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The time Pepsi got sued for a $33M fighter jet
- ilovecaching 5y agoHe wouldn’t be able to afford the fuel (hovering burns a ton) let alone the training, I’m assuming it’s illegal to fly. I wonder how hard it would be to sell a harrier? I believe I heard of one retired military pilot buying one.
- judge2020 5y ago> But as a Defense Department spokesman clarified, a fully demilitarized jet probably wouldn’t have been much fun, anyway. > “Even if the lad were able to get the plane from Pepsi, it would not be one he could fly,” the official said at a Pentagon briefing.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- t0mas88 5y agoEx-military planes exist and can be flown. The fuel problem is easily solved by setting up a business around it and selling rides. This was done with several other jets. Recently the FAA has been making this hard, by not allowing passengers on planes that don't have a full certificate of airworthyness.
- kfprt 5y ago>Recently the FAA has been making this hard, by not allowing passengers on planes that don't have a full certificate of airworthyness. After several crashes resulting in deaths.
- samizdis 5y ago> I believe I heard of one retired military pilot buying one. That would probably be this guy: https://brobible.com/culture/article/badass-pilot-series-art-nalls-harrier/ https://brobible.com/culture/article/badass-pilot-series-art...
- duxup 5y agoI would wonder more about maintenance and safety piloting for what is an unusual fighter.
- echelon 5y agoThe harrier costs $30 million, and the JSF costs "$80 million" (plus $1.1 trillion development / jobs program / pork / bug fixing) Why didn't we just turn harriers into drones and build a lot of them? It seems like we should be building a lot of cheap and/or pilotless aircraft. edit: -4. I should refrain from posting unpopular opinions because it triggers HN's rate limiter and prevents me from posting the rest of the day. I just wrote a small essay I can't post anymore.
- judge2020 5y agoThe US government certainly has fleets of pilotless drones, both small and large.
- KineticLensman 5y ago> Why didn't we just turn harriers into drones and build a lot of them? An aircraft whose basic design concept is more than 50 years old isn't the best starting point for a modern drone capability
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- dredmorbius 5y agoB-52s are a design that will turn 70 next year, with individual airframes built 60 years ago still in active service, and planned to continue in same beyond 2050, a century of use. Aeronautics hasn't changed all that much. Many of the interesting parts can be readily swapped out. (A re-engining of the B-52 was considered in the 1970s, but shelved on a costs-benefit basis.) A drone Harrier role might not make strategic sense, though it could. Age alone has little to do with the question.
- KineticLensman 5y ago> B-52s are a design that will turn 70 next year Agree. > A drone Harrier role might not make strategic sense B-52s are still flying because they do actually fulfil a military role, namely carrying vast amounts of stuff and being suitably militarised. Harriers are relatively short range, non-stealthy, fuel inefficient and sacrifice payload for the VTOL capability. I can't see any way in which a Harrier would make sense as the basis for a new drone, let alone in a strategic sense. [Edit] Updating old military things to new roles can be a fantastic way to waste vast amounts of money before cancelling the programme anyway. Exhibit A - the UK's Nimrod programme (new engines on bespoke vintage fuselages). Exhibit B. The UK Army's Warrior vehicle upgrade (modern turrets on a 40-year old hull), cancelled this year after running the 'capability sustainment programme' for at least five years. [Edit 2] The last time (1982) that the Harriers conducted actual air combat as opposed to dropping bombs in a permissive airspace was against Super Étendard (now 50 years old) and Mirage III (now 60 years old). There is no evidence Harriers would last more than ten minutes if their users didn't have total air supremacy.
- generj 5y agoInteresting story. Kinda hard to feel bad for the would be jet owner. He knew it was a joke but wanted to take advantage of the opportunity for arbitrage anyways. The more astounding aspect is that he was able to get investors in on his scheme.
- javajosh 5y ago>he was able to get investors in on his scheme. Small downside (legal fees, 1/7x), big upside (~50x return) plus they knew Pepsi would return the check. That liquid was available for other purposes. On the upside column, it probably felt good to fund the cheeky bastard.
- amelius 5y agoThe sad thing is that his lawyers didn't inform him about "Advertisements are generally not considered offers in contract law", but still took his money.
- DangitBobby 5y agoI wonder if it could ever be considered fraud to accept payment for a case you know to be unwinnable, seeing as how the client would have to be operating under the assumption that the case is winnable.
- MiddleEndian 5y agoHe'd need to get some new lawyers to sue the original lawyers! Lawyers all the way down...
