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Why nobody ever wins the car at the mall

thehustle.co

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Re: Why nobody ever wins the car at the mall

#241

Post by pcwalton »

starpilot wrote: post #23
Animats wrote: post #9

Since this is a California on-site thing, California sweepstakes law applies.[1] - "The exact nature and approximate value of the prizes must be disclosed clearly and conspicuously when they are offered." - "The law prohibits the company from misrepresenting the odds of receiving any item offered." - Prohibited: "Failing to award and distribute all prizes of the value and type represented." Online complaint form here…

Why haven't they all been shutdown if they are clearly illegal? Also, I've seen these across the country.

The local DA and the DOJ have limited resources, probably. Popehat often talks about this.

Re: Why nobody ever wins the car at the mall

#242

Post by braythwayt »

gregpilling wrote: post #222
lysp wrote: post #215

About 30 years ago in Australia There was a competition at the local shopping centre. Spend $20 at any shop in the centre, show your receipt and you get a chance to win the displayed car. The chance involved folding a paper plane, and then trying to get it into the car through the sunroof. Which was only open a small crack. A friend of the family tried about 5 times over the day and never got close. They came back qu…

There are companies that specialize in insuring risks like that. It is a whole sub industry of insuring unlikely to win contests. https://www.holeinoneinsurance.com/how-much-does-it-cost.htm...

Way back in the day, I had a reinsurance company as a client. For those unfamiliar, reinsurance companies insure insurance companies.

For example, they might insure a standard insurance company for automobile accidents, with a $1,000,000 deductible. So the retail insurance company handles payouts up to a million dollars, but when there's a really wild claim, the reinsurance company pays the insurance company for anything over a million.

They end up specializing in rare events that involve large payouts, so they also did things like the hole-in-one insurance you mention above, very common with charity gold tournaments.

They had many stories to tell, including the fellow who played a lot of golf and collected three hole-in-one payouts, and another story about a truck that went off a mountain road, slid down and blocked train tracks, causing a train derailment, with a town below the train that needed to be evacuated.

Re: Why nobody ever wins the car at the mall

#243

Post by Rjevski »

Cthulhu_ wrote: post #42
dawnerd wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They just blame it on their phone company and the like. I know a few people that knowingly hand out info at conventions yet will blame everything but. Might have to do with the marketing companies waiting long enough and people quickly forgetting about them entering their info. So when the spam calls hit they just think of whatever company they know for sure has it. Side note: it’s almost impossible to book anything…

This is why the GDPR and similar things are good; you can sign up, but they have to delete your data if you ask them for it. It makes schemes like this a lot less er, 'final', so to speak.

However, this only works if GDPR ends up being enforced, which doesn’t look too great so far considering how many sites violate the regulation with non-compliant forced consent screens.

Re: Why nobody ever wins the car at the mall

#244

Post by Mister_Snuggles »

macintux wrote: post #231
Mister_Snuggles wrote: post #223

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You could be right, I can’t remember if the times that happened were when I originated the call or my friend did. I know it didn’t work all the time, and I think it stopped working at some point too. This was back in the days when you could tell roughly where someone lived by their phone number - 43x—xxxx was south Edmonton (but not Mill Woods or Riverbend), 2xx-xxxx was Calgary, area codes didn’t matter because the…

Actually, I’m coming around to your point of view. I think it was the recipient who controlled the “transaction”. The world was so very different. Waiting for that 0 to finally work its way around the dial, good grief. Especially since as a kid I was perpetually afraid any phone number that included a 0 might lead me to somehow get connected to a phone operator, so I wanted to dial the following number as quickly as…

One of the things that radio hosts here joke about is how kids with a zero in their phone number had fewer friends. “Oh, I don’t want to call Bobby, he’s got two zeroes in his phone number, it takes so long to dial”. Between that and risking talking to An Adult and getting In Trouble, I wonder how true that is.

