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Free stuff
Some guy started a personal free stuff campaign, taking 100 stamps and sending letters to 100 companies asking for free stuff. He acheived a pretty decent level of success, documented on his website (which is a bit overloaded with traffic so I recommend the Google cache). Story found on The Consumerist.
A few years ago when I was living and working in Houston, I bought a bag of Lay's KC Masterpiece BBQ potato chips from my company's vending machine. I noticed upon opening the bag that it was even emptier than usual. I ate a few chips and glanced down to find I had unearthed an unspeakable horror. Okay, well it wasn't really that horrendous. But it was a large, dense lump of what appeared to be congealed BBQ flavor stuff. Pretty nasty, and heavy enough that the bag only contained 3 or 4 actual chips.
So I called the number on the bag, and told them what I found and the codes on the bag. They apologized profusely and asked for my information so they could send a coupon. About a week later I received a set of 5 coupons for any Frito-Lays products of any size. It was a pretty cool deal - a defective 50-cent bag of chips got me coupons for 5 free full-size bags.
Have you ever complained to or complimented a company and received free stuff in response?
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Comments
My colleague at the writing
My colleague at the writing academy uses something like this as a teaching exercise. Her students pick four or five companies and then write different letters to each. Some students lie just a little. Some lie a lot, concocting fantastic tall tales of woe. And some students simply beg.
The winner is the one who brings in the most loot. Tall tale letters have the highest rate of success. My theory? Customer service types reward letter writers who entertain them.
Dang. Totzilla is no longer
Dang. Totzilla is no longer on eBay.
Free stuff for Kids!
When I was 8 or so I got a book called "Free Stuff for Kids". Basically, it was a list of places you could write to for free samples of things, sometimes you had to send a SASE, sometimes a dollar, but most stuff was pretty neat on a kid scale (3-D glasses, free sparkle stickers, etc.)
As far as scoring free stuff as an adult, I usually don't bother to complain. In addition to my general good-naturedness, I'm downright lazy.
I had it too
Meadowbrook Press discontinued the series in 2002, unfortunately.
Seems like they should have
Seems like they should have an online version by now. Or someone should...
I had that book!
I can't recall if I ever actually wrote to any of the listed companies. I think the coolness of the idea that people would just give you stuff for writing to them was enough fantasy/wish-fulfillment for me.
Our latest free stuff scored has been more of a downer, in that it has usually resulted from someone's incompetence related to stuff we bought. Specifically, how hard is it to get a goddamn carryout order right? I wanted my side salad, not a $15 gift certificate for my next order.
carryout/delivery screwups
There is nothing worse than a screwup of a food order. I've had a delivery place screw up orders before, but what are you going to do, wait another hour for them to make the right thing and deliver it?
We recently had two screw
We recently had two screw ups with our local restaurant for take-out orders (it's a Bistro with a nice sit down restaurant). They've sent us to $15 gift certificates as a result with apologetic letters. Frankly, I'd rather they get the order right, but it's nice to get acknowledgement for when they screw up.
My wife does it al lthe time.
She enjoys phone conflict. I'm more reticent, and would rather not have to calm her down afterwards, too. But the free shit is nice.