- elzbardico 5y ago> Lawyers all the way down Sir, this is the stuff nightmares are made of
- webmaven 5y ago> I wonder if it could ever be considered fraud to accept payment for a case you know to be unwinnable, seeing as how the client would have to be operating under the assumption that the case is winnable. If the lawyers gave him legal advice that was obviously bad or false, there could be a malpractice case. Most likely they did tell him (though probably not very forcefully), and he proceeded anyway against the advice of counsel. Happens all the time.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- xwdv 5y agoI remember seeing this commercial as a little kid and fully believing this was a real thing that could happen and someone could fly to school in a jet. I thought it’d be so cool if I could win and do that someday. I kind of miss being able to easily believe in something so outrageous like that. Nowadays I approach most things with extreme skepticism and a cynical opinion. The world has beaten me down.
- nickkell 5y agoWould buying some magic beans from me cheer you up?
- billytetrud 5y agoThe article says his suit was rejected because ads don't obligate the advertiser to anything. That seems more or less false. False advertising is explicitly against the law. I don't understand why a ruling would be made implying that false advertising is ok. At very least, it seems Pepsi should have been fined for that.
- goodcanadian 5y agoFrom memory, my understanding is that it did not obligate Pepsi because it was obviously* a joke. *obvious to any reasonable person.
- brutal_chaos_ 5y ago"Obvious to any reasonable person" is so vague. What happens when Poe's law is reached? Half the people will scream obvious while the other half scream obviously not! Also, the reasonable person would have to be raised and steeped in the culture. why would someone from another country, who doesn't understand US norms, be considered unreasonable? Pepsi is a large corporation that has been in posetion of USSR military gear (vague because I don't exactly remember what atm). Why wouldn't they be able to give a jet away? They are big enough, have possessed similar items, and run contests all the time. Seems legit to me (but I also haven't seen the ad).
- lkbm 5y agoHere's the ad in case you're interested: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZdackF2H7Qc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZdackF2H7Qc
- brutal_chaos_ 5y agoThanks! Definitely Poe's law. They show what seem like awards with point values and include a jet with a point value. The jet landing at school seems like a joke, but not the jet itself, IMHO. Sure it's an outlandish prize, but they gave it a point value along with others. Maybe the way the case was brought, it fell apart, but that's gotta be false advertizing.
- neurobashing 5y agoThe (IMHO wonderful) film Real Genius riffed on the real-world examples of people trying to exploit corporate sweepstakes: "When Lazlo Hollyfeld (Jon Gries) sends in a large number of entries to the Frito-Lay contest, he is mirroring the actions of Caltech students Steve Klein, Dave Novikoff and Barry Megdal, who, in 1974, used a similar strategy to win a McDonald's sweepstakes. Their entries came to roughly 1/5th of the total entries and won them a station wagon, $3,000 cash and $1,500 in food gift certificates." "It said enter as often as you like, so I did."
- jbluepolarbear 5y agoWhen I was in college, a local pizza place had an online contest for “free pizza” for a year and said you could enter as many times as you like. I wrote a quick python script to fill out the form with my info that would submit it every 30 second. I got a call from the pizza place a few days later asking me to stop. They said that I was 90% of the entries and that I wasn’t acting in good faith. They offered me $100 gift card and I was happy with that.
- cesis 5y agoAt one time Pepsi actually owned several USSR military vessels https://www.businessinsider.com/how-pepsi-briefly-became-the-6th-largest-military-in-the-world-2018-7 https://www.businessinsider.com/how-pepsi-briefly-became-the...
- generj 5y agoYou have to wonder what the executives thought of this! Sounds like an interesting documentary ready to happen.
- dylan604 5y ago>You have to wonder what the executives thought of this! Based on the time period, in the words of Rick James, "cocaine is a helluva drug." If that was the actual reason, it makes total sense. If that's not the reason, then what the actual f were they doing?
- monocasa 5y agoThere wasn't a usable forex market for ruble to USD. At that point you drop down to essentially bartering.
- sandworm101 5y agoThere weren't many products in the Soviet Union that could be sold in the west. They needed a commodity that was to western standards. Soviet steel had full scrap value in the west and the ships were mobile. Pepsi also traded for tomato paste.
- saalweachter 5y agoBribing someone?
- sandworm101 5y agoThey were sold for scrap. They were less military vessels than large floating objects worth their weight in steel.
