By admin
Have you ever seen an advertised special in a store that seemed like a great price, only to find out that the advertised price was effective only after you received a mail-in rebate? How did you feel about that? If you are anything like most people, it didn’t phase you much. You probably thought, Well bottom line is if I get some money back in the mail which makes the item only cost that much, then that’s the price I can buy it for. But there is still that little asterisk in your brain about the discounted price, isn’t there? Somehow you know this isn’t quite like buying it at that advertised price.
After all you still do have to fork over all the money now and wait for a rebate to arrive, and there is at least a tinge of doubt in your mind that you will actually receive it. And for good reason! Retailers are getting worse and worse about honoring these rebate offers. They are looking for any excuse not to honor them and some of them go to ridiculous lengths to weasel out of their obligation. They make you dot a hundred i’s and cross and hundred t’s on three or four forms, send in a critical part of the packaging plus a printed receipt, and if you slip up on some minor point you blew it – no rebate.
Now, understand that just because you missed something on the form or sent the wrong part of the packaging in, the company doesn’t really doubt that you purchased the item. They can see just from the receipt alone that you are a legitimate customer. There is pretty much no chance that somebody is trying to scam them out of an unearned rebate. They know this. They are just trying to find a loophole – any loophole – to dishonor the price they advertised the item for. Electronics companies are especially notorious for doing this nowadays.
If you do somehow clear the obstacle course, you are likely to receive a prepaid visa debit card which you must spend at retail establishments in order to redeem. What’s more, if you don’t do it pretty quick the thing will expire and you will lose the rebate. It’s not cash. It’s not a check you can deposit in your bank account. It can’t go into your savings account, cannot go into your kid’s college fund, cannot practically be given to your favorite charity. You have to use it at a store or a restaurant in order to redeem it. And you won’t get it for many weeks, possibly months after you mail in the required forms.
This still all might seem OK to you. After all, you live in this society and so you are out spending money in stores quite often, and even the grocery store will accept that prepaid debit card. But let me tell you a considerable percentage of those cards expire without being used. They go into a purse pocket or a drawer and you find them in 8 months expired and worthless. You didn’t get the advertised price. As a matter of fact there is a good chance that as you are reading this some Christmas present you purchased a couple months ago cost you more than you planned on. Because right now, that rebate card is lost somewhere, if you even remembered to sit down for 30 minutes and figure out the claiming process in the first place.
What this all adds up to is terribly misleading marketing, if not blatant false advertising. It’s amazing that it is still legal. When Mama Riah and I purchased new cell phones recently the girl at the store told us to make sure we didn’t put the rebate claim forms in the same envelope or we would only get one of them. Now isn’t that utterly ridiculous, even perhaps borderline criminal? We should all get together as a society and just say no to any product advertised with a mail-in rebate price. Either that or start a massive class-action lawsuit.
Papa Riah
Technorati Tags: advertising, rebates, scams
By admin
The 2009 Superbowl commercials were just as bad, if not worse, than the 2008 Superbowl ads. I mean they were outright terrible! I was embarrassed for these companies that are putting them out. Now I realize that it has become a tradition in America to try and create humorous ads for the big game. The problem with humorous ads is that they are usually not good commercials. There are exceptions to this of course, but those exceptions are not to be found in any of the past few years’ Superbowl commercials. These are the most expensive commercials on television to both produce and air. For them to flop so horribly is inexcusable - and executive heads should rightfully be rolling.
Not only were not any of the ads good commercials, but they weren’t funny either. I never even broke a smile. Perhaps there is no longer any true creative talent working at any of the ad agencies responsible for the insult to the American intelligence that was perpetrated upon us today. What an incredible waste of money and resources during these times when both should be so precious. I wonder how many jobs Pepsi, Coke, Doritos, Anheuser Busch, and Go Daddy could have collectively created with the money they blew on failed attempts at humor. Certainly none of their ads will be responsible for creating any additional revenue, so they may as well have burned the money.
Here are a few of the less memorable highlites:
• Go Daddy further degraded it’s image by producing a commercial featuring female race car driver Danika Patrick taking a shower. What naked female race car drivers in the shower have to do with registering internet domain names is beyond me. I have never seen anything cheaper, less creative, and less funny.
• Some stupid health drink company or another came back again with more dancing cartoon lizards, mixed in with some dancing hip hop stars. I didn’t know or remember the company when they did this last year, and I still don’t know who they are nor will I recognize their products if I ever see them on store shelves. And it wasn’t entertaining in the least.
• A business meeting in which the company served Bud Light threw an employee out a glass window when he suggested cutting back on expenses by not providing beer at all the business meetings. This was not funny and worse yet suggests that the product is expensive.
