profits from concessions (very high) and the adverts, the maths clearly works out well for the cinema chains. Certainly here in th UK a number of them are really pushing these sorts of schemes. This is all in comparison to MP, who have to pay the full retail price of the ticket and get nothing from the concessions. The chains can probably absorb two to three times as many visits in a month compared with MP.
      • jacurtis 7y ago
        MoviePass actually did run as a $50 subscription for a few years and had a viable business model. Many people only know of MoviePass as the $10 a month subscription service that sprung out of nowhere about 2 years ago, but MoviePass had been around much longer than that. MoviePass started back in 2011 and originally required you to print out physical vouchers at home, and take them into the theater. MoviePass juggled lots of different pricing models ranging from $25 a month for 3 movies, up to $99 for an unlimited movies. And yes, for a while they had a $50 per month unlimited movie plan. For the first 6 years of their business, they operated in this semi-sustainable way. They had funding from AOL Ventures, True Ventures, and other venture capital companies during the time but ran a fairly sustainable business. In 2017 they finally had their "exit" when a publically traded analytics company called "Helios and Matheson" purchased a majority stake in the company. Helios and Matheson saw potential in MoviePass (which had been running "successfully" for 6 years at this point) and wanted to expand it to as many people as possible. This is when MoviePass decided that the best way to get lots of new users is to offer them something they can't refuse. How about $10 a month for unlimited movies. This led to a myriad of articles and free press about the company and a huge influx of customers. This is when most people had first heard of MoviePass as if it came out of nowhere, but it had a solid 6-year history of being in this business. The goal of this promotion was only to gain a large influx of customers. It was never intended to be a long term strategy. I also think that H&C (the parent company) intended to make money back by selling customer data (since they are already in that business anyway). Unfortunately, like the Hoover story, they underestimated how many people would take advantage of this offer for unlimited movies.
        • hinkley 7y ago
          Stories like this, combined with personal experiences, have made me very anxious for the exit coming when I'm still invested in the future of the company. The new owners always envision a different business model and those often span a gamut from slightly sinister to patently absurd. Startups can have a lot of BS, it's true, but it's a different flavor from the post-exit BS.
    • b_tterc_p 7y ago
      95% of movie theater seats go unsold* and much of the profit margin comes from the concession stands. Moviepass wasn’t the right solution as a third party but it was a decent opportunity. *people don’t perceive this because people only go to popular movies
      • moftz 7y ago
        Movie theater chains running the subscription on their own is much more viable. They are paying per showtime anyway so a full or empty theater doesn't make them any money but the concessions do. Paying for extras like comfy chairs or food is how they get their money. Offering a monthly subscription that only covers tickets would really be the best option for them. They get more people in the theater that might feel obligated to buying food since they didn't just have to buy a ticket.
        • snark42 7y ago
          > They are paying per showtime anyway so a full or empty theater doesn't make them any money but the concessions do. Perhaps, but the distributor (who gets 40-90% of the ticket cost) would have to agree to it somehow,.
          • moftz 7y ago
            Right, you cut them in on the subscription fees. The theater gets more people willing to go to the movies and the distributor gets pretty much a guaranteed income every month. Figure out the average amount of money people spend on movies every year, divide by 12, and make that the monthly fee. The distributor would see mostly the same income (holiday months might bring in less than years past but the slow months would bring in more than usual). If the average movie goer sees one movie per month with a ticket costing $12, make that the monthly fee. Offer tiered subscriptions if it helps reduce people from going too often. It's like a gym membership. People like having the option to go to the gym whenever they want. Many gyms offer a per use fees but if you want to go more than once or twice a month, it is cheaper to have the membership. Actual operating costs are fairly low (machines aren't too expensive to fix and clean) but the real money maker is in all of the extra goods and services that you pay extra for.
  • TorKlingberg 7y ago
    It should be noted that the founder of MoviePass was replaced by the new owners long before the shenanigans against users.
  • airstrike 7y ago
    Related HN discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20636152 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20636152
• c3534l 7y ago
  They're lucky no one ended up in prison over that. That's just outright fraud.
  • techntoke 7y ago
    Rich people get off easy
    • whamlastxmas 7y ago
      Lol at your downvotes. HN crowd never disappoints
      • DiabloD3 7y ago
        Given how surprised Jeffery Epstein was to find out he committed suicide, shouldn't anyone anywhere making such a comment get downvoted?
