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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

by 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...
- MaxBarraclough 7y ago
  > assume people don't have access to more than one email address It's more likely that they've considered the costs of this sort of low-level fraud, and have decided the promotion still makes good sense.
x2f10 7y ago
Even without Iceland's BOGO promotion, you'd end up with endless pizza - no? Quite the oversight by the pizza company.
foobarchu 7y ago
I did something similar in college with free sandwiches from online receipt surveys at Arby's and Burger King. The thing is, very very few people go through the effort to take advantage of those systems like that, so it's not really a loss for them. The Hoover blunder was so bad because they assumed it would be like cutting out vouchers from pizza boxes, and that most people wouldn't bother, but the offer was of such high value that everyone wanted in on it.
walrus01 7y ago
At one point in time Starbucks ran an ad in The Georgia Straight (weekly entertainment paper printed in Vancouver BC) with a coupon good for one free medium size drink, any type, expiration date somewhere like 120 days in the future. I went through several newspaper boxes full of georgia straights, they're free, pulled out the coupons and had 120 days of free coffee. It worked out to about $450 worth of free drinks.

by Zenst 7y ago

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...

MaxBarraclough 7y ago
> assume people don't have access to more than one email address It's more likely that they've considered the costs of this sort of low-level fraud, and have decided the promotion still makes good sense.

x2f10 7y ago

Even without Iceland's BOGO promotion, you'd end up with endless pizza - no? Quite the oversight by the pizza company.

foobarchu 7y ago

I did something similar in college with free sandwiches from online receipt surveys at Arby's and Burger King. The thing is, very very few people go through the effort to take advantage of those systems like that, so it's not really a loss for them. The Hoover blunder was so bad because they assumed it would be like cutting out vouchers from pizza boxes, and that most people wouldn't bother, but the offer was of such high value that everyone wanted in on it.

walrus01 7y ago

At one point in time Starbucks ran an ad in The Georgia Straight (weekly entertainment paper printed in Vancouver BC) with a coupon good for one free medium size drink, any type, expiration date somewhere like 120 days in the future. I went through several newspaper boxes full of georgia straights, they're free, pulled out the coupons and had 120 days of free coffee. It worked out to about $450 worth of free drinks.