- Havoc 5y agoMarketing agencies keep underestimating the number of crazy people out there that will not only crunch the numbers but attempt to execute. Like that guy that bought a pallet full of dessert to get unlimited flight tickets
- TazeTSchnitzel 5y agoThey could have given him a Soviet warship instead: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PepsiCo#Soviet_Union https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PepsiCo#Soviet_Union
- duckhelmet 5y ago‘the Harrier was a US Marine Corps aircraft used extensively in the Gulf War. Capable of taking off vertically and carrying 10k pounds of bombs, it had been called the “most captivating and the most dangerous plane in the US military.”’ From a British Design by Hawker Siddeley in the 1960s. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harrier_Jump_Jet https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harrier_Jump_Jet
- hyperbovine 5y agoThis quote betrays a lack of understanding of the destructive power of other planes in the US arsenal. Depending on when it was uttered, the B52, B2, A10, AC130 and/or F22 all come to mind as being way scarier.
- jshier 5y agoIn this case it's likely "dangerous" refers to the plane's danger to the pilot, not the targets of its weapons. The Harrier was notoriously unstable in its VTOL configuration, as it was built before adoption of fly by wire systems that could keep it stable automatically, like the F-35B does.
- matheusmoreira 5y agoDoesn't the B2 have world-wide nuclear weapons deployment capabilities? Nothing is scarier than this impossibly cool plane.
- hyperbovine 5y agoYes, it can deliver a nuclear warhead anywhere in the world without detection. Basically a death-ray.
- LaMarseillaise 5y ago> most dangerous plane in the US military. Only for the pilot.
- 45ure 5y agoPepsiCo seemed to have lost their collective minds in the 90's in their pursuit of fighting the Cola Wars, like it was some narco gang territory. This episode seems tame in comparison to the Pepsi Number Fever aka 349 incident, with a similarity to running an ad campaign, and then strong arming or swatting away claimants, as a cost of doing business. Pepsi Number Fever, also known as the 349 incident,was a promotion held by PepsiCo in the Philippines in 1992, which led to riots and the deaths of at least five people https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pepsi_Number_Fever https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pepsi_Number_Fever https://www.phmurderstories.com/blog/pepsis-number-fever-1992-the-deadliest-marketing-disaster-in-history https://www.phmurderstories.com/blog/pepsis-number-fever-199...
- dwohnitmok 5y agoReading the wiki article seems to indicate this is a different issue though. It was a system bug that led to approximately 64 billion 2021 dollars erroneously being printed out as prizes in a single day. This was never factored in as a cost of doing business. This wasn't the same thing as putting a prize in an ad that was never meant to be redeemed since this was a bug to begin with. The problem is that an advertising campaign that quintuples your market share to a quarter of the soft drink market in a matter of months must have tapped into an extremely strong set of emotions and those will turn into an absolute fury if your campaign backfires so spectacularly.
- ezekiel68 5y agoI remembered that ad campaign and (more vaguely) the lawsuit the moment I saw the headline here. Before I clicked the link I said to myself, "Harrier jet, right?" This made me happy since I sometimes indulge in fear regarding cognitive decline.
- 55555 5y agoYou post this same comment every time this story resurfaces on the front page. :|
- speg 5y agoAre you suggesting he is indeed on the decline? :(
- NieDzejkob 5y agoI can't seem to find any other instance of this comment.
- xyzelement 5y agoI suspect the comment you are replying to executed what is called a joke.
- everyone 5y agoWhat kind of psychopath puts so much effort into getting money by abusing the legal system?
- cycomanic 5y agoIt's interesting and a sign of the failures of the justice system that "the same judges" (not necessarily literally) rule >An enforceable contract requires both parties’ signatures: Under existing law, any contract for the sale of goods worth $500+ must be evidenced by writing; Pepsi did not sign anything. While at the same time deem click through EULAs valid contracts.
- duxup 5y ago>at the same time deem click through EULAs valid contracts Is this actually the case? I'm not sure that it is... Regardless the points made in the Pepsi case are quite different than an EULA. That was only part of the reasons for the decision in the Pepsi case.
- SkittyDog 5y agoSome have, some haven't... Various US federal circuits are currently in dispute, so there are some interpretations where it's all legit, and others where it's not, or is limited... Also, various states have drastically different statutory laws that govern software sales & EULA enforceability. ... Point is, the parent poster is correct... A significant portion of legislatures & jurists believe EULAs to be valid contracts. Not all, but plenty enough.
- duxup 5y agoI think the other user has since edited their post so we would be talking past each other. When I responded there was nothing about what " A significant portion of legislatures & jurists believe".