        • sooheon 7y ago
          Epstein knew it was coming. And why would this be at odds with the root comment? Epstein's death served to protect the rich.
        • techntoke 7y ago
          Epstein "committing suicide" would be considered getting off easy, especially for all those involved.
• baybal2 7y ago
  Reminds me of me trying to get those "Cheapest price guarantees" — had been turned back at god knows how many reputable retailers, and booking agencies with replies like "so sue us": Expedia, Booking.com, BestBuy, London Drugs... I think, many of such cos keep a record of people going for such deals, and once you request a freebie for the 10th time, they look it up and blacklist you
• narrator 7y ago
  There's also the old contract law chestnut of the guy who bought enough Pepsi points to theoretically earn a Harrier jet. The court said no, you don't get a jet. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leonard_v._Pepsico,_Inc https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leonard_v._Pepsico,_Inc.
  • r00fus 7y ago
    Its crazy that the ads still kept running after the ruling albeit with an adjusted point cost. How was the ad not “false advertising“? It should have had a disclaimer.
    • tialaramex 7y ago
      It's never false advertising if a reasonable person wouldn't believe it. Irn Brew advertised that it is "Made in Scotland, from girders" but no reasonable person would conclude that a fizzy drink would be made from girders, so it isn't false advertising. Likewise Pringles says "Once you pop you can't stop" but it isn't false advertising because a reasonable person understands that they can actually stop. You can't have a fighter jet. It's not just "They are very expensive" they are not available. Sale is restricted to qualified purchasers. A reasonable person knows they can't have a fighter jet. The plaintiffs in that case knew it. They were just looking for a pile of cash. Too bad.
      • CamperBob2 7y ago
        In the US there would be no problem owning a fighter jet, and it would be entirely reasonable to expect Pepsi to deliver what it promised. Plenty of old Soviet hardware is in private hands over here, for instance. [1] You couldn't equip it with functioning machine guns or missiles with explosive warheads without the appropriate Federal Firearms License, but other than those narrow exceptions, party on. [1] E.g., https://www.popularmechanics.com/military/aviation/news/a28700/raptor-aviation-cold-war-fighter-jets/ https://www.popularmechanics.com/military/aviation/news/a287...
        • 7y ago
• chrischen 7y ago
  Google Fi did the exact same thing with their travel promotion that they soon realized was a terrible deal for them. And then they made up some stuff to deny fulfilling the order with the travel credit for me, while still hitting my credit bureau with a hard inquiry.
  • estsauver 7y ago
    FWIW, I got the travel promotion.
    • chrischen 7y ago
      The real problem was when I had to call support about it... (they had no support basically).
• Sherl 7y ago
  Where does Costco membership goes in this? Countless returns of opened and tried products.
  • Scoundreller 7y ago
    My Costco always has lines, but the one at the Returns is always the longest.
• cosmodisk 7y ago
  Reminds me a law book on contracts- there were quite a few cases,where companies or people try to weasel out of contract as part of advertisement campaign.Never ends well to them.
  • TuringNYC 7y ago
    Seems to work fine for telcos in the US. You can change retroactively change the price by adding "regulatory recovery fees." If your service is genuinely misconfigured, you will often get the standard line "service is not guaranteed" until(if) you get to a Level III Support Engineer. And in the worst, worst case, you get thrown into arbitration which is already skewed in the telco's favor.
• itoocode 7y ago
  "The common sense" should have told the team that would not work.
  • dylan604 7y ago
    Common sense doesn't seem to really be that common any more. More like un-common sense
• lordnacho 7y ago
  I always wondered why the British word for vacuum cleaner / cleaning is just Hoover (like web search is called Google), and yet I'd never come across a machine that said Hoover on it. I find it odd that they even thought about this. Why didn't they just limit their losses by saying "only the first x customers"? Surely it's obvious that anyone wanting to fly to the US, a pretty popular destination among the British, would be better off getting a cheap Hoover. If the point is to get rid of old stock, why not do an offer where you and your friend get a machine each for a sensible price?
  • remarkEon 7y ago
    Yeah a whole lot of the story makes no sense. There’s plenty of ways - sensible ways - to offload aging inventory that don’t involve schemes like this, and I’m left wondering if there is more to this study than what’s in the article. As in, if this random travel agency had some personal connection to Hoover executives at the time.
    • Osiris 7y ago
      It sounded like the original promotion with just fights inside Europe went well. It was the expansion of the promotion to include the USA that seemed to have caused the problem.
