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No this isn't about some FREE offer that got out of hand...
...well ok it is, but not in the way you're probably thinking.
When I was at a games store the first time around Corporate decided that legally downloaded music was becoming the next big thing and figured that by offering free legal music downloads with certain purchases would be a great way to boost business (nevermind the fact we have never ever sold music in our stores...).
So they sent us 100s and 100s of cards (same size as credit card) that were each good for 10 downloads each. To get the downloads you had to go through the usual steps:
1) Go to a certain website
2) Input your promo code
3) Select and download your songs
Corporate gave us hardly any information about the cards aside from what was printed on them, except to say the songs downloaded could be imported to Ipods and other portable music players.
They also neglected to give us a real life or video demonstration as to how the download process was supposed to work. They deemed it unnecessary (right because customers will never ask us questions about this stuff
).
Customers were to receive one card for every used game purchased or game traded in. To further aggravate us, the cards had to be rung out ONE AT A TIME (our registers apparently allowed us to do a quantity sale, but half the time the function didn't work properly), which mean if you traded in 10 games, I also had to scan 10 cards with the purchase.
So that's the background, now on to the suck!
The downloaded songs could NOT be transferred to an IPOD! - contrary to what corporate told us, our customers informed us there was no way to transfer the downloaded songs to any portable music player, they could only be listened to on a computer. Some got very upset at us for misleading them.
Sales took longer to ring up: As I mentioned above the cards were typically run through one at a time, this meant a lot of transactions now took a fair bit longer than they had before. This led to a lot of frustrated and impatient customers.
Customers were flooding us wanting help with their cards : Like I said, we were given virtually NO information or instruction on how the downloading process actually worked. We were told we were more than welcome to take a card for ourselves and try it out at home (you know, OFF the clock on our own time) but obviously not many employees took it upon themselves to do this.
It got to the point where either customers were demanding our corporate number or we were offering it voluntarily because we were no help with the card. As it turns out many customers reported to us that corporate was even useless in providing help with the cards, since the CS phone reps hadn't been giving any training on them either.
My Manager sent several emails to the district manager, desperately looking for some kind of support or resource we could direct customers to, all he said was "he was doing what he could to address the matter" but nothing changed for weeks.
Customers flat out refused the cards or got pissy when we tried to give them away: Repeat customers who had fought with the cards before had no desire to get more. Folks who had no plans to use for them didn't want it. A lot of people just didn't care for the extra plastic in their bags and one memorable customer threw the cards back in my face when I gave them to him.
So we ended up with a wastebasket filled with unused cards.
To add even more suck, many of the customers who didn't want the cards neglected to inform of us this fact, preferring instead to litter out store floor and the area outside our front door with them, jam them between game cases or stuff them into our bargain bins. Every night I cleaned up after close I inevitably found tons of cards.
The rest of the store went to crap: Since all of us were having to expend so much energy dealing with the issues from these cards, it was very difficult to keep up with the rest of the store, thus we ended up with a not so great looking store, a messy back area and a dirtier floor than we should have had since we didn't get to vacuum it as much.
Did I mention this promotion went on for TWO WHOLE MONTHS??
And to top it all off, when it was all over, corporate did the stupidest thing of all.
- Despite all the customers who had complained and gotten frustrated with the cards.
- Despite all the employees who had gotten so overwhelmed with the promotion and complained to their managers.
- Despite all the managers who had bitched endlessly on conference calls about the problems the promotion was causing.
Despite all of the above, corporate sent an internal release declaring the promotion an "outstanding success" solely based on the number of cards that were given away and left open the door to running it again in the future.
I ended up leaving the company so I'm not sure if it ever got done again (God, I hope not) but that was the worst nightmare of a promotion I'd ever had the displeasure of dealing with.
...well ok it is, but not in the way you're probably thinking.
When I was at a games store the first time around Corporate decided that legally downloaded music was becoming the next big thing and figured that by offering free legal music downloads with certain purchases would be a great way to boost business (nevermind the fact we have never ever sold music in our stores...).
So they sent us 100s and 100s of cards (same size as credit card) that were each good for 10 downloads each. To get the downloads you had to go through the usual steps:
1) Go to a certain website
2) Input your promo code
3) Select and download your songs
Corporate gave us hardly any information about the cards aside from what was printed on them, except to say the songs downloaded could be imported to Ipods and other portable music players.
They also neglected to give us a real life or video demonstration as to how the download process was supposed to work. They deemed it unnecessary (right because customers will never ask us questions about this stuff
).Customers were to receive one card for every used game purchased or game traded in. To further aggravate us, the cards had to be rung out ONE AT A TIME (our registers apparently allowed us to do a quantity sale, but half the time the function didn't work properly), which mean if you traded in 10 games, I also had to scan 10 cards with the purchase.
So that's the background, now on to the suck!
The downloaded songs could NOT be transferred to an IPOD! - contrary to what corporate told us, our customers informed us there was no way to transfer the downloaded songs to any portable music player, they could only be listened to on a computer. Some got very upset at us for misleading them.
Sales took longer to ring up: As I mentioned above the cards were typically run through one at a time, this meant a lot of transactions now took a fair bit longer than they had before. This led to a lot of frustrated and impatient customers.
Customers were flooding us wanting help with their cards : Like I said, we were given virtually NO information or instruction on how the downloading process actually worked. We were told we were more than welcome to take a card for ourselves and try it out at home (you know, OFF the clock on our own time) but obviously not many employees took it upon themselves to do this.
It got to the point where either customers were demanding our corporate number or we were offering it voluntarily because we were no help with the card. As it turns out many customers reported to us that corporate was even useless in providing help with the cards, since the CS phone reps hadn't been giving any training on them either.
My Manager sent several emails to the district manager, desperately looking for some kind of support or resource we could direct customers to, all he said was "he was doing what he could to address the matter" but nothing changed for weeks.
Customers flat out refused the cards or got pissy when we tried to give them away: Repeat customers who had fought with the cards before had no desire to get more. Folks who had no plans to use for them didn't want it. A lot of people just didn't care for the extra plastic in their bags and one memorable customer threw the cards back in my face when I gave them to him.
So we ended up with a wastebasket filled with unused cards.
To add even more suck, many of the customers who didn't want the cards neglected to inform of us this fact, preferring instead to litter out store floor and the area outside our front door with them, jam them between game cases or stuff them into our bargain bins. Every night I cleaned up after close I inevitably found tons of cards.
The rest of the store went to crap: Since all of us were having to expend so much energy dealing with the issues from these cards, it was very difficult to keep up with the rest of the store, thus we ended up with a not so great looking store, a messy back area and a dirtier floor than we should have had since we didn't get to vacuum it as much.
Did I mention this promotion went on for TWO WHOLE MONTHS??
And to top it all off, when it was all over, corporate did the stupidest thing of all.
- Despite all the customers who had complained and gotten frustrated with the cards.
- Despite all the employees who had gotten so overwhelmed with the promotion and complained to their managers.
- Despite all the managers who had bitched endlessly on conference calls about the problems the promotion was causing.
Despite all of the above, corporate sent an internal release declaring the promotion an "outstanding success" solely based on the number of cards that were given away and left open the door to running it again in the future.
I ended up leaving the company so I'm not sure if it ever got done again (God, I hope not) but that was the worst nightmare of a promotion I'd ever had the displeasure of dealing with.
Further proof that Corporate people are living in their own Happy Little Business World, where unicorns dance and rainbows sing and every plan is a huge success no matter how badly thought out it is. 
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