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Why nobody ever wins the car at the mall (2018)

thehustle.co

201–210 of 264 posts

Re: Why nobody ever wins the car at the mall (2018)

#202

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When you say 'footie' that makes me think you are Australian. "Raffles" in australia have very specific legal requirements.

Go 'Pies!

I’m beginning to question if HN really is full of the smartest and brightest :).

(Carn the Lions)

Re: Why nobody ever wins the car at the mall (2018)

#203

Welcome to the ecosystem of lead-generation, and the specialized marketing campaigns which drive business sales. One of my earliest technical jobs was writing the middle-ware systems that handled lead data, and tracked the sales conversion rates of the companies we served. As an aside, it is the worst job I ever had in any of my careers… In general, you are never dealing with a single company: 1. An advertiser operat…

I do the same thing with every cold-call power-sales phone call I get. I try to keep them on the line as long as possible, while paying as little attention as possible. Put the phone on speaker, turn down the volume a little, and carry on working on my computer. I feel that the only way to end spam (email and phone), is to take up as much time of the spammer as possible. If all 25m recipients of an email scam replied…

There's an old project that does exactly that! Lenny has some long vids up on youtube. I suppose the next step is using some of the newer AI stuff to improve the interaction...

https://lennytroll.com/

Re: Why nobody ever wins the car at the mall (2018)

#204
post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We all did buddy.. we all did.

Kinda funny how that comment is flag-killed, but an equally unverifiable anecdote is the top comment on the previous discussion, and it claims the same thing: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17400832

Perhaps because one provides no further detail, or context to add relevance?

Re: Why nobody ever wins the car at the mall (2018)

#205
post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would disagree. There are several sections of STEM where there really isnt much for you. What are you supposed to achieve with a bachelors in physics?

> What are you supposed to achieve with a bachelors in physics Start an internet payment, space exploration, electronic vehicle, tunnel boring, or direct brain-computer interface company. The mean ROI on a bachelors in physics is probably the highest in STEM. Apparently, they're also popular on Wall Street

Ah, "mean ROI". What's the median ROI? What does the distribution look like?

Re: Why nobody ever wins the car at the mall (2018)

#206

Welcome to the ecosystem of lead-generation, and the specialized marketing campaigns which drive business sales. One of my earliest technical jobs was writing the middle-ware systems that handled lead data, and tracked the sales conversion rates of the companies we served. As an aside, it is the worst job I ever had in any of my careers… In general, you are never dealing with a single company: 1. An advertiser operat…

I do the same thing with every cold-call power-sales phone call I get. I try to keep them on the line as long as possible, while paying as little attention as possible. Put the phone on speaker, turn down the volume a little, and carry on working on my computer. I feel that the only way to end spam (email and phone), is to take up as much time of the spammer as possible. If all 25m recipients of an email scam replied…

Unfortunately, automated IVR systems have become difficult to quickly spot thanks to Google Machine Learning based NLP, and your telecom company still pays the robocall campaign even if you never answer due to how the legacy phone systems were designed. Additionally, while the VoIP based phone centers boxes allowed inexpensive/free long distance, they also provided the unscrupulous unlimited outbound traffic to cold-call users. Even if your telecom only pays fractions of a penny to receive the call, a third-world teenagers computer time is likely worth far less than you'd guess. ;-)

While the number-filters on modern smart-phones are fairly good (origin spoofing is illegal), these devices still suffer from other problems like app lamer-ware stripping contact lists (is your "cloud backup" on by default?).

Re: Why nobody ever wins the car at the mall (2018)

#207

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Still orders of magnitude cheaper than the amount of money scammers con out of the public every year.

In lots of cases, this is demonstrably not true. Sure some scammers might make millions but many make much less. Look at the average cost for prison, the cost of the police and Courts and it can add up to much more. I'm not saying that you should only jail people if it's cheaper but society cannot afford to incarcerate everybody who commits a crime, not only for the money but the effect it has on ex-cons who can't fi…

The government does nothing about the overwhelming majority of small time scammers. It’s left to the civil courts and small claims courts. When the feds do prosecute scams, it’s typically for large dollar value schemes that defraud tens of millions or more.

So we already have that soft on crime reality when it comes to scamming and false advertising. The average person believes the government is far, far more active than it really is in this type of issue. Crime pays and most criminals get away with it.

Re: Why nobody ever wins the car at the mall (2018)

#208

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"We researched it and contracted a sweepstakes company who helped us run the sweepstakes legally."

The reason I asked is because almost every sweepstakes I see on youtube/instagram/tiktok violates this so I am not ever sure all these "sweepstakes companies" know the rules.

Ive found that its always incredibly hidden and requires some kind of paid postage where the non free option is like what OP described

Re: Why nobody ever wins the car at the mall (2018)

#209

It's unbelievable that showing a car when it's not being awarded doesn't fall under any sort of false advertising law.

It's pretty easy to be deceptive without needing to be false. A lot of advertising these days just use a mix of clever selective language, vague subjective terms, and omission of important information to avoid directly lying. It's pretty much normalized across all marketing at this point.

To my knowledge an ad doesn't have to correspond to the visual which is why a lot of ads visually sell or imply sex in some way, meanwhile whatever there selling isn't. Clothing is notorious for this. Sticking a car there just catches your eye like an attractive person might to lure you in. It's then up to the passerby to read the details and fine print of what's actually being sold.

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