      • londons_explore 7y ago
        I suspect "well" might be an exaggeration. I bet they were doing the same complex-claims-process, but no consumer action groups got involved. Without a consumer action group, most customers will just be disappointed when told that they were disqualified because they filled the form in in black ink instead of blue. The few customers that make a big fuss can be given flights. It's only when a group gets involved that you have to give them all what they're entitled to, and it gets expensive.
        • notahacker 7y ago
          I think the bigger difference is that initially the sort of person that used the promotion was somebody who saw it as a reason to pick Hoover over Zanussi or Electrolux products and often bought the higher end washing machine or fridge they were actually looking for rather than the cheapest vacuum cleaner, so Hoover often did better than break even on the promotion when taking into account their profit margins versus whatever wholesale price they got on the flight tickets. And lots of genuine customers didn't bother filling out forms, and few people looking to buy flight tickets to Italy for about £119 decided to get a vacuum cleaner and some booking hoops to jump through instead... When £600-£1000 face value tickets were offered, the logic of buying the lowest cost qualifying electrical product instead of the flight to the US started looking entirely different...
• vr46 7y ago
  Heh, I got a free flight out of this! It was my second trip to NYC from London, I was 19 or 20 and the markets were saturated with cheap brand-new Hoovers that people didn’t need. Great trip to NY/hapless marketing campaign from Hoover.
  • rconti 7y ago
    How long did it take from vacuum purchase to tickets in-hand?
    • vr46 7y ago
      A LONG TIME. Best part of 6-12 months, maybe. That is a long time when you're 19.
• joosters 7y ago
  And Hoover vacuums, once the star of every living room in the UK, sit in closets gathering dust Bad choice of phrase for the end of that story!
  • smcl 7y ago
    I'm quite sure that it was deliberate
  • Agentlien 7y ago
    I'm quite sure that was intentional.
  • megaremote 7y ago
    It is called a joke.
• Slartie 7y ago
  I think this shows a significant disconnect between the ostensibly-wealthy managers that cooked up this genius marketing ploy and their customers: if the managers want an intercontinental flight, they just book it at whatever the current price is, because £600 is chump change for them and does not motivate them to invest time into looking for deals. It thus naturally never occurred to them that anyone would even think about buying the cheapest qualifying vacuum, even though they don't need one at all, just to get an awesome deal on flight tickets - basically it's flight ticket buying for £120 with the catch that you must dispose of a cheap vacuum. Anyone to whom those £600 worth of flights appear as a considerable value will immediately come to this conclusion, whereas if £600 means nothing to you, you'd never even think about putting up with the hassle.
  • Sniffnoy 7y ago
    The lesson I draw is a bit different. Sure, they might have failed to think of that -- but they didn't personally have to think of it, as long as someone else did and warned them. But, even though they got professionals to assess the risk, they then completely ignored that assessment. Well -- we all know how that story ends...
    • ghaff 7y ago
      It's probably a mistake to assume that everyone down the line will look at some promo/ad/etc. with fresh eyes and ask "Do we really want to do this?" People assume that someone else has vetted the basic concept, get focused on the mechanics, etc. and focus on the how rather than the should. ADDED: There are plenty of ads that make you ask: "How did this get through?" and it's the same basic idea. Having worked for large companies I totally understand.
      • KaoruAoiShiho 7y ago
        It was warned by professionals: "When Hoover ran this plan by risk management professionals, the company was warned that it would be an absolute disaster." I don't know how formal this warning was though. To me this is a key part of the story that should've had more detail.
• rtpg 7y ago
  The interesting nugget here is that they did this promo for european flights and it _did_ work! Granted, the process was really hard and whatnot but saying "you'll get some flights to Europe if you fill out this form after spending 100 pounds" is kinda bonkers.
  • Vespasian 7y ago
    Some differences: 1) Flights in Europe are not that expensive (even in the 90s) and they were probably able pay that out of their product margins. 2) People will jump through considerably fewer hoops if all they get is a an 1:30 hour flight to Italy over the weekend. 3) Flying to the USA is something special and has a "dream vacation" vibe to it. In my company it would not be that hard to move a planned vacation around if I could argue that my flights were part of a great deal.
• Lukesys 7y ago
  Did anyone just buy a hoover, go on the trip and then return the hoover for a refund to a store? :)
  • dghf 7y ago
    Most British stores won't give refunds just because the customer's changed their mind: there has to be something wrong with the product sold. This was even more so in the 90s.
