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27 years ago, Hoover offered free international flights with any £100 purchase
- noncoml 4y agoIsn’t that the plot for “Crazy Stupid Love”
- melbournegrad 4y agoPunch Drunk Love, but that was a different scheme based on this guy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Phillips_(entrepreneur) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Phillips_(entrepreneur)
- noncoml 4y agoRight! Punch Drunk Love, that’s it!
- flembat 4y agoThis was real, my wife's mother bought us a cheap plastic red hoover for 127.00. I stayed on the phone for seven hours, hoover offered us one flight date in a weeks time, we got proper flights from London to New York on British Airways, and took our three year old up the empire state building, son is 30 now. It was January and snowing like crazy, we stayed with friends and shovelled snow from their drive in the morning. Just to add people in New York were really friendly, talked to us, and helped us get our push chair on and off the trains.
- byoung2 4y agoAlso in the running: https://www.cbc.ca/radio/undertheinfluence/the-bottle-cap-snafu-that-nearly-cost-pepsi-32-billion-1.6305749 https://www.cbc.ca/radio/undertheinfluence/the-bottle-cap-sn...
- permo-w 4y agosounds like pepsi got off lightly
- II2II 4y agoGiven the phrasing of the article, it sounds like an "honest" mistake in Pepsi's case. The intent to distribute two prizes likely means the number was predetermined or that it was to be selected from a small pool of numbers that had a low run. On the other hand, the Hoover example was based upon pure dishonesty. They made a claim, put in a bunch of rules to disqualify people, took steps to slant the rules in their favour, then hoped it would be enough to win the numbers game. Hope because they were relying upon assumptions that were very much out of their control.
- permo-w 4y agoit worked once, so let’s do it again - but BIGGER - is such a classic business mistake
- fabianhjr 4y agoAlso ignoring any sort of risk analysis; its hilarious that they were warned by risk professionals and decided to proceed anyways.
- chiefalchemist 4y agoReading this and how unprofitable the offer was it almost seems like they (i.e., executives) intentionally tanked the company. The inspiration for Ted Lasso? :) "The math was concerning: On the sale of a £119 vacuum cleaner, Hoover made a profit of £30. The two free fights that came with it were worth at least £600. This meant that each customer who followed through with the promotion cost Hoover £570."
- andylynch 4y agoReally impressive. That’s a bigger fiasco than when Gerald Ratner said out loud that a prawn sandwich would outlast the earrings sold in his stores.
- DangitBobby 4y agoI think this "sales promotion" is actually just fraud?
- ouid 4y agoYeah the white washing of this extremely clear cut case of fraud is journalistic malpractice. "Oh look at these cheeky things Hoover did to try to "fleece" their customers in a flagrant attempt to breach contract." This is like the toy yoda story.
- OrangeMonkey 4y agoMost "sales promotions" in the 90's were little more than fraud. Most of us remember the period where almost everything in computer stores were "free after rebate." "Emachine 1997 model FREE AFTER REBATE", "Pack of 50 CDR FREE AFTER REBATE". The rebate involved you filling out a form with the original proof of purchase, sending it off, and either never hearing from them again or having it denied. "Sorry, wrong receipt, send us the real one" but it was already gone. Now, I assume anything with a rebate is fraud. The insight from this article is that we were right.
- CalRobert 4y agoI had about a 95% success rate. As a broke student in the early naughties I got almost everything tech FAR. CompUSA and Frys (pour one out) were especially good. I miss the cameraderie of the Black Friday Frys line.
- LegitShady 4y ago>early naughties Haram
- notyourwork 4y agoI don’t recall ever getting one denied. Maybe I was lucky but those CD rebates were huge for me as a kid to have infinite supply of media to write content to. Music, games, apps, etc.
- astura 4y agoYep, Same, I've filled out probably 25+ rebates in my life and I always got the rebate, eventually. You have to make sure you read and follow the fine print though - the instructions are very specific. The GP probably didn't read the fine print. I still have several spindles of CD-Rs (and later DVD-Rs) that were free (or maybe $1) after rebate.
- londons_explore 4y agoSimilar 'cashback' deals exist even now... You rarely get 100% back. Often there isn't too much fine print either, and the payout rate is ~90% in my experience. Sometimes they insist in paying in amazon vouchers or some other 'almost cash' currency. They are very common on subscriptions.
- b112 4y agoThe trick with "under the cap" winnings, was to ship the lot with the grand prize, to a slow consumption area. I grew up in a rural area, but one with a tourist season. The population almost tripled in tourist season, and tourists consume far more "on the run" consumables. More than one local won the grand prize, months after a 6 month contest ended. I won a brand new car, 2 months past win date.
- syrrim 4y agoMeaning they didn't even honour it? Very shady.
- b112 4y agoThe cans/bottles, and promotional material did clearly stipulate when the contest ended. By shipping the cans/bottles to an area of low consumption, a month before the end of promotion, it ensures it would be unlikely that the winner would find a bottle cap before end of promotion.
