| Date: | July 12, 2006 / year-entry #233 |
| Tags: | non-computer |
| Orig Link: | https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/oldnewthing/20060712-26/?p=30533 |
| Comments: | 17 |
| Summary: | Back in 2003, M&M offered a chance to win $5000 every summer for life, but if you looked more carefully, the offer actually read, "Win $5000 Every Summer For Life*", and the asterisk at the bottom read, "Maximum 50 years". That fine print was filled with strange stuff. For example, 3. Sponsor responsible only for... |
Back in 2003, M&M offered a chance to win $5000 every summer for life, but if you looked more carefully, the offer actually read, "Win $5000 Every Summer For Life*", and the asterisk at the bottom read, "Maximum 50 years". That fine print was filled with strange stuff. For example,
One of the prizes was approximately ten pounds of M&Ms. The logical conclusion: "M&M is not responsible for the quality of M&Ms." I was reminded of this by the recent flap over how hard it was for one person to cancel his AOL account. There was an AOL contest some years back that offered a chance to "Win free AOL dial-up service for life!", and it too had limited your life to 50 years in the fine print. That one would actually be fun, though. Imagine, in the year 2052, AOL will still have to keep one modem up and running just for this contest winner. |
Comments (17)
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"Imagine, in the year 2052, AOL will still have to keep one modem up and running just for this contest winner."
I could imagine it, if other companies were as committed to their existing customers. MSFT is the only company I’ve seen bend over backwards so far for its legacy users.
Well, that’s changing slowly. For example, it looks like Vista will kill off support for MSN email’s proprietary password authentication.
For some reason this reminds me of a story. I was told it as a joke involving AOL, but it’s possible it was a real con tried by some smaller ISP.
Basically, they justified their higher price by offering 1000 free hours per month as opposed to the 750 hours offer by (the competition/themselves prior to price increase).
You’ll note, of course, that a month has, at most, 744 hours.
While it’s more likely that AOL would just provide them with another service, there are similar cases. Back in the late 80s, the cable company in Longmont, CO scrambled all but a few basic channels. This made it difficult for people to use cable-ready TVs. The reason for this was that part of the contract with this city was that some people were given "basic cable" as long as they lived in their houses. There were only around 6 people left who qualified for free service.
[You’ll note, of course, that a month has, at most, 744 hours.]
I’m not sure I’d term that a "con". Everything is up front. And, is it possible they allow multiple simultaneous connections, thus using 2 hours per hour?
Lighten up people, I think Raymond was trying to be funny. Don’t you think he knows that it was
"a catch-all phrase to prevent lawsuits."?
Weiguo: Close; as I recall, the "1000 hour" free trial was for 45 days, not one month – meaning you could indeed use every hour of the trial allowance within the free period (45 days being 1080 hours).
My inner geek is now wondering (a) whether they actually enforced the 1000 hour limit, charging extra if you used the maximum possible 1080 hours, and (b) what they did about daylight savings, which could make it 1081 hours instead at the right time of year.
October has 745 hours in the parts of the US that use DST. At least, until the DST change gets moved to November in 2006.
JamesCurran, I think you’re forgetting leap years.
Recently many of the cell-phone operators in India are offering "Free incoming calls for LIFE*" and in the fine print they say LIFE==15yrs .
Whenever I hear about one of those "…x for life!" promotions, I imagine elite squads of Ninja Assassins poised to terminate the winner’s life after the press goes away.
Note to self: If the prize delivery committe is dressed all in black and equipped with katana, don’t answer the door.
Last time I tried, just out of curiosity, to see Google’s home page cached on Google, it beared the message "Google is neither affiliated with the authors of this page nor responsible for its content." But I checked it a few seconds ago and it doesn’t happen anymore… I’m amazed they took the trouble to change this, lol…
MSN Search still fails at this detail, lol…
Reminds me of a rating I recently saw for the sci-fi action film "Game over": Rated PG-13 for violence and some dialogue.
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0382178/
please pick me
Raymond Chen blogged recently about a disclaimers for a particular prize and it got me thinking…