    • djpowell 7y ago
      Argos have always done 16-day no quibble money back guarantees
      • dghf 7y ago
        True. But I doubt anyone would be able to go through the rigmarole of getting the tickets and go on the trip within that 16-day window.
      • dazc 7y ago
        Were argos around back then?
        • markedathome 7y ago
          https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argos_(retailer) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argos_(retailer) established 1972
    • anentropic 7y ago
      they are obliged to now if you buy online though...
• harshbutfair 7y ago
  There was a very similar promotion running in Australia last year where you could get free return flights for buying six bottles of wine (minimum cost around $68). They also required sending in paper forms and nominating three destinations and three sets of dates. I went to Bali on that deal.
  • stirlo 7y ago
    I got in on this deal too, nominated 3 destinations in New Zealand and got free flights to Christchurch. That said a number of people missed out due to the confusing processing and a page where it requested ID (drivers license or passport) but if you only provided a drivers license they refused to accept any international destinations, therefor you hadn’t nominated 3, therefor you got nothing. Of course it would have been trivial to ask for passport details after the fact but obviously the intention was to deny those who tired to claim on any technicality possible. The passport requirement wasn’t mentioned in any terms either which makes it even more dodgy.
• kbouck 7y ago
  I wonder if this event was the inspiration for the pudding coupons in "Punch Drunk Love" (Barry plans to exploit a promotion loophole by buying massive amounts of pudding in exchange for airline miles) Great movie! https://youtu.be/fRgWQUkkyDI https://youtu.be/fRgWQUkkyDI
  • andysomniac 7y ago
    This was actually a separate incident that actually happened - buying puddings gave airmiles https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Phillips_(entrepreneur) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Phillips_(entrepreneur)
  • dagw 7y ago
    That was inspired by someone doing exactly that: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Phillips_(entrepreneur) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Phillips_(entrepreneur)
  • wingerlang 7y ago
    Off topic and maybe you know already, but there's an interesting theory about this movie being a sort of Superman movie, google the theories and have a read.
• close04 7y ago
  > Today, it’s remembered as the worst sales promotion in history. Wasn't the same thing said about American Airlines' "golden ticket"? By coincidence airfare promotions seem to be front and center in these blunders.
  • SmellyGeekBoy 7y ago
    Just a hunch, but airlines often have a lot of empty seats, selling them cheap would devalue their offering but giving them away makes them look generous.
  • Slartie 7y ago
    That thing was the worst product in history. It was not a promotion for a product, but a product in itself, which I consider to be fundamentally different things.
  • bjnord 7y ago
    Yes, and in the same way, once the AA execs realized how much it was costing them, they started looking for some way to get out from under the agreement they made. I had something similar happen with a national tire-and-brake chain, from whom I bought a "lifetime alignment" for one of my cars for the cost of about 2 alignments. After a few years had passed, it was always a huge rigamarole: "I don't show that in the computer; do you have your receipt paperwork?" "We don't offer lifetime alignments any more." "This store has a new manager since then and we're no longer honoring that deal." They always gave it to me after I persisted, but never easily. Look, I'm not responsible for your shortsightedness; I bought the deal on your terms, and now you need to honor the deal.
• Zenst 7y ago
  One of the worst sales promotions I managed to take advantage of was not as grandiose, but still bad marketing. Iceland (supermarket chain of frozen food) had an offer for buy one get one free on some branded pizza. But those Pizza boxes also has a voucher on the packaging for...a free pizza. So I'd buy a pizza and get two free. Then use those two vouchers to buy two more pizza's and free ones. This I repeated daily throughout the promotional period in low volumes like that, so as to not raise awareness of the oversight. Upshot was I had a whole month of free frozen pizza, two filled up freezers of pizza and on top of that, only ever paid for that initial pizza. Was a good period of savings on the back of that promotion at a time in which money was very tight. Also after the store BOGOF had finished, I still had a pile of free pizza vouchers that lasted for the rest of the year due to expiry date on those vouchers. What I surmised was that the pizza manufacturer had said it would do a promotion for buy one get one free, they did it via vouchers and Iceland implemented it via the till system. Though equally, still took the vouchers.
  • jotm 7y ago
    That's hilarious!
