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Comment by MaxBarraclough | Hacker News Reader

I'll share my less dramatic experience, on the off chance others have seen the same:

Every few weeks I get an email from Uber Eats with a generous-looking promotional code, to the tune of 25% off. If I line up an order on the website and enter the promotional code, no discount appears on the order. If I refresh the page and re-enter the code, it tells me That code has already been used.

This has happened to me 3 times now, if I recall correctly.

It's not as if this can be blamed on my using a peculiar browser. Last time this happened I was using Edge, with no plugins or funky configuration changes.

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I have a coupon code that keeps showing up in my email for something like $20 off from Uber Eats. I usually use Doordash, so I don't end up using it. Eventually they send an email warning that the coupon is going to expire soon, don't let it go to waste, etc. I don't care, so it expires. Then two days later, I get another coupon code for the same offer, and the same set of emails repeat.

This has repeated at least six times. I'm just morbidly curious how long this cycle will go.

Sort of unrelated, but I had a similar email issue after I moved between states earlier this year.

Submitted a request for a quote from a moving company, and included the specific date of move in the request. They called me, gave me a quote, but I opted to go with someone else. Moving date came and went, we got settled in, and about a week later the emails came in.

I would get one email per day informing me that they hadn't heard from me yet and needed to hear from me ASAP if I was still interested. They proceeded to include a comment that said they would not stop emailing me until they heard from me. Each email also appeared to be hand-typed by this person every day.

I wrote an email asking them if they even bothered to notice that my move date had come and gone, but stopped myself because, like you, I was morbidly curious. It took them three months of ignoring their, "We won't stop until you call us," emails for them to finally stop.

I looked at a used car (at a new car dealer) a few years ago, and got phone calls, one or more per day for weeks, until I called them back.

I realize that maybe the person was forced to do it by their boss, and people hate being ghosted, but it was so far out of my idea of social norms that I didn't want to talk to them even more.

If they're not taking the hint after 10 calls with no response, what are they thinking? How far will it escalate?

If I was just busy for a few days and wasn't ghosting them, what do they think they've accomplished?

wonder if this is just because these places are operated/owned by older people who are used to an era where people called all the time? Norms might have been different then… but even if that’s the case, they should be aware of the current norms.

I don't think older people expect to be treated like that.

The salesman was ~half my age, and I knew someone ~twice my age who had bought and serviced a car there and simply said they had no such experience, like I had.

I guess that older people do feel it's more of a faux pas to not return a call. But it's never been normal to go nuclear even so.

I have wondered if the reason for weird stuff at car dealers is simply that, with a commission-based position, you can basically let anybody who thinks they can do it try, and some of them are going to be weird overconfident people.

But I also figure that as a rule, really weird "customer service" is probably management coercion for some stupid reason.

I’ve had similar experiences occasionally with a few tech recruiters (this is an outlier experience not the general one). Incessant emails until finally one with something cute and a gentle note that they won’t bother me anymore. It’s really annoying because I feel cruel for ignoring their emails but it’s not like it’s going to change my mind. If your email got ignored just move on, but I do understand that the business incentivizes that behavior.

Literally every time I order from Amazon they offer me a free trial of Amazon Prime. I take them up on the offer around 80% of the time, use the free trial, and immediately cancel. I've had probably 8 free trials of Amazon Prime over the last five or so years and they are still offering it.

Genius. I keep declining it out of some misplaced sense of morality.

This has repeated at least six times. I'm just morbidly curious how long this cycle will go.

Possibly forever. This is the Bed, Bath, and Beyond advertising model.

Flooding your in/mail-box with coupons is a way of keeping the brand fresh in your mind. Considering the worthlessness of the coupons, and the small number of people who use them, it's more than worth the expense.

> Considering the worthlessness of the coupons

Are there a bunch of restrictions? $20 off sure sounds pretty good.

$20 is good to you. To Uber, it's an insignificant spec.

I haven't been in London in four years but still get regular offers of discounts quoted in Pounds Sterling.

The same happened to me. I didn't notice that the discount wasn't on the bill until 2 days later. I contacted UberEats and they said it was over 48 hours so they wouldn't do anything about. It was about 52 hours after.

Yeah, I never use Uber eats it sometimes do when I get one of those big discounts… but every time I do, I have issues like this. I usually get it to eventually work by following the email link and retrying a bunch, but the fact that it fails so often is always suspicious to me… are they hoping I don’t notice, or that I will say fuck it and order anyway?

I had the same experience with a couple food delivery services.

At first I figured it was a bug, after a couple more rounds I wondered if they counted on me deciding “whatever I’m hungry”.

Had similar issues with coupon codes from other non food services too…

I have used Uber Eats before and they are constantly sending me emails with $30 off coupons for first time orders only. Are they hoping I give them to someone else or something?

I get similar codes and emails from a variety of delivery and meal kit services that don't work. I figure it's just another "innovative" growth/revenue hack.

I have also had this issue, but only in the last few weeks. The promotions used to work before.

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