27 years ago, Hoover offered free international flights with any £100 purchase
thehustle.co
thehustle.co
Most of us remember the period where almost everything in computer stores were "free after rebate." "Emachine 1997 model FREE AFTER REBATE", "Pack of 50 CDR FREE AFTER REBATE".
The rebate involved you filling out a form with the original proof of purchase, sending it off, and either never hearing from them again or having it denied. "Sorry, wrong receipt, send us the real one" but it was already gone.
Now, I assume anything with a rebate is fraud. The insight from this article is that we were right.
I still have several spindles of CD-Rs (and later DVD-Rs) that were free (or maybe $1) after rebate.
Sometimes they insist in paying in amazon vouchers or some other 'almost cash' currency.
They are very common on subscriptions.
Other things used as cash include gift cards, cigarettes, drugs, bikes, iDevices, baby formula, diapers, laundry detergent...
Although, generally speaking, Amazon and other general purpose large retailers (Walmart, Home Depot) have figured that out. When I get rewards points of some sort with an option to convert to various gift cards, the best deal is always with the specialty retailers but then you need to make a point of using the card for something you really want/need as opposed to just adding some dollars to your Amazon account.
I usually find out about these deals on https://www.doctorofcredit.com/ which is run by what seems like fantastic, non-scammy, people and its the only credit card blog that I know of that's independent. The rest shill for referrals.
I worked at a store that heavily promoted these things to get foot traffic. The only people with problems were the people lining up on Sunday meaning to fill a cart with shit they didn’t need - or even know what it was to get it for “free”.
I remember one guy, who punched me in the mouth, screaming that he bought a scam video card “it doesn’t even play tapes” for $14.95 and didn’t get his $20 rebate for whatever reason. I think that he didn’t include the UPC code or something. The medical bills after I threw him out the window, the arrest and fine were a lot more than $14.95.
I used the free cd offers all of the time to get CD-Rs… we’d make custom mix CDs for the folks in our dorm.
I assume from the story those are the angry fellows charges not our hero protagonist.
One can not punch a person and not expect retaliation, even if that person you perceive to be a social inferior to you doing retail work.
Funny you took the complete opposite way that the clerk got in trouble.
> Though already existing in Middle French, the word defenestrate ("out of the window") is believed to have first been used in English in reference to the episodes in Prague in 1618 when the disgruntled Protestant estates threw two royal governors out of a window of the Hradčany Castle and wrote an extensive apologia explaining their action.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Defenestrations_of_Prague
But that article has no citations for that claim...
The prefix de- is used in Czech normally since forever and to this day (originally Latin though), the stem fenestra is Latin (not normally used in Czech), and the suffix -ace is Czech (Slavic origin).
BTW the quote you posted says the first usage in English language was in reference to the Czech text which actually coined it (thus the English text adopted it), not that it's English in origin.
It's only used in loan words. Like "depilace" is a normally used loanword in Czech, non-loan word variant would be "odchlupeni". But "dechlupeni" (using "de-" instead of "od-" + native Czech word) would be completely nonsensical.
Claiming that "defenestrace" is originally a Czech word seems absurd to me. It might have been "invented" in Czech lands, but clearly from the latin form.
The prefix de- is not used only in loanwords, you can construct new words with it just fine. It doesn't sound right in your example but that doesn't mean it's nonsense.
> The prefix de- is not used only in loanwords, you can construct new words with it just fine.
Listing some examples would strengthen your argument immensely.
> It doesn't sound right in your example but that doesn't mean it's nonsense.
To my native ear, it sounds nonsensical. I wouldn't be able to guess what it is supposed to mean.
It was the Czech person who first combined the Czech/Latin prefix, the Latin stem and the Czech/Slavic suffix in a decidedly Czech sentence.
> Listing some examples would strengthen your argument immensely.
You said one yourself. Nobody would say it because there's already a better way to say that, but everybody would understand the meaning and the grammar is fine.
> but everybody would understand the meaning and the grammar is fine.
No, I certainly wouldn't. It's nonsense.
Can you name a word formed like that which is present in some dictionary?
(I had the displeasure of studying Latin in school)
Note that all Latin speakers in that time period spoke Latin as their second (third...) language, and it was pretty common to see influence of other (mother) languages onto the used Latin. It wouldn't be surprising if e.g. a German native speaker (where such word concoctions are common place) coined such a Latin word.
Here ( https://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/morph?l=defatigatio&la=... ) is a dictionary entry citing defatigatio to a speech given by Cicero.
The best discussion of the original formation of the word I have been able to find was here: https://linguistics.stackexchange.com/questions/35905/did-a-...
The cops thought it was great. My boss not so much. The whole thing was absurd - an adult attacking a 19 year old over a few dollars.
Their business model was based on the assumption that a percentage of customers would forget to do this. Unfortunately, when hundreds or thousands of $ is on the line, people were very diligent! Unsurprisingly that company didn't last long.
Reminds me of Jessica Walter's character in Arrested Development: "It's a banana, Michael - how much could it cost? Ten dollars?"
https://www.theonion.com/fuck-everything-were-doing-five-bla...
Assuming no one here went to jail this is essentially a legal way to run a ponzi scheme.
Rich people aren't idiots, I think the target customer for this thing is someone who's so price sensitive that they'll go to huge lengths to get a TV for free.
I got so much stuff I didn't need from them. I filled my entire dining table with stuff, and got my family to help me with an assembly line style UPC cutting and pasting operation.
I even scripted their website to auto-generate the rebate form.
The final batch never paid out, but I was able to file a credit card chargeback for most, but not all, of it.
I scripted that too. I had to print and fax around 400 pages of documentation to the credit card company. (Print directly to fax either didn't exist then, or at least I didn't have it.)