  • technothrasher 7y ago
    Hmm, fascinating. I took advantage of the exact same thing on "Mama Celeste" frozen pizza at "Stop & Shop" here in the US a few years ago. But the free pizza vouchers were printed on the sales receipt, rather than on the product. So I could return the single purchased product and end up getting all the pizzas completely free. I emptied their pizza freezer. The store figured out what I as doing pretty quickly, but didn't much care as they were reimbursed by the manufacturer and thought it was pretty amusing.
  • notahacker 7y ago
    On a more basic level, if you like free stuff there's an awful lot of "present voucher to receive free x for signing up to our mailing list" promotions that assume people don't have access to more than one email address (or even prevent you entering multiple name+1@domain.com variants). Always amusing when this is pointed out to you by the guy that actually built the app...
• pjc50 7y ago
  I'm just about old enough to remember this fiasco being reported week after week on Watchdog, the long running consumer rights show: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Watchdog_(TV_programme) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Watchdog_(TV_programme) (Is there an American counterpart to Watchdog? The number of egregious anti-consumer actions that I hear about on the Internet suggests not)
  • obituary_latte 7y ago
    Unfortunately not. Closest thing would be Consumer Reports which was never — afaik — televised. Makes sense if you think about it - US networks would never air such a program that could negatively effect the potential for advertisers. I guess the one possible exception being Public Television.
    • SmellyGeekBoy 7y ago
      Makes sense, Watchdog is produced by the BBC who don't have to worry about such things.
    • lonelappde 7y ago
      You mean except for 60 Minutes and every local news station's consumer advocate?
  • morkfromork 7y ago
    There was a US show called Fight Back! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fight_Back!_with_David_Horowitz https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fight_Back!_with_David_Horowit...
  • graypavement 7y ago
    There is a Canadian version called CBC marketplace
  • colanderman 7y ago
    It's common for local television outlets to have consumer rights segments. E.g. https://www.nbcboston.com/news/local/NBC-Boston-Responds-408410885.html https://www.nbcboston.com/news/local/NBC-Boston-Responds-408...
• noneeeed 7y ago
  I have strong childhood memories of watching the consumer campaign programme Watchdog with my parents. This was one of their biggest and longest running stories. It's hard to overstate just how badly this screwed Hoover in the UK. Their name really was mud by the end of it, and now it's genuinely a bit surprising for me to see a Hoover.
• Theodores 7y ago
  The Hoover story (decline chapter) goes beyond the legendary sales promotion. The former factory in Perivale, West London was an Art Deco masterpiece, that closed down in 1982. There was manufacturing in South Wales (the 'China' of it's day) and that factory finally closed about a decade ago. This factory also did the contract manufacturing for the Sinclair C5. The actual promotion was not that wild a deal. If you look at the privatisations that the UK public were offered you can see some true gift-horses. If you bought shares in anything the government were flogging off then you made a lot of money. You also were bought - you could be expected to vote Conservative from then on - 'brand loyal'. If we look at the VC funded things that go on today, every early Uber ride was a 'sales promotion'. Same with the early days of Amazon where money was not so important. Even online groceries sales are a bit speculative. What is sad is the lack of genuine offers from today's brands. In the olden days competitions would have a 'tie breaker' to complete, nowadays they want you to text or call a premium rate number that costs enough to pay for the promotion. In the 1980's a typical 'really good promotion' could be something like the Weetabix Lego offer. If you bought a dozen packs of Weetabix cereal then you would have enough tokens to get a really good and quite exclusive Lego set, or, if you didn't want to have 576 Weetabix biscuits to eat then you could pay retail equivalent for the Lego offer. There was nothing disingenuous about it and any delay in shipping (28 days of delivery was never realistic) only added to the excitement and anticipation. I don't know why but in the days before the internet when everything had to be manually transcribed from posted-in forms the offers and promotions were just that bit more honest. Stuff wasn't cheap and made in China then. The Hoover disaster marks the end of this happy chapter of consumerism.
  • dazc 7y ago
    'any delay in shipping (28 days of delivery was never realistic) only added to the excitement and anticipation.' I fondly remember getting all manner of free-stuff as a kid by collecting coupons. As you say, having to wait so long for delivery made it seem like you were getting something really special. Nowadays if my Prime delivery doesn't turn up by 11 am the next day I get frustrated.