- crustycoder 4y agoDon't what the problem was, I got my free holiday to Orlando out of it, on the day I wanted and from the airport I wanted... ;-) The article missed out one important detail - the deal included very overpriced accommodation, which is how they were going to claw the cost of the flights back. But they failed to make booking the accommodation through the deal mandatory, so people took the flights and not the accommodation.
- IMSAI8080 4y agoYep and overpriced travel insurance too. It wasn't just the bureaucratic restrictions they were relying on. The plan was the travel agents would do high pressure upselling to claw back the cost but the public didn't bite in sufficient numbers. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/3704669.stm http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/3704669.stm
- drc500free 4y agoBasically, Groupon.
- traceroute66 4y agoI don't know, I'd say "one of the worst". To be truly "worst", I'd say you'd have to feature in the textbooks of students of English contract law. See, for example, Carlill v Carbolic Smoke Ball Company[1] which is a famous example used in every single textbook. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carlill_v_Carbolic_Smoke_Ball_Co https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carlill_v_Carbolic_Smoke_Ball_...
- amelius 4y agoHow about: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pepsi_Number_Fever https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pepsi_Number_Fever > 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. Somehow, the company and the brand still exist.
- bsjaux628 4y agoFrom the article, 3 victims were PepsiCo workers and 2 were a teacher and a student that were caught in the blast of a pipe bomb thrown at a PepsiCo truck. How is the company to blame for the action of a mob of idiots and anarchists?
- amelius 4y agoBy provoking mass anger? > About 22,000 people took legal action against PepsiCo; at least 689 civil suits and 5,200 criminal complaints for fraud and deception were filed.
- tedunangst 4y agoNope, I'm still blaming the bomber for the bomb.
- thatguy0900 4y agoThat's what they should do, sue. Throwing grenades at warehouses accomplishes nothing. At least go for the ceos if you must do that.
- raisedbyninjas 4y agoAn early internet promotion that would have probably been more costly if they had the same advertising reach was online casino deposit bonuses. In the early 2000s it was popular for online casinos to offer bonuses on deposits used to play. Say 50% or 100% bonus up to $2000. The only catches were one bonus per household and you had to bet at least the full amount of the deposit and bonus before cashing out. There was no limit on the game to use it with or other hoops to jump through. So it was pretty easy nearly break even in black-jack for 30 minutes, cash out, and move onto the next.
- jamiek88 4y agoEvery single word of your post was great, correct, but meaningless at the time except for two words near the end. Cash. Out. Man, I went through all those hoops, spent weeks, scamming those systems, real money too, but mostly playing the game you outlined but when it came time to get that money suddenly that sites admins were in cayman. Then Bermuda. Then Sri Lanka and their English suddenly wasn’t too good! Once I ended up with a perosnal cheque from one of their guys as I was bitching on the forum making them look bad. Can’t believe a) I cashed it and it and b) it wasn’t a scam.
- raisedbyninjas 4y agoBelievable. I just never had a problem or weird delay.
- kuboble 4y agoI actually got 600$ from an online casino like that. (2007 iirc) I got free 50$ but had to wager 2k$ before cashing out. Played some slot machine, run hot and had 600$ by the time the bonus cleared. I took out cash from ATM a couple days later.
- mellosouls 4y agoThis reminds me of American Airlines "Lifetime Unlimited First-Class Flying" pass snapped up by a lucky few to AA's regret. https://simpleflying.com/american-airlines-aairpass/ https://simpleflying.com/american-airlines-aairpass/
- cosmodisk 4y agoThis and entry level books on legal contracts make a fantastic read on how things can go wrong very quickly for those who promise heaven and then some more.
- karthickgururaj 4y agoThis was recently covered in depth in "Now I Know" [0] - a random corner of Internet with quirky collection of articles. I have been a happy reader these past many weeks. [0] https://nowiknow.com/the-marketing-stunt-that-vacuumed-up-a-whole-company/ https://nowiknow.com/the-marketing-stunt-that-vacuumed-up-a-...
- ww520 4y agoThe U.S. Treasury used to run a promotion on the online sale of dollar coins to encourage the usage of them in circulation. They accepted credit cards for the online purchases and shipped the coins free of charge. People just bought them with credit cards that gave rebates, points, or miles, and then deposited the coins in banks to get back the cash.
- no_wizard 4y agoI have heard of this before. I even met someone who claimed they they would do this with their high cash back cards and claimed to reap thousands in rewards with unlimited cash back. Even said they would open new cards to do this with they high dollar promo periods and high credit limits and would just do this while the promotion was active. Claimed to have made thousands on it, maybe even 10s of thousands I always wondered if your credit scorn would be all jacked because it would report this high to zero usage
- arcanemachiner 4y ago> I always wondered if your credit scorn would be all jacked because it would report this high to zero usage I shall add this to my list of unverifiable FICO score rumors.
- userbinator 4y agoIt's called "manufactured spending".
