Deliveroo April Fools' joke backfires in France
bbc.co.uk
bbc.co.uk
Pranks are at their best when they punch up, subversively point out the irrationality of existing power structures, or when they have no larger agenda or point. When they give you a moment to remember how absurd everything really is when you think about it.
Treating 4/1 as an excuse for PR departments to find a clever way to push their message just makes me sad.
The rest of the jokes are obnoxious, trite, wannabe bandwagons. Maybe it's time corporates ease down on this worn out tradition?
I mean, this is a like an AWS April fools joke where they pretend to loose all your data or something.
You've got to wonder how people come up with ideas as clearly braindead as this.
Apparently there was one such case.
But the voltswagen thing was way too early. Jokes and serious news are mixed on sites like HN. This shit with deliveroo is unthinkable. And all this in a environment where fake news isn't just rampant, it's been weaponized.
Yeah, count me out. It's gone too far. Companies really need to quit it. At least, we could hope that HN could keep this crap off the front page
Makes me thing about the april fools on LinuxFR[1]
[1] - https://linuxfr.org/news/mise-en-place-du-port-du-masque-ave...
TL;DR: Since the government authorized facial recognition on security cameras and the mask prevents that, they voted a law to have a QRCode on your mask to enable "facial" recognition
Obvious fake news, but funny read anyway.
IKEA sent an email about Hund Couture. They made a little video with dogs dressed in clothes made of IKEA bags. Amusing. Hurts no one.
Sending someone a fake bill that looks real isn’t really funny. I’m not even sure what that is.
The worst part of April Fools' isn't the spirit, it's the deception and inauthenticity.
I remember one creator on YouTube this year who put it as: "yes, today is April 1st, but what I did is real, not a lie, and it took actual effort to achieve."
Unfunny. Not even smart.
EDIT:
Here's a guide https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vkKs2LgF6qc
Then let the company accountants tell how well such a marketing stunt fared.
Can you imagine the stress this would bring to someone not as fortunate financially!?
Seriously, how does the person who approved this not realize that, for many people, a charge like this means they can no longer afford food for the month, and have to spend time they don't have trying to resolve the situation?
During the first and second lockdown, they shutdown their "help" chat, so no way to complain when your delivery cames 3h late (yes, 3h!! not even a joke) or with half of the order (with the price not adjusted).
And now they dare to joke by sending fake bills? I will never order from them again.
I thought we had laws to protect the customer, but it seems with enough money you can get away with anything...
Then you have these tech blogs("journalists") covering them like it's black friday sales. "All the April Fools jokes you've missed around the net"
This makes it even more difficult to imagine how they could have thought that faking potential fraud and financial loss would be a good idea (can it ever be a good idea, anyway ?)
Customers, in general, don't abuse such right, and I've never come across cases of extremely evident mistakes like these.
However, in case a customer demanded such "premium", I believe you would have to take the matter to court showing that your mistake wasn't in bad faith.
Edit: but in general, yes, companies have to be really cautious. Such law applies to enterprise customers as well. I worked for a small telecom provider which hired services from a bigger one. They started a whole new department responsible for detecting unduly charges and, within some months, the department was not only recovering money, but also generating revenue.
- regarding the hypothetical case presented, the customer would be entitled to get the double refund only if she'd paid the bill;
- still regarding the hypothetical case, if you've sent the wrong bill by mistake, and the customer still paid it, you could offer a "simple" refund and, in case the customer demands the double, you could refuse and the burden of proof would be hers -- although you could still loose in case the customer takes the issue to court and the judge gets convinced you attempted to commit fraud
- on the concrete scenario I mentioned (the company I worked for), the unduly amount probably happened out of negligence of the big telecom, not due to bad faith. However, it would be so hard for them to prove it (especially considering the error was never fixed), that they would simply accept to refund the excess in double
April fools is about pranking people.
Ya'll need to relax.