• thesaint 7y ago
  Someone I knew (a proper slime ball), let's just call him 'Nigel' got a job working on this campaign. He was part of the team that answered the telephones. People would call the hotline to book their 'free' flights. His task was to do anything and I mean anything not to give them the flights. Lie, cheat, hangup repeatedly, anything. He said it was absolutely crazy - coming from a guy who had a hobby of collecting fingers after hand shakes...
• CPLX 7y ago
  This is roughly the same business model as Uber. They should have just raised a billion dollars first and claimed it would all make sense when the roomba was invented.
• dEnigma 7y ago
  McDonald's Austria had a feedback promotion, where you got a QR code with your bill, that led you to a very short survey about your experience, at the end of which you received a voucher code for a free Coke. When I got my Coke I noticed that the (0€) bill again had a feedback QR code. Of course I had to try and see whether I could get another free Coke that way. Sure enough it worked, but I never abused it, because after two free Cokes I pretty much got everything I wanted out of it, and it had the added inconvenience of the survey. (Plus I think you had to get the coke at the same restaurant and I was afraid someone would notice.)
  • deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
  • johnnycab 7y ago
    I am not an active patron, but it impresses me how creative some people are at discovering these tricks. It appears that McD doesn't seem to mind, rather they leave the door slightly ajar for some tomfoolery, making the user believe they have outsmarted them; usually they are just open-secrets eg. surveys on receipts for codes, can be a random number. https://www.lifehacker.co.uk/2014/08/29/get-much-free-mcdonalds-can-eat https://www.lifehacker.co.uk/2014/08/29/get-much-free-mcdona...
    • mywittyname 7y ago
      I used to work in retail software services and this was known colloquially as, perpetrating a scam. Many times, the teams figure out many of the ways that scams can be perpetrated. Probably the coke instance was probably considered and OKed. But you're right, people do come up with some really cleaver techniques, which, when discovered, get added to the pre-rollout test cases.
      • moftz 7y ago
        Coke pretty much costs nothing compared to the rest of the operating costs. This is why many McDs have the price of all the fountain drink sizes the same. I'm guessing only a minority of people would come in for the free drink and leave without eating something. It's the same as the monopoly game pieces they give out. Many just have things like a free hashbrown, or fries, or a drink, small things. People aren't going to both waiting in line just for something small like that so either McDs doesn't lose anything when those people don't come back or they make a real sale when they come back and buy a burger with their free fries.
• TuringNYC 7y ago
  In the late 90s dot-com bubble, I had many friends at the Austin software company Trilogy (which hired extensively at our university). Apparently they had an HR referral promotion where "you refer a person that gets hired, you get $5000, you refer two people, you get $10000, you refer three people, you get $20000, and so on..." I heard the referral schema was quickly cancelled once HR discovered exponential growth.
  • mlrtime 7y ago
    This is still quite common however hiring managers, internal recruiters and HR are always excluded.
    • TuringNYC 7y ago
      Really? Did you notice the last bit? The referral fee doubled with each additional hire! It grew exponentially!
      • hinkley 7y ago
        I'm sure they would have gotten plenty of activity even if it only went up $2500-5000 per subsequent hire, rather than doubling.
  • jedberg 7y ago
    I had a friend in the 90s who started at a tech company as an admin assistant. But her husband was an engineer and she knew a ton of engineers, so she started referring them. The company paid $5,000 for each hire. She got so many people in the door that she made more money on referral bonuses than her regular salary. The company solved the problem by "promoting" her to HR as a recruiter.
• jvanderwal 7y ago
  A few years back Wendy's had an offer where if you got a medium or large drink there was a coupon on it. 32 coupons got you a one-way flight in the continental US, 64 got you a round-trip flight. Being a poor college student at the time, a few friends and I went dumpster diving at all the local Wendy's and over a couple nights ended up getting about 4 round-trip tickets. The only drawback was having to throw out those clothes..
  • titchard 7y ago
    That's a fantastic way of doing it - I'd imagine you'd put on some old clothes to do the diving anyway.
  • jacurtis 7y ago
    Wow i had never heard of this offer. But it seems like it was a good deal without even dumpster diving. What does a Medium Drink at Wendys cost? Probably $1.50? So buying 32 medium drinks would cost $48, which would get you a free one-way flight in the US. $48 (plus all the drinks you can handle and diabetes to prove it) is an insane deal for plane ticket. By this logic a round trip ticket would cost ~$96 which is also a steal. Even without dumpster diving, $48 is a great deal for a ticket even if you just dumped the soda out or never filled up the cup at the fountain.