- matgessel 4y ago> temporary impact on your credit score. Applying for multiple credit cards at once will reduce your score for a few months; if you will be applying for a mortgage, car loan, job, apartment, or other situation that requires a check of your credit, it is a good idea to stop all churning activity as far in advance as possible. Most conservative estimates recommend at least 2 years as "hard pulls" from credit card inquiries will fall off your credit report in 2 years. > your homeowners insurance rate can be impacted by your churning activity, even though your credit score remains high. Your insurer regular does a soft pull on your credit, and they may increase your rate if there are a lot of new credit lines, even though your overall credit score and utilization may remain in good standing. https://www.reddit.com/r/churning/wiki/index https://www.reddit.com/r/churning/wiki/index
- vr46 4y agoMy friend and I actually did this! We bought a Hoover, got flights to New York - I flew out months and months later in summer 1993 - and the Hoover itself we gave to my parents, and it’s STILL there at my late parents’ place, working. Helluva deal for us.
- fiftyacorn 4y agoSad thing was it was a last ditch attempt to save jobs at a few hoover factories in the UK. Redundancies followed and the last factories closed in 2002
- davidgerard 4y ago(2019)
- ghaff 4y agoI confess that I don't actually know why rebates went so far out of fashion. I assume companies figured out better ways to price discriminate and enough people got to the point of "what's a stamp?" that even many price sensitive people weren't reeled in by rebates. A random piece of trivia is that most rebate forms went to Young America in Minnesota. A long ago company I worked for supplied them with a lot of their computing gear.
- bombcar 4y agohttps://www.menards.com/main/home.html https://www.menards.com/main/home.html BUT lesser known https://www.homedepotrebates11percent.com https://www.homedepotrebates11percent.com
- tfsh 4y agoMy mother used this to go on holiday (Greece if I recall, however I may be many thousands of miles off). We still have the very same Hoover, so for her it wasn't a bad deal.
- musicale 4y agoDisastrous promotions notwithstanding, didn't Dyson eclipse Hoover by developing a greatly improved design (bagless/cyclonic, which has since become a popular standard design for vacuum cleaners?)
- thesaintlives 4y agoDid Dyson develop a better design? Not in my opinion. There hoovers suck (not in good way). Bagless designs is also most certainly not a new thing...
- musicale 4y agoYes, the modern dual cyclone bagless vacuum is Dyson's invention[1] and was subsequently adopted by the industry as a whole (including Hoover, Electrolux, etc..) Cyclonic separation had previously been used in central vacuum systems and canister vacuums but not in portable upright vacuums. The design was so successful that Dyson became the most popular vacuum cleaner brand in the UK, and it remains so today. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Dyson https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Dyson
- paulpauper 4y agoIt's sorta like this with many vc-backed companies. Operate at a loss to get market share in the hope that some customers can be billed later or raise prices.
- NomDePlum 4y agoMyself and a friend bought a hoover for the flights to the U.S. I've no memory of the application process being difficult and we even returned the hoover to the store and swapped it for the equivalent in Sega mega drive games without any issues. I actually went out to the US separately as part of a student work America summer visa and my friend and another person used the voucher to meet me in Orlando. This was definitely late 1992 so very sure the quote about no flights being honoured initially aren't accurate.
- thesaintlives 4y agoI knew a guy employed to work in the 'free flights' call center. He was a total sleaze ball. His job was literally "do and say anything not to give them flights..
- noneeeed 4y agoThis was a weirdly strong memory from my childhood. The BBC’s consumer rights programme Watchdog, which my parents always watched, would cover it on an almost weekly basis. It really was a staggeringly stupid thing to do. And it was weird to watch Groupon convince so many small businesses to do similarly ruinous promotions in the 2000s.
- jbigelow76 4y agoMaybe I'm the only one, and man would I love some way to confirm or deny this (given that Harold Ramis is dead, and was a primary writer, this isn't likely) but did anyone that happens to be an 80's movie nerd pick up on the name Spangler in the linked article? The article says in 1908 James Murray Spangler invents and patents the first vacuum cleaner. In 1984 we get the movie "Ghostbusters" in which one of the main protagonists is Egon Spangler who invents a way to to trap ghosts (by "sucking" them into traps.)
- TMWNN 4y ago>Egon Spangler Spengler. Not Spangler.
- jbigelow76 4y agoSo it is, good catch.
- bloomingeek 4y agoAw, the rebate days! After a few errors I became the rebate king. I only purchased on sell with rebate included. I always kept receipts and scanned everything for back up. I only had to make the dreaded phone call to complain a few times. Oh, and don't forget to deposit the rebate check quickly!
- tgsovlerkhgsel 4y agoI've seen slightly milder forms of such scams in the US, a lot milder forms in some European countries outside of Germany, and basically none in Germany. I think it's a combination of the public not expecting/tolerating it (i.e. any company involved in it would suffer a severe hit to its reputation) and strong consumer protection laws that could make it very expensive for the companies involved, but not having to constantly be on one's guard and assume that anything you see is a scam is nice. Less friction is better for society, and having to figure out whether what you see is what it seems to be or a scam trying to mislead you is friction.