4 ms·
I forget the name but during the dot-com era there was a company who sold stuff like TVs at vastly inflated prices (something like 10x retail) to consumers on t
by United857 4y ago
I forget the name but during the dot-com era there was a company who sold stuff like TVs at vastly inflated prices (something like 10x retail) to consumers on the premise that they could get a 100% rebate by mailing in a form thus making the purchase "for free".
Their business model was based on the assumption that a percentage of customers would forget to do this. Unfortunately, when hundreds or thousands of $ is on the line, people were very diligent! Unsurprisingly that company didn't last long.
- hn_throwaway_99 4y agoYeah, it baffles me that whoever did the planning for this thought that "making it cumbersome to fill out" would work the same as for, say, a 5% rebate on a small purchase vs. when the rebate is worth thousands of dollars.
- ferrocarraiges 4y agoI wonder if the decision-maker could have been wealthy enough that thousands of dollars felt insignificant to them. At some point, you lose sight of how much things cost, because the answer is almost always "not much". Reminds me of Jessica Walter's character in Arrested Development: "It's a banana, Michael - how much could it cost? Ten dollars?"
- grogenaut 4y agoHow many years till that's true
- Tarsul 4y agoPeople in 2100 will laugh at that joke and think "that's way too cheap. What is she thinking!"
- _carbyau_ 4y agoHas happened before: https://www.theonion.com/fuck-everything-were-doing-five-blades-1819584036 https://www.theonion.com/fuck-everything-were-doing-five-bla...
- teagoat 4y agohttps://www.reddit.com/r/StupidFood/comments/yavk2n/banana_sushi_from_a_vegan_restaurant_in_boulder/ https://www.reddit.com/r/StupidFood/comments/yavk2n/banana_s...
- hattmall 4y agoActually it's pretty genius. They probably made a killing, they went out being 80 million in the hole due to unpaid rebates and ended up paying out something like 2 cents on the dollar. I'm sure they got decent salaries and made money from upstream purchases. Assuming no one here went to jail this is essentially a legal way to run a ponzi scheme.
- stavros 4y agoIf the buyer didn't care how much things cost, they'd buy the $500 TV at the shop, not through some crazy "$500 TV for $5000" scheme. Rich people aren't idiots, I think the target customer for this thing is someone who's so price sensitive that they'll go to huge lengths to get a TV for free.
- hinkley 4y agoWhen a chore pays more than your day job, people often find a way to get it done.
- ars 4y agoThey were called CyberRebate. I got so much stuff I didn't need from them. I filled my entire dining table with stuff, and got my family to help me with an assembly line style UPC cutting and pasting operation. I even scripted their website to auto-generate the rebate form. The final batch never paid out, but I was able to file a credit card chargeback for most, but not all, of it. I scripted that too. I had to print and fax around 400 pages of documentation to the credit card company. (Print directly to fax either didn't exist then, or at least I didn't have it.) It's been how many years? And I still have stuff from them in my house, some in use, some just brand new in a box. I was getting 1.5% cashback from the credit card I used, and everything was completely free.
- seattle_spring 4y agoOh man I remember that site! Adding this comment to remind myself to research it later. Edit: cyberrebate.com [1] [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/CyberRebate https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/CyberRebate