It's been how many years? And I still have stuff from them in my house, some in use, some just brand new in a box.
I was getting 1.5% cashback from the credit card I used, and everything was completely free.
Edit: cyberrebate.com [1]
I believe he got paid every time or close to.
Haram
I've gotten all the rebates I've filled out. I just assume that enough people are sloppy or don't read instructions that it works out for the company
I also try to do any of those class action suits I qualify for. Those are a little more hit or miss but it's about the same time investment of a simple form, but usually those take a lot longer to get money. Got a check for 3 bucks for buying chips at some point in the past couple years, but it was really nice getting hundreds of dollars put into my bank account from Facebook a few months back after filing a claim years ago and forgetting about it.
But ok I then went to one in London and some directors were sent to prison for fraud. So OP yes you have a point. It was a dodgy world.
In spite of the obviously scammy nature of such promotions, I still took the bait a few times, averaging probably a 50% rebate success rate - somewhat better than I would have predicted. At some point there was a web site where you could check your rebate status, which seemed to help a bit.
The article missed out one important detail - the deal included very overpriced accommodation, which is how they were going to claw the cost of the flights back. But they failed to make booking the accommodation through the deal mandatory, so people took the flights and not the accommodation.
To be truly "worst", I'd say you'd have to feature in the textbooks of students of English contract law.
See, for example, Carlill v Carbolic Smoke Ball Company[1] which is a famous example used in every single textbook.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carlill_v_Carbolic_Smoke_Ball_...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pepsi_Number_Fever
> Pepsi Number Fever, also known as the 349 incident, was a promotion held by PepsiCo in the Philippines in 1992, which led to riots and the deaths of at least five people.
Somehow, the company and the brand still exist.
> About 22,000 people took legal action against PepsiCo; at least 689 civil suits and 5,200 criminal complaints for fraud and deception were filed.
On the other hand, the Hoover example was based upon pure dishonesty. They made a claim, put in a bunch of rules to disqualify people, took steps to slant the rules in their favour, then hoped it would be enough to win the numbers game. Hope because they were relying upon assumptions that were very much out of their control.
Claimed to have made thousands on it, maybe even 10s of thousands
I always wondered if your credit scorn would be all jacked because it would report this high to zero usage
I shall add this to my list of unverifiable FICO score rumors.
> your homeowners insurance rate can be impacted by your churning activity, even though your credit score remains high. Your insurer regular does a soft pull on your credit, and they may increase your rate if there are a lot of new credit lines, even though your overall credit score and utilization may remain in good standing.
And if you had good credit and lots of credit cards already, having one or two cards occasionally nearly maxed out didn’t really hurt your credit score much.
It was also fascinating to watch it all break down in the end, as banks stopped accepting bulk deposits of the coins. A lot of panicked people trying to find some way to get their thousands of dollars of coins back into their checking accounts after every bank in town turned them away. IIRC, some credit card companies also stopped paying rewards on those purchases or closing accounts due to the obvious manufactured spending, making all of the risk and work pointless.
Helluva deal for us.
I grew up in a rural area, but one with a tourist season. The population almost tripled in tourist season, and tourists consume far more "on the run" consumables.
More than one local won the grand prize, months after a 6 month contest ended.
I won a brand new car, 2 months past win date.
By shipping the cans/bottles to an area of low consumption, a month before the end of promotion, it ensures it would be unlikely that the winner would find a bottle cap before end of promotion.
The article says in 1908 James Murray Spangler invents and patents the first vacuum cleaner. In 1984 we get the movie "Ghostbusters" in which one of the main protagonists is Egon Spangler who invents a way to to trap ghosts (by "sucking" them into traps.)
Spengler. Not Spangler.
I've no memory of the application process being difficult and we even returned the hoover to the store and swapped it for the equivalent in Sega mega drive games without any issues.
I actually went out to the US separately as part of a student work America summer visa and my friend and another person used the voucher to meet me in Orlando. This was definitely late 1992 so very sure the quote about no flights being honoured initially aren't accurate.
A random piece of trivia is that most rebate forms went to Young America in Minnesota. A long ago company I worked for supplied them with a lot of their computing gear.
"The math was concerning: On the sale of a £119 vacuum cleaner, Hoover made a profit of £30. The two free fights that came with it were worth at least £600. This meant that each customer who followed through with the promotion cost Hoover £570."
[0] https://nowiknow.com/the-marketing-stunt-that-vacuumed-up-a-...
I think it's a combination of the public not expecting/tolerating it (i.e. any company involved in it would suffer a severe hit to its reputation) and strong consumer protection laws that could make it very expensive for the companies involved, but not having to constantly be on one's guard and assume that anything you see is a scam is nice.
Less friction is better for society, and having to figure out whether what you see is what it seems to be or a scam trying to mislead you is friction.
Cash. Out.
Man, I went through all those hoops, spent weeks, scamming those systems, real money too, but mostly playing the game you outlined but when it came time to get that money suddenly that sites admins were in cayman. Then Bermuda. Then Sri Lanka and their English suddenly wasn’t too good!
Once I ended up with a perosnal cheque from one of their guys as I was bitching on the forum making them look bad.
Can’t believe a) I cashed it and it and b) it wasn’t a scam.
I got free 50$ but had to wager 2k$ before cashing out. Played some slot machine, run hot and had 600$ by the time the bonus cleared. I took out cash from ATM a couple days later.
The BBC’s consumer rights programme Watchdog, which my parents always watched, would cover it on an almost weekly basis.
It really was a staggeringly stupid thing to do. And it was weird to watch Groupon convince so many small businesses to do similarly ruinous promotions in the 2000s.
The design was so successful that Dyson became the most popular vacuum cleaner brand in the UK, and it remains so today.