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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

#41

Post by Cthulhu_ »

dluan wrote: post #30

Back in the 90s there was a hilarious trend of winning the car in the mall by being the person to be in the car the longest. This was when SUVs were becoming a really big thing. People were sleeping in the car with 5 other strangers to see who could outlast the others, with only short bathroom breaks allowed. I'm not really sure what the advertisers/dealers won in that exchange.

Probably a bit of free publicity in a local newspaper, people coming by to watch for a while (while a salesperson approaches them), etc. It's good fun, too.

Re: Why nobody ever wins the car at the mall

#42

Post by Cthulhu_ »

dawnerd wrote: post #12
ktal wrote: post #6

I saw that very car at that very mall, and the screens were all surrounded by people eagerly entering their info. Don't people get enough spam calls and emails to realize why?

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.

Re: Why nobody ever wins the car at the mall

#43

Post by Cthulhu_ »

mschuster91 wrote: post #31
svilen_dobrev wrote: post #11

pff, there was some movie long ago, some technician was installing a few 1-armed-bandits in some pub, and asked the owner - should they give 1 win per 100, or 1 per 1000 ? And the owner answered: What? 1 per 1000? We're not a charity here, there must be zero wins!

Having worked in casinos and actually owning a real, unrestricted gambling machine (for laughs, tbh): that's bullshit. Gambling works because there is always, always some machine that is paying out money. This one machine is sufficient to get all other patrons to throw more and more money at them. Sometimes all hell breaks loose and multiple or all machines pay out. The joke is that most gamblers won't cash out and g…

Yup, pretty much. The machines are configured for a certain win percentage though, so the house always wins in the end.

Re: Why nobody ever wins the car at the mall

#44

Post by tikhonj »

Cthulhu_ wrote: post #38
coldtea wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Prohibited: "Failing to award and distribute all prizes of the value and type represented." They can't mock-award it to someone of their own?

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.

Re: Why nobody ever wins the car at the mall

#45

Post by foobar1962 »

When I was a kid -- I'm in Australia -- we'd regularly get computer line-printed Readers Digest Sweepstakes out of the blue -- we lived in a farm in a rural area and this was the 1960s.

The sweepstakes often made claims that "we have invested $1.34 in your name..." It was many years before I realised that they really meant "we have spent $1.34 buying your name and address..."

Re: Why nobody ever wins the car at the mall

#46

Post by theshadowknows »

This sort of thing and the sorts of things Facebook and other companies do really gives CRM and marketing a poor name. My team and I work in technical CRM and we do what we can to give our customers actual relevant advertisements. We also willingly collect only relevant data, don’t store it indefinitely, and never purchase data. The social team gets cranky with us but we have a core set of values that we don’t compromise even when upper management gets pushy.

Re: Why nobody ever wins the car at the mall

#47

Post by drawkbox »

On the flipside, I worked on promotions game systems in the brand promotions space with instant win and giveaways after the user played a game. If they won we had to contact them to verify and get info to send them the prize.

When someone won the prize we had to get the social security number of the person that won for gift tracking as many were over 15k, their contact info and location to send the prize, you'd be surprised at how many people pass that up or think it is a scam and/or never get back. We had to pick the next person if they passed it up or didn't get back and sometimes it would go through dozens of people before they would accept it. Lots of game systems, trips and even motorcycles were passed up.

I myself would have probably done the same thing, hard to believe you won and if you do win it is hard to not think it is a scam due to systems like mentioned in the article.

Re: Why nobody ever wins the car at the mall

#48

Post by mort96 »

drawkbox wrote: post #47

On the flipside, I worked on promotions game systems in the brand promotions space with instant win and giveaways after the user played a game. If they won we had to contact them to verify and get info to send them the prize. When someone won the prize we had to get the social security number of the person that won for gift tracking as many were over 15k, their contact info and location to send the prize, you'd be su…

Why did you even need the SSN?

Re: Why nobody ever wins the car at the mall

#49

Post by TheSpiceIsLife »

mort96 wrote: post #48
drawkbox wrote: post #47

On the flipside, I worked on promotions game systems in the brand promotions space with instant win and giveaways after the user played a game. If they won we had to contact them to verify and get info to send them the prize. When someone won the prize we had to get the social security number of the person that won for gift tracking as many were over 15k, their contact info and location to send the prize, you'd be su…

Why did you even need the SSN?

Not parent but presumably the bit about requiring it for gifts over $15k is a regulatory requirement?
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