bloggo ergo sum

I recently got a promotion in the mail (snail mail) sent out by a local Nissan dealer. It had phrases on it like “scratch and match” and “$1000 shopping spree”, etc. The idea was that you scratch off some stuff to see your number, and if the number is on the reverse side of the letter, then you win something! The prizes are:

1. $5000 cash
2. A new flat-panel television
3. A sea-doo recreational-vehicle
4. $100 cash
5. $1000 shopping spree

Sounds great! Oh but wait…my wife caught something interesting. The odds of winning each prize were printed in the fine-print (I’m sure it’s required by law, otherwise they wouldn’t do it). Anyway, the odds of winning 1-4 were 1/42,500. The odds of winning #5 were 42,496/42,500.

Sound fishy? That’s because it is. I searched the web a little bit for this stuff, and I found several blogs that describe promotions that were very similar to this one. It’s a deceptive way to get people to come to your event. We even tried to call ahead to find out what we’d won, but we were told that we had to come in person. So I went. I showed a salesman my letter, and the first thing he asked was “Are you looking for a car?” I told him that we weren’t, and he showed me the posterboard with the winning numbers on it, and then he got me this gift certificate:


And then he promptly left me alone. Note to self: if you ever want to just get out of a conversation with a car salesman, the quickest way to do it is just to tell him you’re not even looking for a car.

Anyway, the website on this certificate, woarewards.com, is a total scam. It’s an online catalogue with a poor selection of really low-quality products. The $1000 gift certificate goes toward these things, but what happens is that they nail you with “processing fees” and shipping costs (overcharged, no doubt), and so you end up paying more for the products than you would have if you had gone to Wal-Mart and bought higher-quality equivalents.