Re: Why nobody ever wins the car at the mall

#245

Post by technofiend »

lysp wrote: post #215

About 30 years ago in Australia There was a competition at the local shopping centre. Spend $20 at any shop in the centre, show your receipt and you get a chance to win the displayed car. The chance involved folding a paper plane, and then trying to get it into the car through the sunroof. Which was only open a small crack. A friend of the family tried about 5 times over the day and never got close. They came back qu…

There's a furniture salesman here in Houston who makes heavy use of that sort of promotion. His latest if you spend $3,000 on a mattress and the Astros win the "2018 baseball final championship series" you'll be refunded the purchase price.

Not sure why it's worded so formally; must be a legal thing.

Re: Why nobody ever wins the car at the mall

#246

Post by raisedbyninjas »

hutzlibu wrote: post #181
emacdona wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I always thought it would be kinda fun to get a group of people together (maybe a Meetup) who would attend timeshare pitches for fun. The goal would be to pack the room with people who had no intention of buying in. Time is money, and I suspect the best way to cost them money is to waste their time.

yes, but you would be wasting your time - unless you all enjoy it.

That's why you attend the ones that serve free drinks.

Re: Why nobody ever wins the car at the mall

#247

Post by 6cd6beb »

userbinator wrote: post #104
blowski wrote: post #13

Another shady “competition” is the “complete this form and get a laptop”. Except it’s not just this form, it’s this form, and this form, and this form, and this form... until the user gives up. Each of those forms goes to a sales call list. And when you give up, you’ve already completed half a dozen forms - and you’ve given all that data for free. If somebody does ever complete all of the forms, they get told the lap…

I know some people who automated those but basically fed them fake generated data, and managed to make quite a bit before they got banned. Probably not legal, but AFAIK the responses to those surveys aren't legally binding either, and the more "poisoned the well", the less profiling and tracking they can do, so I don't have any moral problems with that.

Is there a good way to find these free laptop scams?

I'm looking for good use cases to sharpen my selenium skills and like wasting scammer's time.

Re: Why nobody ever wins the car at the mall

#248

Post by jldugger »

wmeredith wrote: post #106
TheAceOfHearts wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In my experience, it's quite common to have raffles and similar events rigged. I've heard of lots of companies that have booths at conferences where they scan your badge for a """chance""" to win some prize. Then they look up each person's credentials, and if someone is high up in a company that they wish to establish communications with, they give that person a prize to get their foot in the door.

This is just a modern version of the fishbowl of business cards. You put out the bowl and say drop in your card to win “x”. Then when it’s time to do the drawing you look through the cards to see who’s the most advantageous person to establish contact with.

Perhaps it's time to test that theory and chum the fishbowl waters with a doctored business card too advantageous to pass over.

Re: Why nobody ever wins the car at the mall

#249

Post by eric_h »

tikhonj wrote: post #44
Cthulhu_ wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm fairly sure there's federal laws that forbid that. Of course, it's not a crime if you don't get caught. Plus there's a small sub-story in the article about someone that did win a Tesla, but couldn't afford the taxes they had to pay to actually get it. You can win a car but you have to be able to pay taxes and insurance for it, too.

The sub-story about the Tesla is an example of one of the "other types of car giveaways" that is actually legitimate—not the telemarketing scam.

That sub story also takes place in a location where the local authorities are very active in finding and squashing scams (Vegas).

Re: Why nobody ever wins the car at the mall

#250

Post by dpiers »

technofiend wrote: post #245
lysp wrote: post #215

About 30 years ago in Australia There was a competition at the local shopping centre. Spend $20 at any shop in the centre, show your receipt and you get a chance to win the displayed car. The chance involved folding a paper plane, and then trying to get it into the car through the sunroof. Which was only open a small crack. A friend of the family tried about 5 times over the day and never got close. They came back qu…

There's a furniture salesman here in Houston who makes heavy use of that sort of promotion. His latest if you spend $3,000 on a mattress and the Astros win the "2018 baseball final championship series" you'll be refunded the purchase price. Not sure why it's worded so formally; must be a legal thing.

Terms like “Super Bowl” and “World Series” are trademarked, so advertisers use phrases like “the Big Game” or “baseball final championship series”, in this case, to avoid a lawsuit.
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