    • ashelmire 7y ago
      They probably figure the average person is going to 1) order a whole meal when they come to Wendy's and 2) not likely to go to Wendy's 32 times. Of course, college students are the ones that have the time and metabolic rates to handle this...
• LarryMade2 7y ago
  The real tragedy was it didn't really do anything for Hoover, didn't promote their product, merely turned it into a tool to acquire something else of more value. Hoover was no longer selling their stuff to the consumer, the sale was guaranteed - whether they made a good product or not - it was selling airline tickets. I would think quality went down as manufacturing realized they could cut corners and no one would really notice. So they probably pushed out a lot of junkier vacuums. They lost their brand notoriety along with it, as people probably now thought of hoover as "the place where we could scam some cheap airline tickets" instead of where to go to get good appliances. This is where the (illusion of) profit became more important than the product for the board and that took the company down with it.
  • HeWhoLurksLate 7y ago
    Reminds me of Uber right now, who is trying to sell something for less than it's worth. Hopefully they get enough market share that they can actually switch around and make enough money to pay their drivers well.
    • krisroadruck 7y ago
      Every time I see this I wonder why people never mention the obvious follow-up. Which to me at least, is will a version of Uber that charges enough to be profitable and pay their drivers well still be an attractive product? It may still well be for short trips of a few blocks downtown, but for things like taking an Uber from the outskirts of town to downtown to avoid having to drive your car into the thick of traffic, the prices are already close to what I'm willing to pay for that convenience. Datum point of one but at a current round trip cost of $60+, raise the prices 50% and I'll either drive myself or just not go downtown.
• mxcrossb 7y ago
  This reminds me a bit of CyberRebate [1], who also seemed to preset on the “make it too complicated for the customer to get what we owe them” system. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CyberRebate https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CyberRebate
• AndrewStephens 7y ago
  Back when iTunes was new, a potato chip company in NZ had a promotion where each packet of chips had a printed code that got you enough iTunes credit to buy one song. By itself it was a good deal - buy a packet of chips for $1.50 (or whatever) and get a song worth 99 cents for free. What made it amazing was I found that the codes were also printed in the smaller kids-lunch-sized packets that the local discount supermarket was selling in packs of 8 for $6. Not the most spectacular discount but I still felt I was sticking it to the man each time I ate a tiny packet of chips while listening to a new song.
• leejoramo 7y ago
  Then there was the US Mint promotion of selling and shipping collectible $1 coins for $1 The US Government made plenty of money since it costs very little to make the coin But people paid for the coins using airmile or other reward credit cards and made huge rewards. https://boingboing.net/2009/12/08/airmile-hackers-use.html https://boingboing.net/2009/12/08/airmile-hackers-use.html
  • davinic 7y ago
    And those reward card purchases pass a much higher interchange rate to the retailer (the US Mint in this case).
    • dllthomas 7y ago
      ... but almost certainly significantly less than the seigniorage.
      • davinic 7y ago
        Ha, fair point!
• thecleaner 7y ago
  Not related but does someone know some good sales books ?
• davinic 7y ago
  Nathan For You proved the lengths that people will go to claim a rebate: http://www.cc.com/episodes/z5sar1/nathan-for-you-gas-station-caricature-artist-season-1-ep-103 http://www.cc.com/episodes/z5sar1/nathan-for-you-gas-station...
• LanceH 7y ago
  During the 1984 Olympics, in the US, McDonald's ran a promo where you got a peel off for an event if you bought a large fry, coke or the six piece nuggets. If a US athlete got a medal you won a food prize, potentially multiple prizes if the US placed multiple athletes. This was the year the soviet bloc withdrew as it was in the US. The US won some absurd number of medals. The other thing is the prize was always free food, which also had the peel offs. So you could buy a large fry and have a really good chance of completing your meal. Now you'll see the free food consolation prizes are always for something that doesn't result in another ticket.
• ticmasta 7y ago
  Sounds like Hover defined the playbook that today's hottest startups use: it's 2019's MoviePass business model.
• tom_mellior 7y ago
  Some fun examples in this thread. One more is how the French lottery was hacked in the 18th century: http://www.veritablehokum.com/comic/voltaire-broke-the-lottery/ http://www.veritablehokum.com/comic/voltaire-broke-the-lotte... "Short Version: France accidentally started a lottery where, under certain conditions, the total prize was worth more than the total cost of all the tickets."