• Audi provided the action with a seemingly never-ending car chase scene which suggested that criminals through the past few generations could always rely on Audis when it comes to needing a getaway car. (If that wasn’t the message sorry, but that’s what I got out of it.)
• Doritos ran two commercials (this must be a recession-proof business) both which featured senseless violence that was supposed to be funny. I will give them credit for doing a good job of product branding however, as the Doritos bag was prominently displayed by the guy smashed on the front of the bus windshield. But somewhere in my subconscious mind I now think that consuming this product is dangerous.
• Castrol motor oil came out of the woodwork with an incredibly expensive commercial that pushed the limits of being politically correct. I actually would have liked this one if they didn’t end it by imprinting in my mind the image of a guy making out with a monkey. With that image forever imprinted in my brain I will now go out of my way to make sure I never use that particular brand.
• Then there were the movie trailers. Hollywood must not be in a recession when they can tack on millions to a movie budget for trailers on films that will not be out for months. I was horrified to see an upcoming sequel for The Fast and the Furious. As if there aren’t enough insane twenty-something year olds in lowered Hondas risking my life every time I am on the freeway already!
There was a very consistent theme in all the failed attempts at humor in the ads this year. I cannot quite pinpoint it, but it was almost like the same three guys wrote most of the commercials. You know what I mean? It was all cheap sight gag stuff and no comedy of any substance. Go to any third-rate comedy club and pick a few struggling standup comics and they could have produced ads ten times more entertaining, guaranteed. Of course the product branding probably will still suffer, but at least we would get a decent laugh.
Papa Riah
Technorati Tags: superbowl, superbowl ads, superbowl commercials
By admin
How do you feel when you leave a store, walk back to your car, and find a flyer on your windshield? Happy and eager to read the flyer? Or annoyed at being inconvenienced with it? My guess is the latter. You have just been burdened with a piece of trash that you are now responsible for disposing of. In fact in today’s society you are responsible for making sure it gets recycled properly.
Perhaps you have even been so annoyed that you let it make a litterbug out of you, pulling it off your windshield and letting it flutter to the pavement on the parking lot. Doesn’t that make you want to sort of hurry up and speed away at that point? You are now a fugitive attempting to make a getaway! Didn’t plan on that when running to the store for milk did you?
Somehow, you have now committed a crime - one which you probably think you are justified in, as the real blame goes to the company distributing those stupid flyers. Doesn’t it? Truth be told, the judge will probably not see it that way. What the company did was legal. What you did was not. They did not commit an intentional act of littering. You did. They are allowed to advertise in this manner and you are responsible for properly dealing with the literature you received.
Have you ever not even noticed it until after you started driving away? This happens sometimes with the smaller ones. That can really be annoying, especially if it creates a blind spot. As a matter of fact I have (on occasion) not noticed large ones until after I was on the road and suddenly had to deal with a rather hazardous blind spot on my front windshield. Note that this is also illegal - for me, not the company who just made a criminal out of me while I wasn’t looking.
The most tempting way to deal with this situation is - you guessed it - by turning on your windshield wipers. Been there, done that! It doesn’t always work. In fact sometimes this only repositions the flyer in a place that creates an even larger blindspot and you may be forced to pull over and deal with it. How embarrassing! If by some miracle you are able to free it with the windshield wiper, you are now littering on the highway - a much more serious offense than littering in the parking lot and it could end up costing you $500. Or worse, it could fly off and land on the windshield of some total idiot behind you and cause a traffic accident.
If that happens, how do you feel about going to the furniture store sale?
What are these companies thinking with this kind of marketing? How can it possibly work? Are we are such dolts that we will remember a sale at the cleaners and not remember that it nearly got us arrested or killed finding out about it?
And what about these kids they hire to distribute the flyers. They aren’t exactly the kind of people I would choose for handling delicate equipment on my car. I wonder how many windshield wiper arms have been broken in this process. I wonder how many kids who broke windshield wipers were stupid enough to still leave the flyer afterwards. I wonder how many people who had this happen to them were too stupid to even put two and two together and figure out how their car was damaged.
Papa Riah
Technorati Tags: Humor, Advertising, Marketing
Have you ever seen an advertised special in a store that seemed like a great price, only to find out that the advertised price was effective only after you received a mail-in rebate? How did you feel about that? If you are anything like most people, it didn’t phase you much. You probably thought, Well bottom line is if I get some money back in the mail which makes the item only cost that much, then that’s the price I can buy it for. But there is still that little asterisk in your brain about the discounted price, isn’t there? Somehow you know this isn’t quite like buying it at that advertised price.