I get that for some people this is a lot of money, but these people aren't stupid because they're poor, they too can figure out it's a prank.
"That's funny, I didn't order 500 euro of pizza. No way I'm gonna pay that."
Please stop white knighting poor people by simultaneously implying they're retarded.
This statement is absolutely wrong. You make it sound like everyone is being rational all the time. Scams are at a similar level of credibility and they do work very well in practice. If I'm told I won't be able to pay rent next month despite working three jobs, which already stressed me out to no end, then it can definitely happen.
But that's not all. Even if we stay rational, we still have the responsibility to consider that the account had been hacked, or that an accounting error happened, etc. That will take some time to resolve. Maybe I'll incur financial cost in addition to wasted time, e.g. by canceling a credit card or involving a lawyer.
What will you do if your prank made me panic, or made me waste resources? Will you take responsibility?
Do you think Deliveroo would find it funny if I send them a bomb threat in response? It's just a joke after all! Yes they had to close their office and it cost them millions, but... it was just a prank, so chill, dude. Haha.
It's a funny as hitting someone's head with a shovel.
A very large bill might do the trick. They might even pay it, it's a pretty old school scam, sending invoices to random companies, usually some receptionist just rubber stamps it.
I struggle to think why everyone in the age of fake bullshit posted on social media all feel like they must “play the game”.
If you don’t have something clever or funny, not doing anything at all is a perfectly acceptable option.
I think they real story here is some implicit requirement to “be cute” or “be heard”.
But I am seeing it’s deeper than that. Look at SV obviously “nudging” political discourse, look at companies like Delta weighing in on election laws while requiring the same of their customers things they decry as a public evil, or Coke telling people to “be less white” whatever that is supposed to mean.
It’s like everyone has forgotten their own core missions. And yea yea “social responsibility” and etc, but I don’t want the cast of Avengers telling me how to vote, or care what my airline thinks about anything but planes and how to serve me better, or what joke my pizza places has to push out because it’s “international joke day”.
What became wrong with putting your head down and doing the best you possibly can at the thing you do?
And not the bad actors who think it's ok to run a protected left-turn red light when there's no traffic. The bad actors making a push these days are the ones who believe "race traitors" should be executed and murder of government officials you disagree with is appropriate political discourse.
Know why these people are comfortable talking about and even acting on these beliefs? Because everything they hear is agreement. Too many people keep their heads down and pretend it will go away. They think clearly-disproven mantras like "sunlight is the best disinfectant".
But there are people starting to recognize that sunlight has in fact accelerated the growth of these things. What stops them is consistent widespread visible opposition. And that means lots of people and businesses stepping up and making direct statements. You hear about it when famous people do it because that's how fame works. But they're hardly the only ones.
If you want to keep it straight tech... if you want Facebook being the ultimate moderators of what speech is allowed, what is true, and who can say it, that’s like your opinion man. I disagree and think they could focus on a sustainable long term plan that will best suit their investors while not causing harm - but how interested does FB seem on their core product vs legislation, “nudging”, their “outreach” on issues that they want to see changed? I’ve seen a lot more of Zuck and Dorsey in testimony than I have tech talks lately.
That said, I'm amazed how angry commenters here seem to be getting over it. Yeah, they tried to do something funny, it wasn't, it backfired and annoyed people. But at the same time, lighten up. Not everything needs to be a rage-inspiring transgression.
It’s not cool at all
So yeah, it would have enraged me, as I would have immediately canceled that card, having had a credit card number stolen and abused before and having to wait for the bank to finish investigating the fraud to get my money back.
It hurts me, because I used to have very sophisticated taste in humor.
Anyway, I've said before, this reminds me of "The name of the rose" where the inquisition era zealot couldn't accept that religious men should laugh, because if they can laugh, they could laugh at God and the whole power of the church would fall apart. There is an echo of this in the current lack of tolerance for any humor that derives from making fun of something, grounded in the misunderstanding that finding humor in something means disrespecting it.