- hakfoo 5y agoOne of the big weaknesses of the current US legal system is that the cost of access leaves a huge opening to ask for the moon. Aside from the general question "is a clickwrap EULA or ToS enforcable" there are a million tiny questions about specific clauses and terms in the 30-page contracts that are stapled to everything in sight these days. Many of them will never be litigated through, because the damages may be small or difficult to quantify, and either self-financing a case or finding a lawyer who's willing to take it on contingency or build a class-action may be difficult. I also wonder how often the mere threat of legal action is used as a bludgeon, even if a fully played-out and fair trial would show the threat to be based on unenforcable terms. (i. e. using non-disclosure clauses to try to hide malfeasance) Easier just to back down than to spend the next five years and six figures trying to defend yourself in court. We have a strangely quaint 18th-century model of "contracts made between parties of roughly equal negotiating power and legal knowledge". I'm not sure it makes sense to apply to companies that have spent dozens of man-years with retained lawyers to refine their contracts, then dump them in front of consumers whose legal training consists of the Saturday afternoon Law & Order marathon on channel 51. Yes, there are some escape hatches built into the system, but every time I see "our terms of service have changed" I know I'm getting reamed somewhere or somehow.
- hawkinsw 5y agoPretty much a classic in every 1L law school class.
- bdowling 5y agoThis and the "Carbolic Smoke Ball" case. (An advertisement purporting to offer £100 to anyone who catches influenza after using their product does not create a unilateral offer that can be accepted by catching influenza).
- tgsovlerkhgsel 5y agoThe Wikipedia article I found says that the court found it does create such an offer? (Or rather, an offer that can be accepted by buying and using a ball.)
- bdowling 5y agoYou’re right, I misremembered the ruling. As with most cases you read in law school, the issues are more important than the outcome.
- andrewmackrodt 5y agoSomething about the article is off. If purchasing a point costs 10 cents and the jet requires 7 million points, his cheque would need to be for $70,000,000, not $700,000.
- turingexam 5y agofyi think you mixed up dollars with cents
- jsploit 5y agoReminded me of this classic recording [0] of Verizon Customer Service failing to understand the difference between cents and dollars. [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MShv_74FNWU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MShv_74FNWU
- andrewmackrodt 5y agoOops, I did indeed, 70m cents.
- RickJWagner 5y agoHaha, reminds me of when Pepsi had the 6th largest military force in the world. True story, see below. https://nickyoder.com/5-minute-history-pepsi/ https://nickyoder.com/5-minute-history-pepsi/
- robertwt7 5y agoLol it always amaze me how people can be that persistent in trying to get what they want. He wants to get a jet for 7m points! I respect his persistence, I would never do that.. regardless, good read
- redm 5y agoIts funny and an interesting read. At the same time, this kind of frivolous litigation drives me nuts.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- jrjarrett 5y agoI’m sorry. Why on earth would any reasonable person think you could turn in 7 million points for a jet? It was a clever piece of advertising ruined because some self important snot could not see the humor.
- narrator 5y agoAt a company I was at, we ran a sweepstakes. The person who won was a person who just entered online sweepstakes for a living.
- irjustin 5y agoSo many people here talking about "False Advertising"[0] thinking that is enough. The pursuant likely has a case under a false advertising claim especially when considering: > For example, a lease advertisement for an automobile that promotes "$0 Down" may be misleading if significant and undisclosed charges are due at lease signing The problem is "false advertising" doesn't get him the jet. It just says Pepsi should be slapped on the wrist, made to change their advertisement. Non-compliance is: > orders to cease and desist, with fines up to $43,792 per violation should they occur. > injunctions by federal district courts. Violations of some Commission rules also could result in civil penalties of up to $40,654 per violation. Violations of court orders could result in civil or criminal contempt proceedings. > in some instances, refunds to consumers for actual damages in civil lawsuits. Leonard had to go after it being a contractual obligation if he wanted any chance at Pepsi giving him the jet or equivalent monetary value. The judge was correct. It's not a contract. Is it false advertising? Probably, but that wasn't the question at hand. [0] https://www.ftc.gov/tips-advice/business-center/guidance/advertising-marketing-internet-rules-road https://www.ftc.gov/tips-advice/business-center/guidance/adv...
- fennecfoxy 5y agoI support Pepsi in this. It's hilarious reading all of the comments from Americans, who will sue at the drop of a hat. Can't even make a joke in an ad without getting sued, so much for being a free country, ahaha.